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By now, you’ve probably heard about the controversy surrounding Donald Trump and White House aide Natalie Harp.
The oddly close relationship between Trump and his “human printer” has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent months.
Harp rarely seems to leave the president’s side, and her letters to Trump indicate that the bond between them goes beyond the limits of the standard employer-employee relationship.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that their relationship is sexual or otherwise inappropriate. It’s just weird.
Still, given the rumors surrounding Trump and Hart, many were not surprised when a photo allegedly showing them kissing on a golf course went viral this week.
There was just one problem: It wasn’t real.
The White House has now addressed the image, with an administration official telling The Daily Beast that it was “clearly a fake photo.”
The image showed an older man who appeared to be Trump embracing a blonde woman who was widely assumed to be Harp. A second, higher-quality version of the picture also circulated online.
And while the blurry version was difficult to authenticate, the clearer image offered a rather significant clue that artificial intelligence had been involved.
Namely, the woman appeared to have six fingers.
That’s generally not something you expect to see in a candid golf-course photo.
Fact-checkers also identified a watermark indicating that the sharper version had been generated using OpenAI tools.
Snopes concluded that the image was AI-generated, while The Daily Beast found no legitimate wire-service photograph showing Trump and Harp together on a golf course in the outfits depicted.
The origins of the image are murky.
One version was reportedly used as a thumbnail for a YouTube video by political commentator Keith Edwards. Edwards told Snopes that his thumbnail team found the image online and that they did not create or alter the underlying photograph. He also acknowledged that they had not independently verified whether the woman was Harp.
Of course, the fact that the photo is fake doesn’t mean Trump and Harp don’t spend an unusual amount of time together.
Harp has become a familiar presence alongside the president, including on golf outings and foreign trips. She has worked for Trump since 2022 after previously hosting for One America News, and she’s known for carrying a portable printer while traveling with him, earning her the nickname “human printer.”
Her close relationship with Trump has attracted additional attention in recent months, particularly after Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff publicly referenced how frequently she travels with the president.
The Daily Beast also recently published letters Harp wrote to Trump in which she described him as her “Guardian and Protector” and expressed her desire to never let him down.
But whatever one thinks of their unusually close working relationship, there is no credible evidence that the viral golf-course kissing photo depicts a real event.
For once, those extra fingers were actually doing some investigative journalism.
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