Audio of Trump mocking California governor at WEF is AI-generated

"So embarrassing. At the Davos Forum, Trump insulted the governor of California Newsom right in front of the audience," reads the simplified Chinese X post shared on January 22, 2026.

The video appears to show Trump calling Newsom "Newscum" among other insults on the stage of the forum.

The camera pans from Trump to Newsom, who stands among the audience listening and smiling.

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Screenshot of the false post captured on February 2, 2026, with a red X added by AFP

Trump delivered an address at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting held between January 19 and 23 in Davos, Switzerland, where he launched into an apparently uncompromising restatement of his claims over Greenland, but suddenly ruled out the use of force to take over it, a crisis that had the global elite fearing he would upend the world order (archived here and here). 

Vocal Trump critic Gavin Newsom, governor of California, called Trump's speech "jaw dropping" for an international audience, saying he had harmed US-European ties despite backing off his implicit threat of using force to seize Greenland (archived link). 

Newsom, who Trump has often referred to as "Newscum," was also scheduled to speak at a fireside chat organised by media partner Fortune on January 21 but said he was denied entry (archived here, here and here). 

He blamed the Trump administration for the cancellation, while the White House questioned his presence at the summit according to the BBC (archived here). 

The video was also shared on Facebook, Threads, Instagram, and Douyin.

But the original footage does not show Trump saying those remarks.

AI-generated

A reverse image search on Google found a similar clip published on January 21 on the official X account of C-SPAN, a US public affairs network (archived link).

It shows that Trump said he would ask for federal help to fight crime if he were Newsom, but did not use the dismissive nickname. 

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Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared X post (L) and the C-SPAN video

"We're going to help the people in California. We want to have no crime. I know Gavin was here. I used to get along so great with Gavin when I was president. Gavin's a good guy. And we're going to -- if he needed it, I would do it in a heartbeat," Trump said.

The official transcript and recording of Trump's address from WEF show him speaking on not taking Greenland by force, and on topics such as migration policies in Europe, the US economy and tariffs (archived here and here). He did not refer to the California governor in the rest of his speech.

An analysis by the DeepFake-O-Meter -- an open-access platform for detecting AI-generated images, videos, and audio -- shows that five of its detection models indicate the audio from the false video is likely to be AI-generated. 

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Screenshot of the result from DeepFake-O-Meter

AFP has debunked other misinformation related to Davos 2026.