The photograph, which went viral on Sunday, showed Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and Donald Trump Jr. enjoying a McDonald's meal aboard Trump's plane Trump Force One, while House Speaker Mike Johnson stood in the background.
Margo Martin, Trump's deputy director of communications, posted the photo to X (formerly Twitter) shortly after 2:30 a.m. on Sunday after the group's trip to a UFC fight in New York City.
"This 1721 painting by Deitz Nuützen predicted the Trump-Elon-RFK McDonalds dinner," the user wrote.
The "painting" depicts four men, two wearing crowns, dining together, with a fifth in the background. Their poses are identical to the photograph and the layout of the setting is extremely similar.
Musk, who owns X and frequently posts on the platform, replied to the post with a laughing emoji.
It had been viewed 4.3 million times by Tuesday and reposted by many other accounts.
The Facts
A Google reverse image search of the "painting" shows no results for the image dated to before its posting by @boneGPT.
A Google search for "Deitz Nuützen" and "Deitz Nuützen painter," with the search parameters set to only return search results published before @boneGPT's post, returns the result "It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search." All of the links Google finds refer only to the Monday post.
@boneGPT's profile description on X says "founder mode // AI & America" and links to a YouTube channel @Vinyl_Vault which posts videos created with artificial intelligence.
Looking at the "painting" it looks AI-generated. The composition exactly matches the photograph, down to the person in Musk's position having their hands on their thigh with four fingers visible, the gold bar as the base of the table, and the figures in Kennedy and Musk's position both wearing modern leather dress shoes, not typical of the early 18 Century.
Deitz Nuützen is a homophone of "Deez Nutz," an internet slang term for testicles (these nuts).
The meme has its origins in rapper Dr. Dre's 1992 album The Chronic. It has a track called "Deeez Nuuuts" in which rapper Warren G tells a joke to a woman on the phone, the punchline of which is "deez nuts."
In March 2015, Instagram user @WelvenDaGreat posted a video of himself calling his friend asking whether something came in the mail today, because he was expecting "deez nuts" before letting out a screeching laugh and yelling "gotteem."
That video became a viral sensation and internet meme. Musk himself has posted at least two "deez nutz" memes on his X account this year.
There is no evidence of an 18 Century painter called Deitz Nuützen nor any evidence that the alleged painting existed before Monday.
This appears to be a "deez nutz" joke.
That did not stop some outlets believing what they saw to be true. Indian news website The New Indian published an article Tuesday titled "Old painting resembling Trump, Elon, RFK in-flight meal sparks viral frenzy." The outlet repeated @boneGPT's claim that it was a real painting by artist Deitz Nuützen. The article wrote that "the resemblance is purely coincidental."