AI-generated image of Donald Trump being arrested

AI-generated image of Donald Trump being arrested

One of a series of Midjourney images of Donald Trump being tackled by police, posted on Twitter by Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins on 20 March 2023, while an indictment of Trump was expected. Higgins said he was making the pictures, but copies spread without that context and were shared as if they were news photos. Trump was not arrested in this way.

Date
March 20, 2023
Period
Contemporary
Made by
Eliot Higgins (founder of Bellingcat), posting on Twitter; recirculated by others
Region
Western and Central Europe
Country
United Kingdom
Medium
Digital posts
Issuer type
Individual
Regime
Sunak Government
Leader
Rishi Sunak
Audience
Mixed
Purpose
Deceive or deny
Themes
Media and information, Science and technology, Elections and party politics
Techniques
Synthetic media
Source
Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
Source
Wikimedia Commons, retrieved September 27, 2026
Rights
Public domain (AI-generated, no human author)

Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

Cap, left officer: [illegible] / [illegible]
Cap, right officer: [illegible] / [illegible]

Two officers' caps carry embroidered two-line arched wordmarks, evidently meant to read as a police-department cap, but the letterforms are garbled and do not spell real words on either line -- a typical tell of AI image generation's inability to render coherent text. Recorded as [illegible] rather than guessed. A shoulder patch, a chest badge and a blank name-tag are also visible but carry no legible lettering, only abstract shapes.