At the end of February 2025, news about a statement allegedly made by the son of the US President spread widely across the Internet. In his opinion, Washington should have chosen Moscow rather than Kyiv as an ally. We have verified the authenticity of such publications.

A 36-second video featuring a voiceover purported to be that of Donald Trump Jr. went viral on February 26. The video is a recording of the screen on which the Triggered podcast is playing, and Trump Jr. allegedly states that the United States should have supplied weapons to Russia, because no one will choose Ukraine as an ally when on the other side of the scale is a powerful nuclear power rich in natural resources that everyone needs.

The quote from Trump Jr. or the video itself was published by Telegram channels Anatoly Shariy (916,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), “Constantinople"(352,000), "Dmitry Nicotin"(326,000), "ZeRada"(270,000), "Konstantin Malofeev"(274,000), "KB"(238,000), "Ne.Sugar"(222,000), Reverse side of the medal (205,000), "Uncle Slava"(180,000), etc.

Viral video. Source: social networks

Donald Trump Jr. is an American entrepreneur, political activist and the eldest son of US President Donald Trump. He leads Triggered podcast, which covers and comments on political and other news primarily from a right-wing conservative point of view. The podcast is available on popular streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Rumble). According to Russian-language Telegram channels, in one of the recent releases, Trump Jr. said:

“I generally cannot imagine that anyone in their right mind would choose Ukraine as an ally if Russia is on the other side of the scale. Think for yourself - a powerful nuclear power, rich in natural resources that everyone needs, literally the largest state on the planet. And on the other hand, there is Ukraine, where there is Chernobyl and dogs that are resistant to radiation. At the same time, the Biden administration is like: “Yes, this is an ally we need! Let’s invest all our money in them!” The US should have supplied weapons to Russia, for that matter.”.

Some bloggers limit themselves to just the quote itself, but many attach a video of Trump Jr.’s statement to it. Alone imposed recording of his voice on his portrait, others published recording the computer screen while listening to Triggered (this option has become more widespread). The interface design is reminiscent of Spotify streaming, and the bottom right side of the screen indicates that this is episode #219, published on February 25th. The timeline shows that Trump Jr. makes his statement about halfway through the podcast, and this happens after the words of an unknown interlocutor.

As of this writing, episode 219 of the Triggered podcast, FBI Dream Team, Plus Taking Your Questions Live! (“FBI Dream Team and Your Questions Answered Live”) was not available on Spotify. However, he posted in video format on the Rumble platform. For the entire hour-long video, Trump Jr. mentioned Ukraine only once at around 37:17, answering a subscriber’s question. The son of the US President said that he would be glad to see in Ukraine a structure similar to the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE) headed by billionaire Elon Musk, in order to understand how Kyiv spends money. In this issue, Trump Jr. does not mention Russia at all, nor does he mention the fact that it should be an ally of the United States instead of Ukraine. Although in the viral video the son of the American president has a certain interlocutor, in the original he hosts the podcast alone.

Trump Jr.'s speech in the recording that went viral on social networks sounds monotonous, unnatural intonations can be heard in some places, and there are no hesitations. Audio file analysis, carried out GetReal chief scientist Hani Farid used their deepfake detection technology to show that the clip was most likely generated by artificial intelligence.

“Verified” also analyzed the audio track from the viral recording using the Hive AI detector. According to the results, there was a 99.9% probability that the video contained computer-generated speech and not the voice of a real person.

A fake video with the voice of Trump Jr. was widely circulated on the English-language segment of the social network X. some publications received tens of thousands of views. Among others, it was published by several fairly popular accounts associated with the US Democratic Party, for example, the profile FactPostNews, which the Democratic Party created to combat disinformation (post has now been deleted). As the video went viral, Trump Jr. spokesman Andrew Surabian wrote in X: “The post is 100% fake, created by AI.” This information confirmed and Triggered executive producer Drew Lynch.

An audio recording of Trump Jr.'s generated voice began circulating on X late on February 26th. At the same time, the first publication that contains a viral video and which was discovered by “Verified” was posted in the Telegram channel “Military Observer” on February 26 at 17:53 Moscow time. This channel many times mentioned in analyzes “Verified” as a distributor, and sometimes the primary source of misinformation.

Soon the information spread across other pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and media. A fake quote from Trump Jr. was published by dozens of major Russian publications: “Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Moskovsky Komsomolets", "Arguments and facts", "Regnum", Lenta.ru etc. After Surabian’s post in X, these media outlets issued a refutation, but this did not stop the Telegram channels - the video continued to spread there.

Thus, Trump Jr. did not state on his podcast that Russia should have been an ally of the United States instead of Ukraine. The evidence used was a fake audio recording created using AI.

Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons