By: Ankita Kulkarni
March 27 2024
Video of Donald Trump promising to support Imran Khan is a deepfake
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Screenshot of viral posts on social media. (X/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)
Fact-Check
The Verdict Fake
The video of former U.S. President Donald Trump speaking with NBC News in 2017 has been digitally manipulated to claim that he supports Imran Khan.
Claim ID 46aadfa5
What is the claim?
A video on social media shows former U.S. President Donald Trump expressing his support for former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was arrested last year from his residence in a corruption case. In the video, Trump purportedly says, “Hello, my Pakistani American friends. I promise if I win, I will try my best to get Imran Khan out of jail as soon as possible. He is my friend. I love him. I will support him to take over the government again and rock, and we will work together to make our ties stronger. Imran Khan Zindabad (sic).”
Users have shared this video with claims in Urdu which state that Trump will get the jailed Pakistani leader out, if he wins the 2024 U.S. elections. The post (archived here) had garnered 27,500 views at the time of writing the story. Archives of similar posts can be found here and here.
Screenshot of viral posts on social media. (X/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)
However, this video is a deepfake. It has been created using an old interview of Trump where he was speaking about former FBI Director James Comey.
What are the facts?
A close look at the video shows Trump’s lip movements are not in sync with the words he is uttering. At 0:14 seconds, there is a jump in the video, and it seems like the video replays from the beginning, showing Trump's repeated hand movements. These signs show that the video is manipulated.
We conducted a keyword search on Google and found that the original video was posted on NBC on May 12, 2017. Trump was speaking to reporter Lester Holt on dismissing former FBI Director James Comey. At around 05:43 into the video, we can observe Trump’s similar eye movements, and at 05:49, we can see the exact same hand action.
He was speaking about an FBI investigation against him on the alleged Russian involvement in 2016 U.S. presidential elections. We can observe several similarities between the viral clip and the interview, such as Trump’s tie, his mic, the badge on his suit, and the background.
Comparison between the viral clip and NBC interview. (Source: X/NBC News/Screenshot)
We also ran the video through itisaar.ai, a deepfake detection tool developed by professors from the Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur. The application classified the viral clip as a deepfake.
Interestingly, the same clip was earlier shared with another message (archived here) in February 2024. An X (formerly Twitter) user shared this clip where Trump purportedly said that once he is elected as the U.S. President, it would give Turkish “President Erdogan 24 hours to get his troops out of Cyprus.” Several other versions of the same video have been shared in the past. You can access them here and here.
The verdict
The above evidence establishes that the viral clip is a deepfake, and Donald Trump has not posted or made any statement in support of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The original video is from 2017 where he spoke to NBC News about the then FBI Director James Comey. Therefore, we have marked the claim as fake.