Fact Check: Is image showing Melania Trump kissing Jeffrey Epstein on the cheek real?
WASHINGTON, DC: Recently, a photo showing Melania Trump planting a kiss on the cheek of the late financier Jeffrey Epstein has been making the rounds on social media.
It seemed to have resurfaced in November 2025 after President Donald Trump signed a bill mandating the release of documents related to Epstein's crimes. So, let's check if the photo is indeed real.
Claim: A photo shows first lady Melania Trump kissing Jeffrey Epstein on his cheek
Recently, a Threads user posted the supposed photo with a sarcastic caption saying, "What a travesty! Trying to say our First Lady had ANYTHING to do with this Epstein guy!" The caption then featured a flushed face emoji, ending with, "....never mind."
Several others also reposted the photo, sharing the same caption on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and X.
Fact Check: The image is likely created by artificial intelligence
In a nutshell, the photo isn't real and was created by artificial intelligence.
The Threads user who posted this photo also posted at least two other fake images of Donald Trump.
As per the fact-checking outlet Snopes, on comparing the AI-generated photo of Melania Trump and Epstein with the real one, the facial features of Epstein, especially the size of the lips, did not correspond to any of the photos that are authentic.
Moreover, there were no news media outlets that ever credibly reported the photo as being real.
Having said that, the AI or Not site gave a "likely real" result for the image, while the University of Buffalo Media Forensics Lab's Deepfake-O-Meter's detection models indicated a low probability of the photo being artificially generated. It’s important to recognize that tools designed to detect AI usage in photos, text, and videos frequently yield unreliable results
Tracing the origins of this fake photo
On August 12, the fact-checking website Lead Stories unveiled the story about the fake picture that gets more and more confusing by the minute.
The website went further back to the X post of August that showed a screenshot of a YouTube video. The title of a YouTube video whose thumbnail was used in the post read, "Trump GOES NUTS After Stephen Colbert AIRS Melania's UNSEEN Epstein Secrets On Live TV."
As of December 2025, YouTube searches did not turn up any popular videos with the same name and thumbnail.
This might mean that either the user who controls the channel or YouTube has taken down the video or the channel. There is a video with very few views that shows the same fake photo, while another video has a similar AI-generated image of the first lady kissing Epstein.
