What was claimed
A video shows Donald Trump telling Keir Starmer to “focus on the UK” because “the UK people didn’t elect you to be a commentator, they elected you to govern”.
Our verdict
There is no evidence Donald Trump said this. The audio in this clip is not authentic and was generated using AI.
A video that appears to show the US president Donald Trump telling Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to “focus on the UK” because “people didn’t elect you to be a commentator, they elected you to govern” isn’t real.
There is no evidence Mr Trump ever said this, and the audio in the clip was made using artificial intelligence (AI). It is extremely similar to another AI-generated video of President Trump appearing to criticise Mr Starmer’s leadership that we fact checked earlier this month.
The video has been ‘liked’ more than 3,400 times on Facebook. Mr Trump appears to say: “Starmer, I’m watching from across the Atlantic and I’ve got to tell you, this is not what leadership looks like.”
He supposedly tells the PM to “focus on home, focus on the UK, your streets, your borders, your economy, your energy bills. These are your jobs, not grandstanding abroad, not chasing headlines, not lecturing the world.”
There have been no credible reports of him making the comments in the edited clip.
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Dr Dominic Lees, Associate Professor from the University of Reading and an expert in generative AI, previously told us the same loud, looped music track in the background “immediately raises suspicions of AI manipulation”.
He explained: “This is a common technique of deepfakes, designed to obscure the audio inconsistencies that are prime giveaways of AI.”
Dr Lees said the previous video we fact checked was made with a text-to-voice AI tool, and we strongly suspect this was used to create this new video too. The voice lacks pauses common in natural speech, for example.
The video begins with a clip showing Mr Trump speaking, however his mouth movements do not correspond with the audio.
Full Fact traced this video to a moment on 27 January when Mr Trump spoke to reporters about an investigation into the shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis.
We matched the clip used at the beginning of the viral video to the moment Mr Trump says “that’s all going very well also. I’m going to Iowa, some of you”, not “Starmer I’m watching from across the Atlantic and I’ve got to tell you”.
Mr Trump does not mention Mr Starmer in the original footage.
We have previously fact checked a number of other deepfake videos, audio clips and AI-generated images of Mr Trump. We’ve also produced guides with helpful tips on how to spot AI-generated audio, images and deepfake videos being shared on social media.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because there is no evidence Donald Trump said this. The audio in this clip was made using AI.
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