A video flashes through numerous scenes. A street in chaos. Former President Donald Trump speaking to members of the military. President Joe Biden stumbling on stairs.
Over them all, a voice resembling Trump’s warns of an impending catastrophe.
“300 million Americans will die in a matter of weeks,” the voice in the Nov. 15 video said. “Russia and China are plotting something so sinister, something that will destroy our way of life. You wouldn’t believe, it’s a disaster.”
For reference, the U.S. population is currently close to 336 million.
A Nov. 13 video showing a waving American flag contains similar Trump-like narration.
“My trusted military experts tell me that 300 million Americans will perish,” the voice says. “During the first few weeks of this attack. There will be no heat, no food and no water.” Both videos end with the Trump-like voice promoting a documentary about an “imminent and devastating attack on America” made by Teddy Daniels, a Republican and Trump-supporter who lost the 2022 Republican primary for Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and has said he was present on U.S. Capitol grounds Jan. 6, 2021.
Screenshot from Facebook
These videos, which we also found in the form of sponsored ads, were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.) The posts link to a video uploaded by loomingblackout.com.
We also spotted a similar but longer video posted Nov. 9.
We conducted searches on Google and Nexis, a research service that tracks news articles and transcripts, and found no reports of or statements by Trump warning that 300 million Americans would die in an impending disaster. We did not find any published evidence that Trump has mentioned Daniels’ documentary, either.
Daniels did not respond to our inquiry. We found no mention of Trump promoting Daniels’ documentary on Daniels’ social media accounts.
Meta’s ad library showed that The Patriot’s Digest paid for ads displaying both videos. According to the disclaimers listed on both ads, they were paid for by Truth Alliance, which appears to be a marketing group. Its website says, “We exist for the purpose of uniting Americans through a variety of brands, platforms and products.”
We reached out to the email address for Truth Alliance listed in the disclaimer but did not hear back. We also tried calling phone numbers associated with The Patriot’s Digest and Truth Alliance. The number listed on The Patriot’s Digest page was “parked,” meaning it was stored with an active service and can be activated when needed. We also reached out to the Trump campaign about the ads but received no response.
Truth Alliance paid $700 to $799 for one video and $300 to $399 for the other, according to the ad library. The videos gained 50,000 to 60,000 impressions collectively, as of Nov. 28. Impressions measure the number of times an ad was on a screen.
The Patriot’s Digest shared another active ad using a Trump-like voice that said words nearly identical to the speech in the Nov. 15 video. This ad cost less than $100 and gained 7,000 to 8,000 impressions.
We’ve seen Trump’s voice generated using artificial intelligence for an ad before, that time by a pro-DeSantis political action committee. Digital forensics experts said voices can be easily fabricated using text-to-speech systems.
Could that be the case in these ominous videos? It’s not clear.
In the videos shared on Facebook, Trump’s supposed voice keeps what sounds like a more automated cadence than the way we hear him naturally speaking. But AI-detection programs did not clearly pick up evidence of that alteration, experts told us.
Siwei Lyu, a University at Buffalo computer science and engineering professor, ran the audio tracks through two analysis algorithms and found “weak or no signs of AI synthesis or manipulation.” Lyu told PolitiFact it could be an imposter’s real voice.
Hany Farid, electrical engineering and computer sciences professor at the University of California, Berkeley, also analyzed the audio tracks using a model that distinguishes between real and AI-generated voice created by ElevenLabs, a text-to-speech tool. Farid said, “Our model does not flag this audio as being generated by ElevenLabs, but there are several other AI voice generators that could have been used.” He also pointed out that the “fairly regular cadence” in the audio is consistent with AI-generated voice outputs.
We did not find published evidence that Trump has promoted a documentary about an impending catastrophe affecting 300 million Americans, nor did we find that he has warned of such a scenario elsewhere.
At PolitiFact, the burden of proof is on the speaker. In the absence of proof, we rate the claim that this audio shows Trump warned of a catastrophe that would kill 300 million Americans “in a matter of weeks” False.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
