In December 2024, a video circulated online that claimed Barron Trump, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s youngest son, gave up his first-class seat to an elderly veteran. The video received more than half a million views, as of this writing.
Users flooded the video with comments, appearing in the story. “They taught him how to honor veterans and respect everyone,” read one of the more sensible comments.
But we did not discover any evidence that this incident occurred. The story originated from Elite Stories and temporarily spread to other YouTube accounts (the veteran appeared in most of the video thumbnails), but no credible media outlet has reported on such a story, which would be newsworthy. ‘interest.
The video also displayed signs of AI-generation — YouTube flagged it as “altered or synthetic content.”
Finally, the video’s description included a disclaimer clarifying that the channel published fictional stories:
The stories presented on this channel are entirely fictional and crafted solely for entertainment. Any resemblance to real events, individuals, or situations is purely coincidental and unintentional. These narratives are not intended to depict, reference, or represent any actual occurrences, persons, or entities.
In short, because we discovered no evidence that this story was true and the description of the video showed that it was “completely fictional,” we claim that this is false.
– YouTube. https://www. youtube. com/watch?v=cUGzv4MOgfs. Accessed December 24, 2024.
Taija PerryCook is a Seattle-based journalist who previously worked for the PNW news site Crosscut and the Jordan Times in Amman.