Old Trump speech falsely linked to South Korea trade deal

Published on August 2, 2025 at 04:21
3 min read
By SHIM Kyu-Seok, AFP South Korea

Social media posts have recirculated an old video of US President Donald Trump and falsely presented it as depicting him calling South Korean leader Lee Jae Myung a "bad negotiator" after their countries agreed a trade deal. The clip in fact shows Trump criticising then president Barack Obama as he launched his presidential campaign in June 2015.

"Trump mocks Lee Jae Myung as a bad negotiator," reads a Korean-language post featuring the clip on Naver Band, a South Korean forum, on July 31, 2025.

"[Trump] mocked Lee as soon as the tariff negotiations finished. [Lee] has become a total pushover," it continues.

The video shows Trump saying, "The people negotiating don't have a clue. Our president doesn't have a clue. He's a bad negotiator."

But its Korean subtitles mistranslate "our president" as "their president".

Screenshot of the false Naver Band post captured on August 1, 2025, with a red X added by AFP

The clip was also shared in similar posts on multiple right-wing South Korean circles on Facebook, as well as on YouTube.

"The way that fool Lee acted as he did, no wonder he is being mocked," read a comment on one of the posts. Another said: "An international embarrassment to be used like that, then mocked by the US president."

Under the trade deal, the United States will impose a 15 percent tariff on South Korean imports -- down from the previously threatened 25 percent -- in exchange for $350 billion in South Korean investments in US industries and $100 billion in energy purchases (archived link).

A keyword search on Google found the clip corresponds to a part of a speech Trump gave on June 16, 2015, when he announced his bid for the presidency (archived link).

At around the 18:50 mark of the speech posted in full by CSPAN, Trump makes the comment: "The people negotiating don't have a clue. Our president doesn't have a clue. He's a bad negotiator."

This was part of a broader tirade against the Obama administration's trade and foreign policies.

Trump then references a prisoner swap involving US soldier Bowe Bergdahl to illustrate his criticism of Obama's negotiating skills.

Bergdahl was a US Army sergeant who was captured by the Taliban in 2009 after walking off his post in Afghanistan and was released in 2014 in exchange for five Taliban detainees held at Guantanamo Bay (archived link).

"We get Bergdahl. We get a traitor. We get a no-good traitor, and they get the five people that they wanted for years, and those people are now back on the battlefield trying to kill us. That's the negotiator we have," Trump said.

Screenshot comparison of the miscaptioned video (left) and the CSPAN video (right)

A full transcript of the speech published by Time magazine also shows Trump was referring to Obama (archived link).

Nowhere in the video or transcript does Trump mention South Korea or Lee Jae Myung.

AFP has previously debunked similar instances of Trump remarks and social media posts being misrepresented as references to South Korea.

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