On Oct. 13, U.S. President Donald Trump posted an AI video on his Truth Social account showing himself playing with a tiger.
In mid-October, social media users claimed U.S. President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself playing with a tiger.
The rumor spread days after a tiger mauled and killed a man at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster, England, on Oct. 10. The clip shows an artificial intelligence tool’s depiction of Trump pointing his finger at the tiger before playfully wrestling and hugging it.
One X user who shared the footage wrote (archived), “Trump actually posted this AI video of him with a tiger in the middle of the night.”
Trump did indeed post the AI video on his Truth Social account, hours after sharing authentic footage of the moment a tiger attacked a man in the U.K. The AI clip Trump posted shows the president mimicking the hand gesture the British man made as the tiger attacked him in the authentic video. As such, we rate this claim true.
The president posted the AI-generated video (archived) on Truth Social late at night on Oct. 13.
Hours earlier, he posted (warning: the link contains violent and distressing content) authentic footage, meaning not AI-generated or digitally created, of a tiger mauling a man named William Chapman in an enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park (archived). Trump’s caption reads, “Don’t ever mess with nature! President DJT.”
(Truth Social user “realDonaldTrump”)
Trump also posted (warning: the link contains violent and distressing content) a compilation of clips (archived) of big cats attacking humans on Oct. 13. Snopes has not determined the authenticity of those videos.
Chapman was a former child actor. On Oct. 10, he entered the tiger’s enclosure and sustained fatal injuries from the attack. His family criticized Trump for posting the authentic footage of Chapman, who, they said, suffered from mental illness. A family statement reads:
The family are utterly devastated by their loss and are struggling to come to terms with what has happened. The publication and circulation of deeply offensive media content is causing them severe distress at an exceptionally vulnerable time. We ask people to stop doing this.
The family are hopeful that the relevant authorities will do their upmost to get to the bottom of why our amazing son did what he did.
For further reading, Snopes has reported extensively on Trump’s authentic Truth Social posts.
Sources
Brown, Mark. “Family of Man Killed by Tiger Criticise Online Content after Trump Reposts Video.” The Guardian, 14 Oct. 2026. UK News. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/oct/14/william-chapman-family-tiger-attack-online-content-trump-reposts-video. Accessed 14 Oct. 2026.
‘Donald J. Trump Video Post from October 13, 2026’. Trump’s Truth, 14 Oct. 2026, https://www.trumpstruth.org/statuses/42322.
Esposito, Joey. “24 Things Trump Actually Posted on Truth Social.” Snopes, 31 Aug. 2026, https://www.snopes.com//collections/trump-real-truth-social-posts/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2026.
‘Man Killed in Tiger Attack Identified as William Chapman’. BBC News, 13 Oct. 2026, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3ewegny45jvo.
South Yorkshire Police. ‘NEWS: Family of Man Who Died in Tragic Incident at Yorkshire Wildlife Park Share Tribute’. Facebook, 14 Oct. 2026, https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1551039760401725&set=a.311353597703687.
‘William Chapman’. IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3489204/.
“William Chapman: Family Pay Tribute to Man Killed by Tiger at Yorkshire Wildlife Park.” The Independent, 14 Oct. 2026, https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/william-chapman-tiger-death-family-tributes-yorkshire-wildlife-park-b3066381.html. Accessed 14 Oct. 2026.
@realDonaldTrump. Truth Social, 13 Oct. 2026, https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/117437094956438218.
