Video of general criticizing Trump, demanding Epstein files is AI-generated fake
- Published on October 7, 2025 at 23:03
- 4 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"Lt. General tells his troops about the why they are going to the War Torn City of Portland OR," says an October 1, 2025 Bluesky post. "OPEN THE EPSTEIN FILES."
The video shows a uniformed soldier with the nametag "Blum" addressing a group of soldiers, who respond to his speech with a collective cheer.
"Listen up," the leader says. "Command says Portland's apparently a war zone. I've seen real war zones, and this ain't it. Our deployment here isn't about protecting America. It's about protecting Trump. He's using us to distract from the Epstein files, and I'll tell you this: He's more afraid of that list than any enemy I've ever faced. The real battlefield isn't Portland. It's that list."
He finishes by shouting: "Release the files!"
The so-called Epstein files, named after the New York financier who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting federal trial for sex crimes including against underage girls, have been the focal point of a controversy engulfing the second presidency of Trump, who was a longtime friend of Epstein.
In July 2025, the Trump administration announced that it had discovered no new evidence justifying the release of additional documents or the opening of a new investigation into the matter.
The video of the military leader calling for the files to be publicized rocketed across platforms, including Facebook and X, after Trump authorized the deployment of troops to Portland on September 27, extending his unprecedented use of the military on US soil to support a crackdown on illegal immigration and crime.
A federal judge in Oregon has since blocked the Portland deployment. Trump -- who is also targeting Chicago, Illinois following similar military campaigns opposed by local officials in Los Angeles, California and Washington -- has branded the cities as war zones and threatened October 6 to invoke emergency powers meant to thwart rebellion.
But the clip is a fake generated by artificial intelligence.
"The National Guard Bureau is aware of a fabricated video falsely depicting a general officer briefing troops for a mission in Portland, Oregon," National Guard Bureau spokesperson Micah Maxwell told AFP in an October 6 email. "This video appears to be AI-generated and is entirely false."
The bureau said there are no official records of the remarks in the video, and that the uniform depicted has been out of service since 2019.
Originated with satire account
Searching for a social media handle watermarked on some posts, AFP traced the video to a September 29 post from "@8secondthings," an Instagram account that posts "ai satire" and "ai parody," according to its bio.
The original post's caption carries the hashtags "#ai" and "#parody."
AFP observed several inconsistencies in the video that are indicative of AI-generated content. As the purported lieutenant general speaks, for example, the patch on the arm of his uniform and the logo on his hat both morph.
The Hiya.com voice-cloning detection tool within the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, assessed that clip's audio is "very likely AI-generated."
AFP contacted the "@8secondthings" account for comment, but no response was forthcoming.
AI video version of old photo
Keyword searches for a military figure with the surname "Blum" surfaced a photo on the National Guard's website that is visually similar to the AI-generated scene.
The picture's caption says it shows former Lieutenant General H. Steven Blum, then the chief of the National Guard Bureau, meeting in New Jersey with Maryland National Guard troops who were preparing to deploy overseas (archived here). The photo is dated to August 16, 2007.
An accompanying National Guard writeup about Blum's visits to New Jersey and Boston, Massachusetts also features the same photo and provides several quotes attributed to Blum -- none of which mention Trump or Epstein (archived here).
AFP was not able to locate any reports of Blum making similar comments to those heard in the fabricated clip.
The National Guard's website and a New York Times report from the time say Blum retired from service in 2010 -- a fact confirmed to AFP by Maxwell, the National Guard Bureau spokesperson (archived here and here).
Authentic videos of Blum show him speaking with a different voice, accent and cadence than in the fake circulating online (archived here and here).
AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.
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