Supposed photo of Trump dancing with a girl on Jeffrey Epstein’s island appears fabricated

Before Jeffrey Epstein was jailed on allegations he ran a sex trafficking ring, former President Donald Trump spoke fondly of the late financier, once calling him a "terrific guy."

But an image supposedly showing Trump "at Epstein’s private island dancing with a 13-year-old girl" appears to be fabricated.

An Instagram post sharing the image was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

In the image, Trump looks decades younger than his current 77 years, and reverse-image searches of older pictures of high-profile people inevitably lead to information about the photos’ origins, such as locations and the date or year taken.  

But we couldn’t find any such context for this image, nor any older appearances of the photo aside from this recent meme, which has overlaying text that reads: "Photo of Donald Trump at Epstein’s private island dancing with a 13-year-old. Trump was in his 50’s when this was taken. What kind of man does that?" 

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Nickelodeon's splat logo design is based on the shape of Epstein Island.

But the people in this image’s background make the strongest case that it was generated using artificial intelligence. 

The man on the left appears to be holding a beer with five fingers and his thumb presumably on the other side of the glass. Though AI has gotten better at drawing hands, misshapen hands with unusual numbers of digits are still a red flag for fake images. 

The woman on the right side of the image, meanwhile, appears to have a large ear abnormally placed on her head. 

"It ticks all the AI image boxes," BBC reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh tweeted. "Unnatural hair, skin tones and facial features, plus the guy in the background holding a pint of beer with six fingers on one hand." 

We rate claims this is an authentic image of Trump False.