Social media users have been sharing a post that claims a video in which outgoing president Donald Trump acknowledges President-elect Biden’s victory in the wake of the chaos of the Capitol protests has been confirmed to be a deepfake. Despite speculation, this has not been confirmed by any credible source and the White House told Reuters the video is not a deepfake.
The post (here) shows a video of Trump in which he can be heard saying, “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay […] Now congress has certified the results, a new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th , my focus now turns to ensuring a smooth orderly and seamless transition of power.”
The video zooms into Trump’s neck and a voice can be heard saying that the video is blurred out around the neckline, the background is fake and the flag is not real. The voice says, “That’s not real. Look at this. That’s not real guys. Something’s wrong with this video. This is a deep fake.” The caption on the post says, “BREAKING: Donald J. Trump Video CONFIRMED ‘Deep Fake’ – TRUST THE PLAN”.
The video of Trump used in the post was released on the evening of Jan. 7, the day after hundreds of Trump supporters breached the US. Capitol. In his message, Trump came closer than ever before to a formal concession over the result of the presidential election (here).
Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that National security adviser Robert O’Brien, senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, along with speechwriter Stephen Miller, counsel Pat Cipollone, chief of staff Mark Meadows and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had all pressed Trump to clearly state that he did not support the violence (here).
The speech was shared by various news networks including Reuters (here), CNN (here) and Fox News (here).
There has been speculation online as to whether the video posted by Trump is authentic ( here , here , here ). However, no credible source has “confirmed” that it is a deepfake.
It was officially released by the White House (here) and tweeted by Trump’s own account (archive.vn/U36Z5). The White House told Reuters on Jan. 11 that this video was not a deepfake.
Giorgio Patrini, CEO of visual threat intelligence company Sensity, told Reuters: “We ran several filters and video analyses and we were not able to find any conclusive evidence of manipulation.”
Trump’s style of speech often varies when he is reading a teleprompter compared with when he is not, as seen in this video from the Washington Post here . President Trump’s movement does not look too dissimilar from his pre-Christmas speech on coronavirus relief here and his speech patterns do not show any obvious signs of manipulation or recreation by an imposter.
VERDICT
False. No credible source has confirmed or provided evidence that the video of President Trump criticising Jan. 6 rioting and referring to an orderly transition of power is a deepfake.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.