Old Trump interview edited with 'free Imran Khan' message

An old interview of former US president Donald Trump was manipulated to make it appear he vowed to free Pakistan's jailed former leader Imran Khan if he won the US election in November. The original video in fact shows Trump speaking in 2017 about his decision to fire former FBI director James Comey. AFP found no official reports Trump called to free Khan, as of April 10, 2024.

The video racked up more than 17,000 views in a Facebook post captioned "US President Donald Trump About Imran Khan PTI" -- referring to Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

In the video, Trump appears to say: "Hello my Pakistani-American friends. I promise, if I win, I will try my best to get Imran Khan out of jail as soon as possible."

"He is my friend. I love him. I will support him to take over the government again and rock and we will work together to make our ties stronger."

While the voice in the video resembles Trump's, his lips are not in sync with his words.

Urdu text overlaid on the video says: "Trump has won the hearts of Pakistanis. Says will free Khan from jail after winning the election."

The post was shared following Pakistan's February 8 elections in which Khan's PTI party was blocked from campaigning by a military-backed crackdown.

The former cricketing star has been languishing in jail since August, slapped with lengthy sentences for corruption, treason and an illegal marriage -- charges he says are politically motivated and designed to keep him from power.

Despite the crackdown, PTI candidates -- who were forced to run as independents -- won the most seats but were kept from power by a coalition of rival parties that had the backing of the military (archived link).

The edited Trump video was also shared on Facebook here, here and here and on social media site X here and here.

Some social media users appeared to believe the video genuinely showed Trump expressing support for Pakistan's jailed ex-leader.

"Well done Trump," one person commented.

"Donald Trump I love you," one wrote. 

Manipulated video

However, AFP found no official reports that Trump vowed to free Khan if he won the US election in November, as of April 10, 2024.

A reverse image search on Russian search engine Yandex found the original video, which shows Trump speaking about his decision to fire former FBI chief James Comey -- not about Imran Khan.

In one of the most momentous moves of his young presidency, Trump abruptly fired Comey in May 2017, sacking the man leading a probe into whether his election campaign colluded with Russia in an effort to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Trump spoke about his decision in an interview with NBC News which aired on May 12, 2017 -- more than a year before Khan became Pakistan's prime minister (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the manipulated video (left) and the Trump's original interview with NBC News (right):

The description of the video, posted on NBC News's website, reads: "In an NBC News exclusive interview, President Trump revealed to Lester Holt that he was preparing to fire FBI Director James Comey regardless of recommendations from the attorney general and deputy attorney general."

In the interview, Trump said of his decision to fire Comey: "I also want to have a really competent, capable director. He's not. He's a showboater."

He did not mention Imran Khan or Pakistan at any point in the interview.

While AFP was not able to locate the source of the audio dubbed over the original interview, AI-powered applications that can clone voices are cheap, easy to use and hard to trace (archived link).

An AFP journalist inputted Trump's purported remarks in the edited video into a website called Parrot AI, which generated a nearly identical video as the one shared online.