What was claimed
A video shows Donald Trump criticising Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership and saying he’s “too busy worrying about everyone else’s problems”.
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 criticising Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership and saying he’s “too busy worrying about everyone else’s problems” isn’t real.
There is no evidence Mr Trump said this, and the audio in the clip was made using artificial intelligence (AI).
In the viral video, which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times across Facebook and Instagram, Mr Trump appears to say: “Keir Starmer, I hope you’re listening, because I’m only going to say this once, and I’m going to say it very clearly, the UK needs leadership, strong leadership.
“And right now, it looks like you’re too busy worrying about everyone else’s problems instead of your own. I’m watching what’s happening over there, people struggling, costs going up, your borders in chaos, police overwhelmed, workers unhappy, infrastructure falling behind. It’s unbelievable. Truly unbelievable.”
The video begins with a clip of Mr Trump speaking, however his mouth movements do not correspond with the words he is supposedly saying.
Full Fact traced this video to a speech made on 5 November 2025 in which Mr Trump claimed the then-ongoing government shutdown was part of the reason Democrats won several key local elections the day before.
We matched the clip used at the beginning of the viral video to the moment Mr Trump says “[...] negative for the Republicans, and that was a big factor”, not “Keir Starmer, I hope you’re listening, because I’m only going to say this once”.
Mr Trump does not mention Mr Starmer in the original footage and 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, told us the 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 video was made with a text-to-voice AI tool. He told us: “The deepfaker has used only a small sample of Donald Trump's voice to create the voice clone, which causes the repetitiveness of the vocal delivery.
“A key feature of such fake audio is the unnatural pattern of voice. This voice clone lacks breaths and pauses, nor does it have any of the familiar characteristics of Donald Trump’s speeches—his slowing down at the end of sentences, his repetition of specific words for emphasis.”
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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