A Photo of Trump Eating Spaghetti While King Charles Talks Is Too Good to Be True

Throughout his time in politics, President Trump has been known to break or bend many of the rules of etiquette that have defined diplomacy for decades. That's one of the things that at least some of his supporters like about him. During a state visit to the United Kingdom in mid-September, Trump had the red carpet rolled out for him and even sat next to King Charles for a royal dinner.

In the aftermath of that dinner, a photo of Trump appearing to slurp down some noodles while King Charles is delivering a speech has gone viral online. The photo is funny, but many naturally wanted to know whether there's any chance it was real. Here's what we know.

While plenty of people have circulated it online, the photo of Trump slurping from a big bowl of noodles while King Charles is standing and appears to be in the middle of speaking has been digitally altered. It was first posted on X (formerly Twitter) by Raw Egg Nationalist, and has already been appended with a community note that makes it clear that the photo is not real.

Actual photography from the state dinner reveals that, while Trump and King Charles were sitting next to each other, there was no food out while the King was presenting, so even if Trump wanted to dig in while the King was talking, he couldn't have.

"The picture of Trump with a mouthful of spaghetti has been digitally edited. At no time during the King's speech was Trump eating, and videos of the table show that there was no food on anyone's plate at that time," the note reads.

What's more, a menu of what was served at the dinner has been published by the BBC, and spaghetti was not one of the offerings.

Instead, the dinner consisted of Hampshire watercress panna cotta with parmesan shortbread and quail egg salad, organic Norfolk chicken ballotine in zucchini with a thyme and savory infused jus, and vanilla ice cream bombe with Kentish raspberry sorbet interior with lightly poached Victoria plums.

Although it might be appealing to your sense of humor or political instincts to share an image that seems to show Trump making a fool of himself, in this case, it doesn't seem like the image is real. In this case, Trump did not humiliate himself, at least not in the way that the photo makes it seem like he did.

Thanks to the prevalence of AI and other photo editing tools, these kind of fake photos are only going to become more common. That's why you should always have a healthy skepticism around any photo you see online. If something seems like it might be too good to be true, that's probably the case. Trump might like spaghetti, but he wasn't chowing down during King Charles's speech.