Video of Trump blaming India for Pakistan floods is edited
- Published on September 8, 2025 at 08:48
- 2 min read
- By Masroor GILANI, AFP Pakistan
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"Donald Trump blames flooding in Pakistan on India," reads the Urdu-language caption of a Facebook reel published August 31, 2025.
"The horrible floods in Pakistan, the destruction, the tragedy. It's not just climate, it's not just rain. It's India," Trump appears to say in the video.
"Believe me India opened their dams in Kashmir, very unfair, very dangerous. They opened the gates and millions of tons of water came rushing into Pakistan through Ravi, through Chenab, through Sutlej."
A brutal monsoon season has killed more than 800 people in Pakistan since June (archived link).
The three mentioned transboundary rivers east of the country have swollen to exceptionally high levels in August as a result of heavy rains across the border in India.
Similar posts also surfaced on Instagram, TikTok and X as Pakistan authorities said neighbouring India had released water from upstream dams on its side of the border, further increasing the flow headed towards Pakistan.
Islamabad's foreign ministry said New Delhi gave advanced notice through diplomatic channels ahead of opening the spillways.
Indian government officials have not commented.
But a reverse image search of keyframes from the circulating video found the original footage was streamed by CNBC Television on YouTube on May 30, 2025 (archived link).
It shows a press conference at the White House where Trump thanked Elon Musk for his work as outgoing head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (archived link).
The US president also spoke about the deadly exchange of attacks between the nuclear-armed neighbours and the truce he surprisingly announced, but did not mention anything about floods (archived link).
There are no official reports that Trump blamed India for the recent flooding in Pakistan as of September 8.
An analysis of the edited clip's audio using the voice cloning detection tool Hiya in the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, found it is "very likely AI-generated" (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked misinformation about the floods in Pakistan.
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