Trump Deepfake Threatens to ‘Destroy’ or ‘Erase’ Pakistan if It Attacks India
By Sarah Komar
What happened: Pro-India, anti-Pakistan social media users are citing two manipulated videos of U.S. President Donald Trump seemingly stating that he would “destroy” or “erase” Pakistan if it attacked India. The videos are AI deepfakes.
Context: In early May 2025, India and Pakistan were on high alert after five militants shot and killed 26 tourists, most of them Indian, in an April 22, 2025, attack in Pahalgam, a tourist destination in an Indian-controlled part of the disputed region of Kashmir.
Pakistan has denied responsibility for the attack, which led the two countries to downgrade their diplomatic and trade ties, close the main India-Pakistan border crossing, and revoke visas for the other’s citizens.
A closer look: Amid the heightened tensions, Indian-nationalist social media users shared two short video clips of Donald Trump standing in front of a backdrop reading “THE NEW YORK ECONOMIC CLUB” and apparently speaking about India and Pakistan.
In one clip, Trump supposedly says: “I don’t want war, I want peace. But if Pakistan attacks India, I will support India, erase Pakistan and warn China. I love Indian people.”
In the other, he supposedly states: “If Pakistan attacks India, I will not sit back. I will destroy Pakistan. [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi is my friend, and I love the people of India.”
You can watch the videos here:
Actually: There is no evidence that Trump ever made such comments, and the videos are AI deepfakes.
AI voiceovers were added to a real clip of Trump speaking, while his mouth movements were altered to match the voiceovers. AI-detection tools Hive Moderation and IdentifAI determined that both voiceovers were AI-generated, NewsGuard found.
The suit Trump is wearing and the backdrop in the two manipulated clips match published recordings of a real Trump speech at the Economic Club of New York on Sept. 15, 2016. However, Trump did not mention India or Pakistan at any point in that speech, a NewsGuard review found.
Vice President JD Vance said in a May 1, 2025, Fox News interview that administration officials were in close contact with both countries and were working to prevent the tensions between India and Pakistan from escalating into a full-fledged conflict.