Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones seized on a May 9 video of a train car meeting among three European leaders to claim they had used drugs and were trying to hide it.
The video showed French President Emmanuel Macron sitting at a table with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer. On the table before them were two blue folders, two drinking glasses and a small white object. The three men smiled for photographers who had gathered. Just as the shutter clicks started, Macron removed the crumpled white object from the tabletop and held it in his fist.
“DEVELOPING SCANDAL: Macron, Starmer, and Merz caught on video on their return from Kiev. A bag of white powder on the table. Macron quickly pockets it, Merz hides the spoon,” Jones said in a May 11 X post. “No explanation given. (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky, known cocaine enthusiast, had just hosted them. All three of the ‘leaders’ look completely cracked out.”
Jones’s post had been viewed more than 29.5 million times as of May 13 and he promoted the drug-use narrative in several more posts. “BREAKING: It’s Coke,” he said in another May 11 post later that day. A few hours later, he shared another photo that he said “clearly” showed “a bag of Blow”. Similar posts spread in Spanish.
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Jones did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment. But original videos of the meeting by the AFP news agency and The Associated Press and high-resolution photos captured by AP showed the white object Macron removed from the table was not a bag of white powder – it was a tissue.
Elysee, the official X account of the French presidency and the Elysse Palace presidential residence, posted pictures that also showed what appeared to be a tissue on the table. It said on X that the white object was a tissue “for blowing your nose”, adding that “this fake news is being spread by France’s enemies, both abroad and at home. We must remain vigilant against manipulation.”
In an email to PolitiFact, a German government spokesperson described Jones’s allegation as “absurd”.
Jones’s post also got another detail wrong. He said Zelenskyy “had just hosted” Macron, Starmer and Merz. However, the news reports said the leaders were on their way to meet Zelenskyy when the photos and videos were captured; they had not already met with him.
We asked digital forensic experts to analyse the close-up photo Jones posted that he alleged “clearly” showed a bag. Experts said they were unconvinced it was authentic.
V.S. Subrahmanian, a Northwestern University computer science professor, and Hany Farid, a University of California digital forensic expert, told PolitiFact that the image could have been modified using artificial intelligence, producing an image that may make the object look less like a tissue.
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How did the cocaine narrative spread?
Darren Linvill, a Clemson University communication professor who studies Russian disinformation campaigns, said he saw the earliest mentions of this narrative in French on May 10.
At about 7:34 ET on May 11, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova posted images of the meeting on the messaging app Telegram; she’d added red circles around the white object on the table. Her caption said Macron, Starmer and Merz had forgotten “to put away their paraphernalia” before journalists arrived to take photos, according to a Guardian report and a Google Translate translation of her post from Russian to English. Her post also described Zelenskyy as an “unbalanced drug addict” who used cocaine in 2022.
Linvill said the false narrative proliferated across English social media – including X, Facebook and Reddit – on the morning of May 11. It was amplified and popularised by “accounts known to be part of the Russian Storm-1516 campaign distribution network”, he said.
Russian disinformation experts told PolitiFact it’s not uncommon for Russian influence campaigns to falsely accuse foreign leaders of illicit drug use, specifically involving cocaine.
“Anything that makes the leaders of rival nations appear debauched and corrupt works to their advantage,” Linvill said. “Russia wants to undercut the legitimacy of Western democracy to make their own system appear better by comparison.”
Scott Radnitz, a University of Washington professor at the Jackson School of International Studies, said the cocaine claim tapped into “a long-running Kremlin narrative” that Zelenskyy uses drugs.
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A senior Russian official in 2024 called Zelenskyy an “illegitimate drug addict” and accused him of trying to continue the Ukrainian war to preserve his power.
In 2022, PolitiFact also fact-checked a deceptively edited video that said it showed Zelenskyy saying he does cocaine. In the original video, Zelenskyy said he likes coffee and denied he uses cocaine. Such rumours date back to the 2019 Ukrainian presidential campaign, when Zelenskyy’s political rival challenged him to a drug test, which Zelenskyy took without any narcotics being detected. We found no credible news reports supporting claims that Zelenskyy uses drugs.
Radnitz said far-right online influencers like Jones often disseminate pro-Kremlin conspiracy theories. Some reports have said Jones’s website Infowars has republished more than 1,000 articles from a Russian state-sponsored outlet.
“In this instance, the cocaine connection was broadened to also include world leaders in order to discredit an otherwise successful diplomatic engagement for Ukraine,” Radnitz said.
*PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.*