Misleading: Crying cameraperson video is unrelated to recent Trump-Zelenskyy spat
On March 1, a video was posted on X with a claim that it shows a Ukrainian cameraperson crying as he witnessed his president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “being humiliated” during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Feb. 28.
The widely shared 13-second video focuses on the teary-eyed man holding a camera while the subject he was filming is not visible in the footage.
The tweet in Chinese reads, “弱国无外交 ! 前辈用血和泪给我们总结的话 ! ” which can be translated to “A weak country has no diplomacy! These are words summarized by our predecessors with blood and tears!”
According to BBC news, the White House meeting between the two leaders was intended as a prelude to signing a minerals deal. However, it escalated into a heated confrontation in front of the cameras, making headlines all over the world.
The video in question garnered over 300 likes and more than 40 retweets on X. It was also widely shared on platforms like Weibo, Douyin and TikTok with similar claims, accumulating over 55,000 likes, 4,000 comments, and 2,800 shares.
Most comments expressed sympathy for the cameraperson. This claim also appeared on Palitratv.ge, Georgia’s largest media holding company.
However, this video is unrelated to any meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy at the White House. The footage originates from a Turkish reality show titled “Sen Olsan Ne Yapardin?” (What Would You Do?), which aired on TRT1 in 2016.
A comment under a Weibo post sharing the video included a screenshot of a TikTok post, featuring the same footage with a different caption. This led our investigation to a TikTok video (archived here) published on Jan. 28, 2024.
The clip bore the TRT1 logo in its top-right corner at the beginning. We then found the same video on YouTube (@1rfanbarutcu) (archived here) as part of a “social experiment”(archived here) by the TV show Sen Olsan Ne Yapardin?
The Internet Movie Database shows Sen Olsan Ne Yapardın? was aired between 2014 and 2016. The TV show’s X account previewed the episode (archived here) aired on Jan. 10, 2016, featuring the two hugging women, a scene that matches the clip found on YouTube (at 3:37).
Machine translation of the video description and subtitles indicate the reality show featured an actress pretending to be homeless in an experiment to observe how passersby would react.
A citizen who helped her became emotional upon learning it was staged, leading both women to cry. Even the cameraperson filming the scene was seemingly moved to tears.
This “sad cameraperson” footage has been repurposed widely on TikTok in various unrelated contexts in the past (for example, here), not just this time.
