Did President Donald Trump post a video montage showing real lion and tiger attacks on people to Truth Social? No, that's not true: He posted a montage of five clips, of which three were AI-generated, on Oct. 13, 2026. Of the remaining two clips in the montage, one shows a documented 2018 incident and the other, dating back to at least December 2022, is unverified.
The video clips appeared in a post (archived here) published on the verified @realDonaldTrump Truth Social account. The montage was posted without a caption.
This is what a screenshot of the video in the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social.)
For context, this video montage of animal attacks was posted after a tiger fatally mauled William Chapman at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster, England, on Oct. 10, 2026. The identity of the man who died was reported by BBC (archived here) on Oct. 13, 2026.
That same day, Trump posted several animal attack videos on Truth Social. At 3:54 p.m. EDT, he posted a 41-second video of the tiger attacking Chapman (archived here). At 3:55 p.m., Trump posted a 24-second video montage -- the focus of this article -- containing five different animal attack scenes. A peppy music track plays over all the clips so their original audio cannot be heard. Later, at 11:17 p.m., Trump posted an AI-generated video in which he is depicted playfully tackling a tiger and then hugging it. He and the tiger pose as if they are smiling for a camera (archived here).
This article addresses the last two clips in the montage first.
Clip Four
At 15 seconds into the montage, there is a five-second clip showing a man with three large lion cubs in an enclosure with straw on the floor. The cubs appear to be playing rough, and the man is struggling to get away from them. Lead Stories used Google Lens (archived here) to search for the source and found reporting about the viral video from news websites from India, ABP Network on April 15, 2024 (archived here), and SaamTV on April 16, 2024 (archived here). Both these reports embedded a post from an Instagram account @enamul___hoqe that is no longer available. The reports did not contain any details verifying where or when this happened, or if the man was OK.
Lead Stories then found reporting from Dec. 28, 2022, in the Maharashtra Times (archived here). This report did not include additional information about the incident but did include a 15-second Dec. 18, 2022, video (archived here) from a still-active Instagram account, @sumit_vishkarma2 (embedded below). This video shows there were at least four young people in the enclosure, and at least two more recording with their phones.
Another Instagram post from @zanzibarleisuretours (archived here) on June 16, 2024, shows a portion of the video that adds a few more seconds beyond the end of the @sumit_vishkarma2 video. At the point the shorter video cuts off, the longer one shows the man had freed himself from the grip of the cubs and did not appear to be injured, but was still cornered inside the enclosure.
Clip Five
The final three seconds of the Truth Social video montage show a large male lion dragging a man on the ground. This video is real and was filmed in 2018 by a visitor on a safari park tour in South Africa. The man in the video, Mike Hodge, the owner of the safari park, survived the attack. The lion, Shamba, was fatally shot by the park's rangers as they rescued Hodge.
Most of the press reporting on the incident does not include the graphic footage showing Shamba dragging Hodge that appears in the Truth Social montage. A 46-second video in a May 2, 2018, article in The Times (archived here) does not show the lion's shooting, but does show Hodge dragged and the moments leading up to that (screenshot below). The original audio recorded the shouts of distressed people calling for help and trying to distract the lion. 
(Image source: The Times.)
The first three video clips in the Truth Social montage are not real. Lead Stories uploaded each clip to Hive Moderation, where the AI-Generated content detection tool rated each video with a high likelihood of being AI-generated.
Clip One
The first six-second clip shows a zoo keeper in a uniform holding a chunk of meat in front of a glass window of a lion enclosure. The male lion paws against the glass and shatters it; the keeper falls to the floor before the lion pounces on top of him. Hive's tool rated this video clip 97.5% likely to be AI-generated (archived here). Lead Stories was unable to find the original video but did find a similar AI-generated video, featuring a lioness, uploaded to TikTok by @pawsunexpected on Feb. 24, 2026 (archived here).
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Clip Two
Between seven and nine seconds in the montage, a zookeeper in an outdoor zoo environment falls to the ground in a sand pit as a large male lion followed by a tiger charges toward him. Lead Stories found a longer 11-second version of this AI-generated video (archived here). It was published with an "AI-generated media" label by @wildlens7773 on TikTok on Aug. 7, 2026. Hive's tool rated the TikTok video on Truth Social 99.9% likely to be AI-generated (archived here). In the longer version, the tiger appears to defend the man from the lion's attack, and then uniformed guards carrying riot shields appear on the scene.
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Clip Three
At nine seconds into the montage there is a five-second clip of a man sitting in a lawn chair in a dusty backyard surrounded by a tall stockade fence. There is a lion cub in the yard with him along with a stick, three tennis balls and a metal pet bowl. Suddenly a lioness followed by a lion bound into the yard and pounce on the man. Hive's tool rated this video clip 99.9% likely to be AI-generated (archived here).
Lead Stories did not find the original source of this video, but a search with Google Lens (archived here) shows that variations of this stockade-fence scenario have been reproduced many times by AI-generated content makers. One example on Facebook (archived here) shows the man relaxing in a fenced yard with his dog before the lion barges through the gate.
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
