U.S. President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video on Thursday depicting him and Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo juggling and passing a ball inside the Oval Office, a clip that quickly amassed about 34 million views and sparked a wave of amused online reaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The post came days after Trump hosted a White House dinner honoring Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, where Ronaldo was among guests. On Instagram, Trump praised Ronaldo as \u201ca great guy,\u201d adding that meeting him at the White House had been \u201cvery nice\u201d and calling the forward \u201csmart and very calm.\u201d The stylized video shows the pair exchanging passes; at one point Trump grabs the ball with his hands before turning and kicking it toward the \u201caudience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Commenters poked fun at the tableau\u2014\u201cHaters will say it\u2019s AI,\u201d one wrote\u2014while others joked about the president\u2019s heading technique. The clip\u2019s popularity underscored Ronaldo\u2019s crossover appeal in the U.S. and the growing use of synthetic media around political figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before Trump\u2019s post, Ronaldo shared photos with the president alongside his fianc\u00e9e, Georgina Rodr\u00edguez, thanking him for the invitation and saying he was ready to help inspire younger generations \u201con courage, responsibility and lasting peace.\u201d Trump later told an audience that his son Barron, a devoted Ronaldo fan, \u201crespects his father a little more now\u201d after the introduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the state event, Ronaldo was seated near the front of the East Room as Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed addressed officials from both countries. The AI video, however, was produced and shared separately, with no suggestion the ball skills display occurred during the dinner itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video on Thursday depicting him and Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo juggling and passing a ball inside the Oval Office, a clip that quickly amassed about 34 million views and sparked a wave of amused online reaction. The post came days after Trump hosted a White House dinner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6698,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6702,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6696\/revisions\/6702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}