Image of Trump presenting $1,300 relief check was parody | Fact check

An Oct. 15 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) includes a picture of former President Donald Trump holding up a giant check, with a Fox News headline announcing “Trump donating $1300 for hurricane relief.” The image, a screenshot of a post on X, formerly Twitter, also includes a list of much larger donations from other celebrities. “$1.3K is less than what Trump spends monthly on makeup and KFC,” text in the image reads.
The Facebook post was shared more than 100 times in six days.
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The image was initially posted online to a page for parody content about Trump. Experts said the photo of Trump with the check has signs of being AI-generated, and there is no evidence of Fox News publishing such a story.
Hurricane Helene left more than 200 people dead and caused billions of dollars in damage across seven southeastern states after making landfall in Florida on Sept. 26. In the aftermath of the storm, numerous fund-raising efforts arose to support hurricane survivors and recovery, and the demand for help increased after Hurricane Milton struck Florida.
The claim Trump made a showy $1,300 donation as part of the relief efforts is false, as is the claim Fox News reported on it. The image appears to have been first posted to Reddit as parody content about Trump.
Gibberish text in the picture of Trump holding the check is a strong indicator it was generated with AI, experts told USA TODAY.
Michelle Johnson, professor emerita of journalism at Boston University, said the image is “clearly fake.” Gibberish text is “a huge red flag” when assessing if an image is AI-generated, and the check is made out to “Manie Mar M AIFAL,” she noted in an email.
Walter Scheirer, a Notre Dame engineering professor, noted that in addition to the check, Trump’s shirt in the photo has nonsensical text and an abstract logo.
Trump endorsed a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $7.8 million as of Oct. 21.
Fact check: No, Trump didn’t pledge only 3% of GoFundMe proceeds to Helene victims
There is also no evidence of Fox News publishing a story resembling the one in the social media posts.  The Facebook post is an example of what could be called “stolen satire,” in which content originally written and presented as parody is captured and reposted in a way that makes it appear authentic. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, which is what happened here.
The post accurately names other celebrities who have donated to hurricane relief, although its figures were not always correct. It accurately reported donation amounts announced by Taylor Swift ($5 million) and actor Ryan Reynolds ($1 million), although it did not also give credit Reynolds’ wife, Blake Lively, for the donation. It understated the amount donated by Dolly Parton (whose companies gave $2 million, not the $1 million in the post) and overstated the amount from rock band Metallica (whose foundation announced $200,000 in donations, not $500,000).
USA TODAY has debunked purported footage of tornadoes spawned by Milton, a fabricated image of Trump wading into flood waters to help and an AI-generated image of flooding in a Tennessee city.
USA TODAY could not reach the Facebook user who shared the claim for comment. It is not possible from that post to tell which account on X made the post that was in the screenshot, but one user who shared the claim later acknowledged being deceived by the image.
Snopes also debunked the claim.
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