Fact-Check Dispatch: Oval Office showdown, 'staged' Ukrainian combat, and mural of Elon Musk is not Banksy
Issue 13 of the Spotlight Fact-Check Dispatch
Spotlight is a newsletter created by Eurovision News in collaboration with Members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). It aims to combat misinformation and promote fact-checking efforts in Europe. The newsletter serves as a platform to showcase the fact-checking work of European public service media broadcasters.
Oval Office showdown
Following a tense meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House, video and images emerged on social media purporting to show heated and violent exchanges between the pair.
of the Eurovision Social Newswire investigated several videos that claimed to show a physical altercation between the pair.“The videos, which showed different scenes of Zelenskyy hitting Trump, were shared tens of thousands of times with thousands of comments left on them. Some of these clips were overlaid with banners and logos of major American news outlets,” Hauser writes.
“Some of the most popular manipulated videos also began being shared on March 1 — a day after the meeting — further indicating that there was a lag between the actual event and a social media trend emerging that imagined the meeting descending into physical fighting,” she says.
One of the talking points which emerged from the meeting was a question posed by Brian Glenn, chief White House correspondent for conservative cable network Real America's Voice, who quizzed President Zelenskyy on his choice of clothing for the meeting.
In the aftermath of the meeting, a video emerged purporting to show President Trump mocking Zelenskyy's lack of a suit. Marie Eleonore Richter of Bayerischer Rundfunk’s #Faktenfuchs team debunked this video as AI-generated.
“It was published by a YouTube channel called "DangerousAI," which indicates AI-generated content. In the video itself, "DangerousAI" is also displayed as the original source in the bottom right corner next to Trump's head,” Richter writes.
“The channel description says "AI Parody Content" and the account owner explains that he uses AI for voice recording,” she continues.
After having played a large part in the heated exchanges at the White House, a video compilation of U.S. Vice President JD Vance trended across social media where he is observed harshly criticising President Donald Trump, including calling him “noxious” and agreeing with an interviewer that he is “a fraud”.
After investigating the compilation,
found the footage to be genuine, concluding that all of the interview clips in the montage were from when Vance was public about his opposition to Trump.“While the content of the video is genuine, there are questions around the account @resist_vannessa that shared it. The account claimed the video had been deleted from X, and its account with 200,000 followers suspended. While the account showed only around 44,300 followers at time of writing, it is not possible to verify if the video was deleted or whether and for what reason the account was suspended,” Hauser says.
Staying with the topic of Donald Trump, Javier Menasalvas of VerificaRTVE debunked a video which claimed to show actor Robert De Niro saying “Fuck Trump” while presenting at the 2025 Academy Awards.
Menasalvas writes: “Actor Robert De Niro did not insult US President Donald Trump at the 2025 Oscars, he did so at the 2018 Tony Awards. Through a reverse search we located the video showing the scene of Robert De Niro insulting Trump published on June 11, 2018 on the X profile of the American television channel NBC News.”
“At VerificaRTVE we have watched the broadcast of the 2025 Oscars held in the early hours of Sunday, March 2 in Los Angeles and we have verified that Robert de Niro did not go on stage at any time during the gala,” Menasalvas reports.
At AFP, Daniel Patrick Galgano investigated a video which purported to show Kyiv's armed forces faking battle conditions to drum up support. Galgano writes that the clip is behind-the-scenes footage from a music video shoot, not a combat zone.
“The clip includes the name of a TikTok account called "vitsikkkk2," run by a Ukrainian combat medic who uses the call sign "Vitsik" and posted the same footage in February.”
“Contacted by AFP, Vitsik said by email that the clip was part of the production of a music video for the song "Brothers" performed by the medic and artist Misha Scorpion. He said the video's cast are all members of Ukraine's armed forces,” Galgano writes.
As residents of La Réunion braced for Tropical Cyclone Garance footage posted on TikTok purported to show extreme weather conditions in La Réunion during the cyclone, a video debunked by
.“The video was posted with the caption: “Cyclone Garance Alerte #cyclone #garance #noticiastiktok”. An artificial TikTok audio was also overlaid on the clip, called ‘Thunderstorm (environmental sound)’, which features people screaming, wind sounds, and dramatic music,” Flannery writes.
“One indication that some of the videos were filmed in the United States was the types of cars seen in some of the frames. Large pickup trucks, manufactured by Ford and other American car brands, are not as commonly found in Europe, Africa, or Asia. However, some of these clips feature large pickup trucks and housing that most closely resembles the American style,” she reports.
“Photos of a mural depicting U.S. President Donald Trump’s billionaire advisor Elon Musk as Adolf Hitler were shared online in the weeks after Musk appeared to perform a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration ceremony,” Powell writes.
“On closer inspection, we can see the word “EVYREIN” written across the bottom of the mural. A Google search then led us to the page of an Italian artist called Evyrein who has posted several pictures and a video of the mural on Instagram,” he says.
Rounding off this week’s Dispatch, Maria Flannery and George Powell looked at the AI video depicting a vision to turn Gaza into ‘Riviera of the Middle East’ shared by U.S. President Donald Trump across his social media platforms.
The pair write: “Although there was no evidence the video was made by anyone connected to the White House, its sharing through several official accounts appears to suggest support for the vision for ‘Trump Gaza’ depicted in the clip.”
“Meanwhile, the AI video posted on February 26 appeared to alienate even some of Trump’s ardent supporters. There was backlash to the post on Trump’s own social network, Truth Social, with some self-described Trump fans saying the clip was in “very poor taste” and “horrible,” they said.