In February 2024, news spread across social networks and the media that Greg Abbott set the Russian president as an example to the American one, comparing the quality of their work. We checked whether the politician made such a statement.
According to news notes and posts on Telegram channels, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, in an interview with Fox News, praised the activities of Vladimir Putin and called on Joe Biden to emulate his Russian counterpart. As evidence, almost all such publications provide a short fragment of Abbott’s speech with Russian subtitles. “Biden needs to learn from Putin the ability to work in the interests of his country... If only the president dealt with real internal problems and did not try to play with Putin, then everything would be different” - these are the words of the governor quote in most posts. Abbott's alleged remarks were reported by TV channels "Ren-TV» (twice) And "Constantinople", newspapers "Moskovsky Komsomolets", "Sight" And "News", radio Sputnik, as well as publications EADaily, "Arguments of the week", "Reporter", "Military Review", "Paragraph", "Notepad Russia", "Ukraine.ru", "Yamal-Media" And "Staff Correspondent"
According to the TGStat service, from February 1 to February 7, about 1,000 entries about the alleged statement of the Texas governor appeared on Telegram, with a total of more than 10 million views. A viral video or quotes from it were posted by TV presenters’ channels Vladimir Solovyov (228,000 views) and Ruslana Ostashko (110,000), as well as "Operation Z: Military Correspondents of the Russian Spring"(435,000), "Dmitry Nicotin"(347,000), "Ne.Sugar"(257,000), "Russia now"(255,000), "Fast and accurate"(236,000), Colonelcassad (229,000), "Readovka explains"(220,000), Ateo Breaking (211,000), "Truthfulness" (170,000), "Uncle Slava"(184,000), "Dmitry Vasilets" (169,000), "Putin on Telegram"(157,000), Voblya (147,000), Rus_criminal (132,000), "Pool N3"(122,000), "Bullet"(116,000), "First People's"(114,000), "All-seeing eye 🇺🇦 Ukraine | News"(111,000, already deleted), "Open Ukraine| Open Ukraine" (twice: 108,000 And 66,000), "Militarist"(88,000), "Russian format"(69,000), "Mislivets Egor"(69,000), "Freshness"(66,000), "Release the Kraken!"(65,000), "Yakov Kedmi" (twice: 64,000 And 57,000), Fox News Russia (59,000), "Politjoystic" (55,000), "Military observer"(54,000), "Tucker Carlson" (53,000), "Sexton"(45,000), "Signal"(41,000), "DPR Info"(38,000), etc. In addition, hundreds of similar posts were published in "VKontakte"(examples here, here And here) and in "Zen" (here, here And here).
The viral video lasts 51 seconds and features the Fox News logo in the lower left corner. On the recording, Abbott says:
We [in Texas] have more people crossing our border every single day than come into New York in a week or a month. It's outrageous that they say they can't do anything about it. And finally, Dana, the fact is that there is only one reason why all of this happens. That's because Joe Biden eliminated all four measures introduced by Donald Trump, which led to the fewest illegal border crossings in 40 years. If only the president dealt with real internal problems, and did not try to play with Putin, from whom he needs to learn to work in the interests of the country, then everything would be different. He needs to follow immigration laws. And if the Biden administration followed the immigration laws passed by Congress, then the mayor of New York, the heads of New Jersey, Chicago, etc. would not have such problems.
"Verified" found the full version of the Texas Governor's speech on website And YouTube channel Fox News, where the video was published on January 4, 2024. It lasts four and a half minutes, and at the beginning the leading Dana Perino asks a Republican politician to comment on the actions of US Democratic mayors and governors in connection with the growing number of migrants arriving in their cities and states through Texas.
Abbott divided his response into three parts. Firstly, according to him, the migration crisis, aggravated in January 2024, demonstrated the Democrats' hostility towards migrants. "They're supposedly waiting for them to come, and when they actually come, they say, 'No, no, no, we don't want them here. Send them back to Texas,'" Abbott said. Secondly, the politician believes that in states where Democrats win elections there is enough space for migrants: “It is absurd to think that there is no room in New York or New Jersey. Do they think there is one in Eagle Pass or Del Rio, Texas?” After this phrase, the Texas governor starts pronounce the words from the viral video, but they are partially different.
The beginning (up to the 00:28 mark) and ending (00:40–00:51) of Abbott's speech from the video distributed on the RuNet completely coincide with what the governor says on the recording from Fox News (01:11–01:39 And 01:46–01:57 respectively). However, a fragment of the viral video mentioning Putin (00:28–00:39) is completely absent from the version of the American TV channel. The differences come in those seconds when, instead of Abbott, footage of illegal migrants is shown on the screen (01:40–01:45). In the original, the governor, when his face was not shown, listed the measures taken by the Trump administration to combat illegal immigration: Remain in Mexico, Title 42, Catch and Release And building a wall on the border with Mexico.
Since the viral video was also distributed in the English-speaking segment of the Internet, it turned Attention Reuters fact checkers. “I can confirm that the audio was altered and that portion of the interview did not occur,” a Fox News spokesperson told the outlet in an email. Hayley Crow, an assistant press secretary for Abbott's office, sent Reuters the Fox News clip in response to a request for comment and transcript interview with the governor, where Putin is not mentioned. In turn, Newsweek fact checkers noticed there is an oddity in the fragment that caused a stir: when talking about President Biden, the governor does not pronounce the article the, as required by English grammar (If only president instead of If only the president).
An excerpt from a Fox News interview, which probably became the direct basis for the forgery, was posted on the official website in early January. YouTube channel Abbott and his account on social network X, but this video is almost 6 seconds long. Briefly speaking. The fact is that the fragment embedded in the video with a mention of Putin is longer than the words of the governor that he actually said, so the creators of the fake had to install an additional video sequence (00:34–00:40). For this purpose last year's personnel migrants crossing the US-Mexico border. In addition, during editing, the video erased the note that the footage in the American city of Eagle Pass was filmed on Sunday.
In foreign-language segments of the Internet, the fabricated video is distributed immediately with Russian subtitles, from which we can conclude that it was first published on the RuNet. At the same time, it is difficult to unambiguously determine the original source: in the captions for the video they used several spellings of the Abbott name (or did not mention it at all), and the words attributed to the politician were translated differently. The earliest post that “Verified” tracked appeared on February 1 at 16:47 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Sheikh Tamir"(130,000 views). This channel mentioned in more than 100 of our analyses.
Thus, Texas Governor Greg Abbott did not advise Biden to learn from Putin how to work in the interests of his country. The video confirming these words was fabricated using a voice, most likely generated by a neural network. Previously, the authors of fakes have repeatedly used similar AI technologies: for example, they imitated the speech of an actor Tom Cruise And mayor of Denver Mike Johnston.
Cover photo: @GovAbbott (X)
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