Danish leader's speech about circus animals falsely subtitled in online posts mocking Taiwan

"Denmark's prime minister suddenly burst into laughter when she mentioned Taiwan in parliament," reads traditional Chinese sticker text on a video shared on TikTok here on March 11, 2024.

Traditional Chinese subtitles on the video claim Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told parliament that Taiwan is a "very good country" and "very rich". 

The subtitles continue: "I propose building diplomatic ties with Taiwan, they are a democratic country... it would solve our financial problems, we will receive a lot of money, we just need to declare 'we love Taiwan.'" 

At this point in the video Frederiksen begins giggling and members of parliament also break out in laughter. 

The video ends with subtitles that read: "Especially their newly elected president, he doesn't look very smart."

Image

Screenshot of the false TikTok post, captured on March 21, 2024

Taiwan elected current Vice-President Lai Ching-te in polls on January 13, despite warnings from Beijing that he would bring "war and decline" to the self-ruled island it claims as its territory.

Lai will succeed Tsai Ing-wen -- who does not recognise China's claim to Taiwan -- when her second and final term ends on May 20.

Since Tsai's election in 2016, Beijing has stepped up military pressure, sending in warplanes and naval vessels around the island nearly daily.

Although the video includes a "for entertainment purposes only" disclaimer at the end, some social media users were misled and shared it repeatedly elsewhere on TikTok and Facebook.

"The world has seen Taiwan is a laughing stock!" a Facebook user commented.

"The Danish prime minister knows that it is easy to swindle money out of Tsai Ing-wen," another one said.

But the video is in fact from October 2019 and shows Frederiksen laughing as she talks about purchasing circus animals to give them a decent retirement. 

Fabricated subtitles

Combined reverse image and keyword searches on Google found the same footage published by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) on its website on October 4, 2019 (archived link).

The Danish-language headline translates as, "Mette Frederiksen burst out laughing during the opening parliamentary debate".

The subhead states that Frederiksen laughed as she talked about the state's purchase of an elephant and a camel. The government had bought the animals after it banned circuses from keeping live animals.

Below are screenshot comparisons of the video in the false posts (left) and the video published by DR (right)::

Image

Screenshot comparisons of the video in the false posts (left) and the video published by DR (right)

A Danish-speaking correspondent at AFP said Frederiksen was discussing how the state ended up purchasing a camel alongside the four elephants it initially planned to buy -- she did not mention Taiwan in her remarks.

"What we didn't know when we started this transaction – and that is no laughing matter -- is that Ramboline, that is one of the elephants,  also had a friend, a best friend: a camel. The camel is of course called Ali. And we were informed that it would be wrong to separate Ramboline and Ali," Frederiksen said before she started laughing.

She went on to say the government bought Ali as well, only to find out later the camel was not really "best friends" with Ramboline the elephant. 

"So we probably didn't get the best deal. I was actually also slightly worried that, as the camel was named Ali, that Nye Borgerlige would pull out of the deal, but you didn't, thank you for that," she said, referring to the Danish right-wing political party, known as New Right. 

Frederiksen's laughing fit was also shown in videos published by Euronews and NBC News, both of which reported it was caused by her speech about the circus animals (archived links here and here).

Taiwan's representative office in Denmark posted a statement about the falsely subtitled video on its official Facebook page on March 13, 2024, calling it both "misinformation" and "maliciously harmful disinformation" (archived link).

AFP has debunked other false claims circulating around Taiwan's January 2024 elections here.