AI-generated video of Trump pledging to 'bring Pakistani Christians to US' spreads online
"I will bring Pakistani Christians to America," reads text over a video of Trump giving a speech shared on Facebook on March 20. The clip featuring the BBC logo in its top-left corner has been viewed more than 130,000 times.
It shows Trump apparently saying, "I know that Christians in Pakistan are living very difficult lives. False blasphemy accusations are made against them.
"Christian girls are forcibly converted to Islam and they are called derogatory names like esai (Christian) and chura (janitor). If the Pakistani government does not put an end to these injustices, I will bring all Pakistani Christians to America."
Christians make up around two percent of Pakistan's population and are frequent targets of blasphemy allegations -- which carry the death sentence -- and often face mob violence (archived link).
Human Rights Watch warned in March 2024 that "Pakistan's blasphemy law has long been used abusively to carry out personal vendettas or prosecute members of minority religious communities" (archived link).
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Screenshot taken on April 9, 2025 of the false Facebook post
The same video spread elsewhere on Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.
But keyword searches of White House records of Trump's remarks found he did not talk about Christians in Pakistan (archived link).
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the clip found it was taken from a longer video of Trump's October 10, 2024 message for the people affected by Hurricane Milton in Florida (archived link).
Trump begins his address by saying: "Melania and I are praying for you as you face the aftermath of Hurricane Milton." He goes on to praise Floridians for their ability to weather disasters before pledging better treatment if he is elected as president again.
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Screenshot comparison of the altered video (left) and the X video (right)
The altered video features the old BBC logo -- the British broadcaster adopted a new logo in October 2021, making the three blocks containing the letters slightly further apart (archived link).
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Screenshot comparison of the logo in the altered video (left) and in the BBC live broadcast (right)
Digital forensics firm GetReal Labs told AFP on April 9 that the clip's audio was AI-generated, given the "quality of the manipulated video clip is purposefully bad to make it more challenging to detect the lip-sync deepfake" (archived link).
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