Altered video of Minneapolis mayoral candidate spreads online

"Look at me. Look at me. I am the mayor now," Fateh appears to say in the video, shared August 3, 2025 on X.

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Screenshot from X taken August 7, 2025

Similar posts spread across the platform as Fateh's campaign for mayor picked up steam after the city's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party -- the local branch of national Democrats -- endorsed him over two-term incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey.

Fateh, a Muslim and a democratic socialist who is the son of immigrant parents from Somalia, has faced racist attacks. His campaign has drawn comparisons to Zohran Mamdani's meteoric rise in New York City's mayoral primary, which also attracted racist rhetoric and false claims debunked by AFP.

The video spreading online appears to further mock Fateh's heritage -- and is altered.

A reverse image search revealed the footage of Fateh was lifted from a 2022 hearing over ethics complaints brought against Fateh, who had recently been elected to the Minnesota State Senate. Fateh is seen wearing the same outfit in the original recording uploaded by the legislature (archived here).

At no point during the session did Fateh make the comment in question.

"This is AI-generated, and this is not something Omar Fateh has said," Fateh's co-campaign manager Graham Faulkner told AFP in an August 6 email.

According to local news, a panel went on to dismiss the 2022 complaints against Fateh, lodged by Republican lawmakers who alleged that he had solicited free advertising from a Somali TV YouTube channel in exchange for introducing a bill that would have provided a grant to the network.

The "I am the mayor now" quote appears to be a reference to "Captain Phillips," a 2013 action movie starring actor Tom Hanks in which the character played by Barkhad Abdi, a Somali-American actor, says: "Look at me. Look at me. I am the captain now" (archived here).

The line has become a meme in American pop culture.

AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.