Deepfake video of Trump 'cancelling Pride Month' deceives South Korean users
- Published on May 27, 2025 at 06:51
- 4 min read
- By SHIM Kyu-Seok, AFP South Korea
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"Trump: June's Pride Month is cancelled," reads a Korean-language X post on May 21.
It features a video of Trump making similar statements and announcing the US would "no longer participate in deliberate moral inversions" by celebrating Pride Month in June.
June will be known as "confidence month, or maybe just June," he says in the video, before making crude remarks about gay sex.
In the United States, Pride Month is celebrated in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, a series of protests led by a group of lesbians, drag queens, transgender people and young, gay men against the police in Manhattan that became a turning point for LGBTQ rights (archived links here and here).
Trump recognised Pride Month in a tweet in June 2019, during his first term in office (archived link).
However, Trump notably overturned various executive orders issued by his predecessor, Joe Biden, that prevented discrimination against LGBTQ Americans and issued an order requiring federal agencies to remove the option for any other gender identity other than male or female on passport applications (archived link).
Similar claims were shared in other posts in South Korea, where LGBTQ people tend to live largely under the radar (archived link).
Users left comments indicating they believed the video was genuine.
"I thought someone made this for fun, but Trump really said this," one user wrote.
Another said: "Leave it up to Trump to tell it how it is."
But Trump's speech in the video has been manipulated using AI, there are no official reports or announcements about the US government "cancelling" Pride Month celebrations in June (archived link).
A keyword search found the video was first shared in an X post by user Maverick Alexander, whose bio states mostly shares "satire" (archived links here and here).
The last frame of the video includes a disclaimer that reads, "This is a deepfake, but let people dream".
This frame has been cut out from the version shared on the Korean-language social media posts.
Several inconsistencies in the deepfake video also indicate it has been manipulated using AI, including a slight mismatch between the audio and Trump's mouth movements.
A separate reverse image search on Google found the deepfake clip matched a YouTube video posted by the Trump White House on April 13, 2025, wishing Jewish people a happy Passover holiday (archived link).
At no point in the video does Trump mention Pride month or LGBTQ people.
A comparison between the two videos shows both Trump's attire and the background -- including the layout of the picture frames on the table behind him -- were identical.
AFP has previously debunked false claims targeting Pride events in South Korea.
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