A woman was assaulted at a Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday while wearing a t-shirt that read “release the Epstein files,” according to several videos of the incident posted to social media. The woman was punched in the face and grabbed by several people, yet no one was arrested, according to NBC News.
An image of the attack was shared on Oct. 14 with the caption, “If there’s one photo to sum up the Trump era, this is it.” The image has gone viral and it’s easy to understand why. But this particular image isn’t real. It’s a fake created with AI depicting a real event. And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of thing happen. It’s not even the only fake photo of this assault currently circulating.
If there’s one photo to sum up the Trump era, this is it. pic.twitter.com/dtGaSCImG6
— Ally Sammarco (@Ally_Sammarco) October 15, 2026
At the time of this writing, the image has over 1.5 million views on X and doesn’t contain a Community Note indicating it was made with AI.
Gizmodo ran the image through Google’s Gemini, which stated that it is likely AI-generated, but doesn’t have the invisible SynthID watermark that’s automatically added to all images made with Google AI image creators. Confusingly, Gizmodo also ran the image through the website SynthID.com, which stated that it does have the SynthID watermark, and originated with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
When Gizmodo ran the image through ChatGPT, it initially concluded that it was likely AI-generated, but became confused when asked about SynthID (first it said no watermark was present, then it said it hadn’t checked). OpenAI’s official AI checker returned a positive SynthID result.
Long story short, these AI image detectors can be confusing for the average person to use. But we can still see plenty of evidence that this is AI, even without verification from an AI detector. The biggest clue is that we have photos and video footage of the woman from multiple angles and it’s clearly not her.
Even Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right lunatic who jumped ship from MAGA after a mild disagreement with President Trump about releasing the Epstein Files, posted video of the assault.
“Watch this video honestly,” the former congresswoman tweeted. “Did she deserve to be beaten by MAGA men because she’s a ‘libtard’? Or because she disrupted the Trump rally with her offensive ‘release the Epstein files’ tshirt? Trump and the party that defends women from men in our sports cheers for beating women.”
Watch this video honestly.
Did she deserve to be beaten by MAGA men because she’s a “libtard”?
Or because she disrupted the Trump rally with her offensive “release the Epstein files” tshirt?Trump and the party that defends women from men in our sports cheers for beating women. https://t.co/KKTlLSO0GY— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) October 14, 2026
It should be noted that this is far from the first time that a protester has been assaulted at a Trump rally. MTG didn’t condemn Trump or his supporters during any of those previous incidents, which date back to 2016.
Trump called the three protesters at his rally on Monday “scum” and accused them of being paid. The idea that any protester would need to be paid in order to oppose Trump is laughable, of course, given the fact that his approval rating is currently hovering around 30%.
Another fake image of the woman that’s been circulating this week depicts the scene from a different angle. The woman is shown wearing an overshirt that’s closer to the one actually worn on Monday, but the font of the text “release the Epstein Files” is still clearly off.
The lamb in the psycho den of MAGA. pic.twitter.com/iUqcaXfj8o
— B mac (@mcpherson_k) October 13, 2026
We ran this image through Gemini, which confirmed that it did have the SynthID watermark. The SynthID website gave the same answer. It’s unclear why Gemini was able to do its own search this time. ChatGPT said it was likely AI but didn’t know if it was made with ChatGPT.
The image above was also shared to Threads, where it was marked as generated with AI. It has no Community Note on X, the far-right radicalization app owned by Elon Musk.
Why are people making fake images of real events? That’s a great question. People were doing the same thing earlier this year when ICE descended on the city of Minneapolis, shooting and killing anti-ICE activists Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Perhaps it has something to do with the composition of the shots and the desire for something cleaner than the often pixelated mess that results when you try to take a screenshot of something so active.
Whatever the reason, making AI images of real events only serves to sow doubt about what happened. And there’s really no good reason to distribute AI-generated photos that confuse people who are scrolling through their feeds.
