AI Version of Pope Leo Condemns Trump’s Immigration Policies, Drawing Praise from the Left
By Macrina Wang
What happened: Left-leaning social media users are praising Pope Leo XIV for his tough stance against the Trump administration, citing a video that supposedly shows the pope saying that Trump’s immigration policies are “a blatant trampling on both the teachings of the Church and the promises of the American dream.”
Context: Before becoming pope, Leo had reposted articles on his personal X account that criticized the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric on immigration.
For example, in April 2025, he shared an X post that called Trump’s handling of the March 2025 deportation of Salvadoran national and U.S. resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia “illicit” and asked: “Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed?” And in February 2025, he reposted an article titled, “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
A closer look: In the video cited by some liberal accounts, the pope appears to address Trump from a podium, saying that he “firmly oppose[s] everything that you stand for” and describes Trump’s actions as “a hideous manifestation of white supremacist ideology.”
You can watch the video here:
Liberal X user @SuzieRizzo1 shared the video and stated: “Damn! Pope Leo XIV tells Trump that the immigration policies he’s implemented are a blatant trampling on both the teachings of the Church and the promises of the American Dream! Amen!” The post garnered 283,400 views and 12,000 likes in two days.
Left-leaning Threads user @ItIsOver2812 posted the video and said, “Beautiful 🙏🙏👏👏.” The post received 6,800 likes and 790 reposts in two days.
Actually: The video is a deepfake using AI-generated audio and video manipulation, NewsGuard found. There is no record of the pope making these or similar comments.
The apparent original poster of the video, pop culture-focused TikTok user @grv12095oio, labeled it as AI-generated. However, most of the subsequent shares of the video did not acknowledge that it was created with AI.
Through a reverse image search of the video’s frames, NewsGuard traced the footage to Leo’s May 12, 2025, address to the international press. In that speech, the pope made no mention of Trump, according to NewsGuard’s review of the transcript and video of the event.
Tricks of our trade: AI deepfakes can be convincing, especially when they align with preconceived notions of what the speaker would say. Here’s some tips for determining that this video is AI:
The voice does not sound like Leo’s. Born in Chicago, the new pope has an American accent while the voice in the clip has an Italian accent.
The voiceover is out of sync with Pope Leo’s mouth movements.
Without pauses or breaths, Leo’s speech sounds mechanical, a tell-tale sign of AI audios.