Slovak president angered by question on photo with real Trump

Slovak President Peter Pellegrini was angered by a question from journalists at the Markíza TV channel: whether he had really been photographed in New York with the real Donald Trump. The journalists had good reason to ask — photos of several European leaders with the US president turned out to be suspiciously similar to one another.

At a reception for participants of the UN General Assembly in late September, several politicians were photographed with Trump at once: then still serving Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, Romanian President Nicușor Dan, and Slovak President Peter Pellegrini. In all the pictures, the head of the White House poses in almost the same way: a wide smile, an identical facial expression, his left arm at his side and his right hand raised with a thumbs-up.

It was precisely this similarity between the photos that prompted Slovak journalists to ask whether Pellegrini had been photographed with the real Trump. “In my long political career I’ve been asked many journalists’ questions, but I can’t recall a more absurd one,” the Slovak president said in a video he posted on social media, calling the question “the pinnacle of Slovak journalism.”

According to Pellegrini, the photo with Trump was taken right after the reception, to which the US host had invited the leaders. After the event ended, the politicians were able to speak with the US president in person. In another post — this time with the photo itself — Pellegrini wrote that he had spoken with Trump directly and openly “about energy, defence, investment, jobs, and real economic opportunities for our citizens.”

A tightly organised photo shoot?

Other leaders made similar comments about their meetings with the American president. The Serbian weekly Vreme suggested that Trump’s identical pose could be explained by strict organisation of the photo session: according to the outlet, delegations may have filed past the US president one after another while he stood in the same spot against the same backdrop, with the camera left in a fixed position.

Tamara Vučić, wife of Serbia’s outgoing president, noted that the raised thumb is also a typical Trump gesture. “What the photo can’t convey is the jokes that caused those smiles,” she wrote on Instagram.

An AI fake and an official explanation

At the same time, a photo from the same event that had been manipulated with artificial intelligence spread on social media, in which Trump looks like a cardboard cutout. The office of Romania’s president has already criticised the fake, saying its aim was “to ridicule the diplomatic efforts that these photos actually represent and to sow distrust in the authorities and in the credibility of official public statements.”

According to the office of the Romanian head of state, the similarity between the photos is explained by the fact that only the official White House photographer had access to the event. “The pictures were processed and sent to all participating countries’ delegations on the same day,” the office added. The meeting itself took place on 22 September, but the European politicians only posted the photos from it on social media in early October.

Source: seznamzpravy.cz