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Claim: Social media users shared a video of Liberian President Joseph Boakai saying he felt ‘insulted’ by Trump’s comment on his diction.
Verdict: False! The video was AI-generated. The creator already labelled it as such, but social media users share it in a misleading context.
Full Text
Recently, the United States President Donald Trump met with the presidents of five African countries: Senegal, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, and Liberia.
The conversation centred around economic ties between the countries and the United States. While the presidents of each country gave their briefs in their respective official languages, Liberian President Joseph Boakai gave his comment in English.
“Liberia is a longtime friend of the United States, and we believe in your policy of making America great again…
”We want to work with the United States in peace and security within the region because we are committed to that, and we just want to thank you so much for this opportunity,” the Liberian President told Trump.
In response, the US president praised Boakai for speaking English impeccably and asked where he got his education.
“Thank you, and such good English. Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?” Trump has asked the Liberian president.
“Where were you educated? Where? In Liberia?” he further queried.
The one-minute clip has since circulated on social media, attracting mixed reactions from Liberians and people from other African countries.
Amidst these conversations, Joe Igbokwe, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), shared a video on Facebook showing the Liberian president reacting to Trump’s comment.
In the video, Boakai purportedly said his exchange with Trump shocked him, adding that he was insulted internationally.
“I understand his arrogance… he pretended to be surprised even though he knew that English is our official language. The discrimination and prejudice against our country are too great. We have our long history and culture. We receive education on our land and master the official language of English.”
Over 200 people have since reshared the video shared by Igbokwe. It was also shared here and here.
DUBAWA, however, watched the video showing the interaction between Trump and Boakai, and the Liberian president showed no visible sign of discomfort. This increased our curiosity, so we fact-checked the claim.
Verification
DUBAWA used the Deepware scanner to scan the video to ascertain whether any manipulation was done to it. The result shows that the video has indeed been manipulated using Artificial Intelligence.
DUBAWA also observed that the video shared by Igbokwe has a tag with a TikTok account name. We traced the account name to Entertainment Sprint on TikTok and saw that the creator tagged the video as AI-generated. This tag follows TikTok’s policy of labelling content generated with AI tools as such.
We found the original video that was manipulated eight years ago. The original video featured Boakai, the then Vice President, discussing his expectations for US-Liberia relations under the Trump administration, among other topics.
Conclusion
The video showing Boakai condemning Trump’s comment is false. It is AI-generated and was taken from another video captured eight years ago.
