Video showing Trump reprimanding Tinubu is created with AI
- Published on November 27, 2025 at 15:58
- 3 min read
- By Oluseyi AWOJULUGBE, AFP Nigeria
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In early November, the Donald Trump administration designated Nigeria as a country of particular concern and threatened US military action over claims of Christian persecution. Since then, a video widely shared on social media has claimed to show him reprimanding Nigerian leader Bola Tinubu. However, the claim is false; the video contains visual inconsistencies that point to the use of artificial intelligence tools. Moreover, it was first shared by an account that posts AI-generated videos.
“This is what president Donald Trump replied President Tinubu (sic),” reads the caption of a video published on Threads on November 9, 2025.
Shared more than 270 times, the video shows Trump watching Tinubu on television.
“I’m tired of listening to this man; he is not making any sense. Honestly, I am so disappointed in Nigerians for voting such a clueless man as president,” Trump appears to say after the television is turned off.
The video has also appeared in posts on Instagram and on Facebook, where it has been shared more than 2,500 times.
In early November, Trump threatened to approve military intervention in Nigeria over allegations that radical Islamists were “killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers”, a claim the government disputes.
Nigeria has faced a jihadist conflict in the country’s northeast, where more than 40,000 people have been killed and another two million displaced since the insurgency began in 2009 (archived here).
The Nigerian government announced a security partnership with the United States on November 24, following talks involving a delegation led by the African nation’s national security adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, who visited Washington (archived here).
Despite Trump’s comments about Nigeria’s insecurity, the video does not show him criticising Tinubu.
AI-generated video
The video begins with Trump watching a televised clip of Tinubu delivering a speech in which he says that “we have no fear of whatever Trump is doing”.
An internet search for this sentence led to a YouTube video published by Nigerian broadcaster Channels Television on September 2, 2025 (archived here).
The video title reads: “Nigeria Has Met Revenue Target, Not Borrowed Locally — Tinubu.”
“If non-oil revenue is going well, then we have no fear of whatever Trump is doing on the other side,” Tinubu says at 6 minutes 10 seconds into the original video.
This footage of Tinubu is the only authentic part in an otherwise AI-generated video.
Another internet search shows that, unlike Tinubu, Trump’s comments do not appear as quotes in any media reports.
Trump’s voice also sounds robotic, a sign of synthetic audio.
When a soldier standing behind Trump leans down to turn off the TV screen, a strange shape appears under his armpit, and one of the medals on his chest appears to morph briefly.
Also, after the TV is turned off, an image briefly appears on the screen again, showing a man who seems to have a third hand coming out of his elbow.
The video carries a watermark from a TikTok account called “@frankisart25”, described in the bio as the “home of video editing” (archived here).
The activity history also shows that the account posts AI-generated videos featuring different public figures, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo.
Hiya, an AI detection tool, flagged Trump's audio “as likely AI-generated”.
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked claims involving the likenesses of Elon Musk and Taylor Swift.
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