Say:

Authentic audio shared online in early November 2024 shows Martin Luther King Jr. expressing his strong support for former US President Donald Trump.

Classification:

Ahead of the November 2024 US presidential election, social media users shared a viral message video (filed) that supposedly contains audio of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. endorsing Republican candidate and former US President Donald Trump in a speech.

One version was viewed more than 1.1 million times on a pro-Trump X account called MAGA Resource; however, the post was later deleted.

He imagesshared repeatedly in Xshowed the civil rights activist talking over clips of Democrats, Trump and other video segments. The audio said, in part (emphasis ours):

We have been told time and time again that we cannot vote for the man who did more for the black community than any other president. If a black man dares to speak out in support of Donald Trump, there will always be a Democrat there to call that man Uncle Tom, a house black, or even worse. We have been used by the Democrats. For decades we have supported the party of slavery and Jim Crow, we have supported the Klu Klux Klan party. Broken promises and broken homes. Our families demolished, our communities destroyed. And yet we continue to vote for Democrats.

(…)

Stop voting for Democrats who say they care about us, but enact the same policies that push us down and keep us there. Enough of these frauds and liars, who claim to be against racism, but believe that an individual’s race is their defining quality. Once we say enough, from all the mountain slopes, let freedom ring.

We recognize that Donald J. Trump kept the promises he made to all Americans. And we will vote for Donald Trump as our president and fight alongside him to make America great again. We will not allow the American dream to die. And as we unite under the banner of President Trump and America First, let there be no doubt that yes, as the man always says, the best is yet to come!

However, the audio in the video above is fake. King never gave such a speech and never endorsed Trump, which is why we rate this recording as fake.

Since King was murdered In 1968, when Trump was just a young man, he was not running for president, and I’m just graduating —Such a speech is anachronistic and out of touch with the realities of the time when King was alive.

The King’s Daughter Bernice King denounced the video on

In fact, MAGA Resource removed the clip shortly afterward, but it continued to be shared by others. accounts.

The video in question clearly shows doctored footage of King speaking. Furthermore, since he died in 1968, the civil rights leader would never have addressed current Democratic Party issues, such as the legal issues of US President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Hive ModerationA website with a tool that detects deepfake content or media created with artificial intelligence software, concluded that there was a 99% chance that the audio was generated by AI.

(Hive moderation AI generated content detection)

a preliminary search for archive containing king speeches produced no results that showed him expressing similar sentiments to those in the social media video.

This is not the first time we have verified quotes attributed to King. In the past, we covered quotes. paraphrased of his original speeches, as well as his supposed opinions on topics such as capitalism.