Teary-eyed Trudeau video is years old, unrelated to Trump tariffs
- Published on December 3, 2024 at 19:03
- 4 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"BREAKING: Canada's Justin Trudeau has arrived in Florida to meet President-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago," says a November 29, 2024 X post sharing the clip of Trudeau.
Similar posts spread across X and other platforms, such as YouTube.
The 21-second video shows Trudeau saying through tears: "We all knew it was coming, but we hoped it wasn't. And I thought I was going to make it through this, but I'm not. It hurts. And we are less as a country."
An apparent "CNN Newsroom" breaking news banner in the lower third of the frame, timestamped at 10:15 am, says: "Trudeau's Response To Tariff News."
Trudeau met Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in the state of Florida on November 29, days after the Republican president-elect vowed on Truth Social that he would immediately slap a 25 percent tariff on all goods coming into the United States from Canada and Mexico.
Trudeau later told journalists he had an "excellent conversation" with Trump and posted on X thanking him for dinner (archived here).
However, the supposed CNN segment spreading online is fake -- and the shot of the prime minister crying is unrelated to Trump's reelection and planned tariffs.
"This is a manipulated video and not something that aired," Emily Kuhn, CNN's senior vice president of communications, told AFP in a December 2 email.
Old clip doctored
A reverse image search revealed the original footage of Trudeau is more than seven years old.
Canadian and US media organizations, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Global News and Time, broadcasted it October 18, 2017 (archived here, here and here). AFP also distributed the footage.
Trudeau was reacting to the death of singer Gord Downie, the 53-year-old frontman for the Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip.
"Gord was my friend, but Gord was everyone's friend," he says elsewhere in the clip. "It's who we were. Our buddy Gord, who loved this country with everything he had."
The Internet Archive's TV News Archive shows CNN did cover Trudeau's November 2024 meeting with Trump, but with different text banners.
At 10:15 am (1515 GMT) on November 30, the day after they got together, the "CNN Newsroom" chyron read: "Trump Hosts Canadian PM Trudeau At Mar-A-Lago Amid Tariff Tensions."
At 10:15 am on November 29, CNN's Jim Acosta was interviewing New York Times correspondent David Sanger about Trump's nominee for his special envoy to Ukraine and Russia.
At 10:15 am on November 26, the morning after Trump posted that he would levy 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports, "CNN Newsroom" was on a commercial break.
Photos of Trudeau from his November 29 visit to Florida show him dressed differently than in the 2017 tape.
AFP contacted the prime minister's office for comment, but no response was forthcoming.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about Canada here.
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