Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
US President-elect Donald Trump promised his Pakistani friends that he would try his best to get Imran Khan out of Jail.
Fact
Audio used in the viral video is AI-generated.
Even as Donald Trump made a stunning comeback by winning the US presidential election on Wednesday, a video claiming that the US President-elect has promised his Pakistani supporters that he will try his best to get Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan out of jail has gone viral on TikTok.
Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan was arrested in August 2023 on the charges of selling state possession that were received during his foreign visits in his capacity as the prime minister.
TikTok user @imrankhan_officialx posted a video showing visuals of Donald Trump meeting former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. In the accompanying audio clip, Donald Trump is heard saying, “Hello my Pakistani American friends, I promise If I win I will try my best to get Imran Khan out of Jail as soon as possible. He is my friend I Love him. I will support him to take over the government again and rock and we will work together to make out ties stronger. Imran Khan Zindabad.”
The video posted on November 5 has garnered 80.4k likes, 8131 users have shared it and 1303 people have commented until the last count. The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker found the claim to be false.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim, Newschecker took several key-frames from the viral video and ran reverse searches on Google. The results pointed us to Imran Khan’s 2019 visit to Washington.
Taking clues from the results, we ran a Google search for keywords, “Imran Khan welcomed in Washington” and found a video, dated July 23, 2019, published on the YouTube channel named ‘Trump White House Archived’ which exactly matched the viral video. We found that the video showed Trump welcoming Imran Khan in the White House in July 2019.
We also came across reports about the growing speculations among Imran Khan’s supporters in Pakistan that Trump’s electoral victory could lead to diplomatic support for the release of the jailed former prime minister. The speculations stem from the supposed good ties between Khan and Trump during the latter’s earlier stint in White House. However, we didn’t find any records of Trump ever uttering these words to free the jailed former Prime Minister of Pakistan.
On digging further, we found an old fact-check article done by Newschecker earlier this year in March. The article debunked a video of Trump allegedly promising support to former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. Thus, our findings clearly showed that the same old AI-generated audio attributed to Trump was used in the viral video.
Conclusion
No, US President-elect Donald Trump has not promised to free jailed Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and regain power. The viral video shows old footage of Khan’s visit to Washington in 2019 with an AI-generated audio laid on top.
Result: False
Sources
Modern Diplomacy, July 30, 2019
Trump White House Archived/YouTube, July 23, 2019
Media Line, Nov 3, 2024
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
