No, Donald Trump hasn’t called for Skittles to be banned

A video shared on Facebook which appears to show US President Donald Trump warning people not to eat Skittles is a deepfake. The video also makes a number of inaccurate or misleading claims.

Professor Hany Farid, an expert in digital forensics at the University of California, Berkeley, told Full Fact: “This is a not very good deepfake of Trump.

“After separating the music track from the voice track, I analysed this audio with models trained to distinguish natural from AI-generated voices. These models confidently classify the voice in this video as AI-generated. In addition, the voice has tell-tale signs of AI-generation in terms of cadence and intonation.”

Mr Trump’s face is only visible for the first second or so of the clip, after which the faked audio plays over unrelated video images. Fact checkers at Logically Facts have also found evidence that the audio is not genuine. 

We’ve written a guide on how to spot deepfake videos and AI audio which can help you identify content that has been edited or created to mislead online.

Claims in the video

The inauthentic voiceover supposedly shows Mr Trump encouraging directing viewers to purchase an e-book. The video appears to suggest Mr Trump wrote this book, but he did not.

Whoever wrote the words in the video also makes several claims about the red food dye carmine.

The voiceover says: “Twizzlers and Skittles need to be banned. They literally put bug blood in the food. It’s called carmine and it’s what gives it the red colour. It’s crazy. Not only is it nasty but it can cause bronchitis and even eczema.”

It is true that carmine is made from crushed cochineal bugs. But while it is commonly used in foods, such as M&Ms, it is not an ingredient in Skittles or Twizzlers, which both use Red 40. 

The claims about the safety of carmine also require scrutiny.

Carmine is approved for use in the UK by the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

The FSA states that most additives are only permitted to be used in “certain foods and are subject to specific quantitative limits”.

Full Fact has found no studies showing an association between carmine and bronchitis specifically. However, some research suggests that individuals with a carmine allergy may experience respiratory reactions, including bronchospasms and, in some cases, extrinsic allergic bronchiolitis.

Bronchitis—inflammation of the larger airways in the lungs—is generally caused by an infection but can also be caused by smoking tobacco and other chemical irritants. 

Bronchospasms, on the other hand, are when the muscles around the airways (bronchi) tighten suddenly, making it harder to breathe. Although bronchospasms can occur if you have bronchitis, they are not the same condition. 

Extrinsic allergic bronchiolitis is an immune response that causes inflammation of the smaller airways due to exposure to allergens, including food dyes like carmine. While bronchospasms and bronchiolitis can cause breathing difficulties, they are not the same as bronchitis.

The claim about eczema is a little more complicated. It’s not always known what causes atopic eczema—a number of genetic and environmental factors are important in its development. There is, though, evidence that suggests it may exacerbate the symptoms.

A 2015 study investigating hypersensitivity to food additives has also concluded that carmine may play a role in atopic eczema, but not that it necessarily causes it.

The emergence of realistic deepfake material like this exposes the increased challenges of verification posed by new technology and the challenge of ensuring an effective and proportionate response by social media platforms to such content.

Misinformation spreads quickly online so it’s especially important to consider whether something is likely to be genuine before sharing.