Claim: Former US president Donald Trump has said that Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan is a supporter of Israel and approves of normalising ties with Israel.
Fact: The claim is false as the video is AI-generated. No credible media reports suggest that Trump made this statement. The screenshot of a Washington Post article whose sub-heading suggests this is doctored as well.
On 16 June 2024, X (formerly Twitter) user Tahir Mughal Pmln posted (archive) on X claiming that former US president Donald Trump has said that Pakistan’s former prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan is a supporter of Israel.
The post contains three clips. In the first clip, Trump can be heard saying, “Imran Khan is a supporter of Israel. He told me himself. He is a cheat, a manipulative man. But what he forgot is, he cannot manipulate the manipulator. And I, ladies and gentlemen, am the manipulator.”
The second clip carries a screenshot of a Washington Post article titled, “The first thing Trump will do is address the situation in Gaza” by Philip Bump published on 16 June 2024. Its subheading states, “Imran Khan told me he fully approves of normalisation with Israel but can’t say it publicly”. The clip is accompanied by Trump’s voice where he repeats the same line.
The third clip contains a picture of Trump and Khan accompanied by an audio of Trump repeating the same.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check ascertained that the video featuring Trump is either altered or AI-generated. We identified two key indicators of manipulation; lip sync discrepancy and constrained lip movements. Trump’s lip movements are not synchronised with the audio and do not match it perfectly. This mismatch is often a sign of edited or AI-generated content. The lip movements in the video of Trump are also limited or constrained, which is another characteristic of AI-generated videos as they typically struggle to replicate natural and fluid lip movements perfectly.
These observations suggest that the video in question is not authentic but a manipulated or AI-generated recording.
Sifting through the Politics section of the Washington Post’s website, Soch Fact Check found that they only published one article (archive) on 16 June. However, its headline does not match the one in the viral claim. In fact, the article is about Biden and Obama warning of the dangers of “a potential second Donald Trump term”, at a star-studded Los Angeles fundraiser.
We also found a Washington Post article (archive) authored by Philip Bump, published on 18 June, titled “Trump has an agenda of his own. He just doesn’t mention it much”. Although the author’s name matches the one in the viral claim, the headline, date, and timestamp on the article are different.
Based on this, we ascertained that the Washington Post did not publish any article with the headline, “The first thing Trump will do is address the situation in Gaza”. The screenshot of such an article included in the viral claim seems to be doctored.The Washington Post formats articles on their app differently than the image in the claim. Some examples can be seen here and here.
When Soch Fact Check investigated the third clip, we ascertained that the photo is from July 2019 when Imran Khan met with Donald Trump in the United States on an official visit as Pakistan’s prime minister at the time.
Moreover, a keyword search on Google did not yield any credible reports suggesting that Trump made any such statement about Khan. It is very likely then that the audio in both clips is fake or AI-generated.
It is also important to note that Khan has consistently opposed normalising ties with Israel. In 2020, as Pakistan’s premier, Khan stated that his country would not recognise Israel until there is a Palestinian state acceptable to the Palestinians.
Virality:
The claim can be found here on X.
The post by @Tahirmughalpml8 gained significant traction with 34,300 views, 1,400 likes and 1,000 reposts.
On Facebook, it was posted here, here, here, here and here.
Conclusion: A video of Donald Trump saying that Imran Khan is a supporter of Israel and approves of normalising ties with Israel is AI-generated. No credible media reports corroborate this claim. Additionally, the screenshot of a Washington Post article suggesting this is doctored.
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com