President Donald Trump is facing a wave of backlash after posting an AI-generated image of himself with Dolly Parton just days after the beloved country music legend’s death.
Parton died Tuesday at age 80 following a battle with cancer, prompting an outpouring of grief from fans around the world.
But Trump’s latest tribute quickly became a controversy of its own.
On Thursday evening, the 80-year-old president shared an obviously AI-generated image on Truth Social showing Parton clutching his arm as the two appeared to walk together along a White House colonnade.
Trump posted the image without a caption.
The strange tribute came just one day after Trump spoke about Parton during an interview with Glenn Beck, claiming the famously nonpolitical singer had been fond of him.
“We all knew her so well. I knew her a little bit,” Trump said. “She wasn’t a very political person… she really liked me, I will tell you!”
That comment — followed by the fake image — immediately drew criticism from Parton fans who accused Trump of trying to insert himself into the mourning surrounding her death.
“What a global laughingstock you are,” Canadian activist Marlene Robertson wrote on X, arguing that Trump and Parton represented dramatically different values.
Another critic called the post “pitiful and embarrassing,” while someone else described the AI image as a “pathetic attempt to steal her humanity and generosity.”
MeidasTouch editor Ron Filipkowski also took aim at the bizarre post, noting that Trump aide Natalie Harp reportedly plays a major role in managing the president’s social media activity.
“Creepy, yes,” Filipkowski wrote. “Even creepier when you consider that Natalie Harp found this on the internet, printed it out, showed it to him, he approved it for posting, then she posted it.”
Harp reportedly earns a government salary of roughly $150,000 per year.
Another social media user joked that the White House now feels “less like a presidency and more like Trump’s personal fan-fiction generator.”
The backlash comes as several members of the Trump family have publicly mourned Parton.
Ivanka Trump also faced criticism after posting one of Parton’s best-known quotes: “I don’t criticize and condemn; I love and accept.”
Ivanka said the words had “resonated within me since I first heard it.”
Critics quickly pointed to her father’s long history of publicly insulting political rivals, celebrities and journalists — including women — and questioned whether Trump himself followed Parton’s philosophy.
“Your father and brothers demonstrate precisely the opposite every hour of every day,” one commenter wrote.
Another said, “Why don’t you tell your father who degrades women every day to follow that advice?”
Others resurfaced the fact that Parton reportedly declined offers to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom during Trump’s first administration.
Parton spent decades carefully avoiding partisan politics, even as she became known for philanthropy, literacy programs and support for causes embraced by Americans across the political spectrum.
“I don’t like to get involved in politics, because first of all, I have as many Republican fans as I do Democrats,” Parton told USA TODAY in 2020. “I don’t want to offend anybody, I have a right to myself.”
Her sister Stella Parton, however, was far less restrained when it came to Trump.
Before Dolly’s death, Stella reportedly blasted the president in a since-deleted social media post.
“As a natural born citizen of the United States of America, I do not support nor do I agree with Trump or his deranged, ugly, nasty behavior,” she wrote, according to a screenshot reported by Raw Story.
Then on Aug. 20, Stella unloaded again.
“We have a pimple in the White House and the pus in Congress do nothing beneficial for the citizens of this country!” she wrote on X.
She followed it up with an even harsher assessment: “The entire administration is a freak show every day!”
Dolly Parton spent much of her extraordinary career trying to stay above America’s increasingly bitter political wars.
But just days after her death, those political battles have followed her anyway — with Trump’s surreal AI tribute now becoming one of the strangest flashpoints yet.
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Dolly had an evil sister… Trump has an evil niece… Congress is 45% evil… it happens… maybe it will eventually be better…
Doesn’t the president have the same rights as you and I? He and his family are celebrating her life and mourning her passing as we all are doing. There are many AI generated postings of Dolly across social networks. Are you going to dirty her memory by saying that there is only one way to mourn? You personally do not have the right to do that.