In December 2024, a video circulated online claiming that Barron Trump, the youngest son of US President-elect Donald Trump, had given up his seat to an elderly veteran. The video has gained over a million views at the time of writing.
Users flooded the video with comments, appearing in the story. “They taught him how to honor veterans and respect everyone,” reads one of the main comments.
But we did not discover any evidence that this incident occurred. The story originated on 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 highly newsworthy. ‘interest.
The video also displayed signs of AI-generation — YouTube flagged it as “altered or synthetic content.”
Lastly, the description of the video included a disclaimer that clarified the channel posted only fictional stories:
The stories presented on this channel are completely fictional and are made for entertainment purposes only. Any resemblance to genuine events, individuals, or conditions is purely coincidental and unintentional. These narratives are intended to represent, reference, or constitute genuine events, people, or entities.
In short, because we discovered no evidence that this story was true and the video description showed that it was “completely fictitious”, we state 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.