Trump Erases Melania From Xi's Welcome, While Aliens Line Up to Greet Him

A photograph is a witness that can't talk back. Donald Trump posted one such witness on Truth Social on Thursday. There he is, standing motionless and saluting, next to Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has just landed on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. A military jet flies overhead. The image was apparently generated by artificial intelligence, and it shows a day that never happened quite like that. Hardly anyone noticed.

The video footage tells a different story. There, the two men appear to be accompanied by Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan, the two presidents' wives. In Trump's picture, the men stand alone. Whether the women were obscured or removed entirely is impossible to tell. All you can see is that they're missing. The two heads of state alone on an empty tarmac: That's how Trump wanted the encounter to look.

One woman, however, survived the edit. In the background stands Monica Crowley, the United States' chief of protocol, who herself shared several photos of herself at the reception. Many people nevertheless mistook the figure with her hand over her heart for someone else: Natalie Harp, Trump's ever-present assistant. The speculation quickly spread across the internet. Whether Harp was even there when Xi arrived is unclear. The wife erased, the loyal aide suspected.

The president himself got touched up, too. When the massive B-1 bomber roared over the tarmac, Trump winced in pain at the noise. In the picture, his face remains set in stone. He had put on a winter coat and black gloves for the reception, even though Washington was fairly mild that day. The machine left him with just one glove. Behind him, the military backdrop seems to have turned into a line of strange figures that look like they came from another planet.

A photograph can't talk back. That's why Trump just has one painted instead. On the real tarmac, two wives walked alongside them, and a president winced when the bomber came overhead. In the picture, a hero salutes in front of beings from outer space. Trump has already decided which of those two days should go down in history.