Eric Trump mocked over botched excuse for UFC cheating scandal: 'Denial took three tries'

Eric Trump fiercely denied accusations Sunday night that he had contacted an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) commentator about whether any of the fights at the White House event that day were “rigged” – a denial that only intensified scrutiny from critics.

In a social media post published just ahead of the White House UFC event, an X user by the name of “Sean O’Meowlly” flagged what they claimed was a “now-deleted post” by UFC commentator Daniel Cormier exposing alleged messages he received from Trump.

“I’ll just cut to the chase. Are any of the fights tomorrow rigged?” reads a message alleged to be from Trump to Cormier, which has not been authenticated, though several media outlets have confirmed Cormier’s social media post revealing the alleged exchange – which was quickly deleted – to be authentic.

As the initial post revealing the alleged exchange went viral – viewed nearly 12 million times as of Monday morning – Trump scrambled to deny the allegation.

“This is completely fake! I have never reached out to Daniel. In fact, this is scary,” Trump wrote in a social media post on X Sunday night, a post he edited three times over the course of seven minutes to slightly alter its language. Less than 30 minutes later, Trump took to X again to deny the allegation, this time claiming the alleged screenshots of the exchange were generated with artificial intelligence.

“We are aware of the fake, AI generated screenshots being circulated online,” Trump wrote in another social media post. “I have never spoken to Daniel. He has since deleted his post, which confirms it was clearly fabricated.”

Another 14 minutes later, Trump again took to X to deny the allegations.

“This did not happen. They were AI generated. Please be careful with reporting,” Trump wrote.

The progressive media organization MeidasTouch flagged Trump’s multiple edits to his initial post denying the allegations.

“The denial took three tries,” the organization wrote in a social media post on X to its more than 1.3 million followers.

Others, like Adam Cochran, a professor and policy consultant, expressed confusion at the specifics of Trump’s denial.

“Claiming it is AI generated when the guy posted it himself, and the post had a URL that then said ‘deleted by the author’ is next level stupid," Cochran wrote in a social media post on X to his more than 300,000 followers.