Trump claimed the Lincoln Project used AI to make him 'look bad.' But the clips are real – Austin American-Statesman
Statement: The Lincoln Project is “using A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)” in its “television commercials.”
Former President Donald Trump has a few gripes with the Lincoln Project, a political advocacy group composed of Republicans who oppose Trump’s leadership. A recent complaint: that the group is showing altered footage of him committing gaffes.
“The perverts and losers at the failed and once disbanded Lincoln Project, and others, are using A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) in their Fake television commercials in order to make me look as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump posted Dec. 4 on Truth Social.
In the Lincoln Project’s Dec. 4 video, titled “Feeble,” a narrator addresses Trump directly with a taunt. “Hey, Donald,” the female voice says. “We notice something. More and more people are saying it. You’re weak. You seem unsteady. You need help getting around.” The video flashes through scenes showing Trump tripping over his words, gesturing, misspeaking and climbing steps to a plane with something white stuck to his shoe.
Are these clips the work of AI? We reviewed them and found the Trump clips are legitimate — and not generated using AI. We reached out to the Trump campaign but did not hear back.
The Lincoln Project posted on X, formerly Twitter, that its “Feeble” ad was not AI-generated. We also looked at two other ads the group published in the days preceding Trump’s post and found no evidence that they included AI-generated content, either.
We identified the origin of all but one of the 31 photos and videos used in the “Feeble” ad, 21 of them featuring Trump. We’ve corroborated them with footage from C-SPAN, news outlets, and/or government archives. In some of the clips, Trump is trying to publicly mock President Joe Biden, which the Lincoln Project ad does not make clear.
Here are sources and context for the clips and photos used in the ad.
For good measure, we also checked the clips in the video that didn’t feature Trump. These included clips and photos of Biden and stock videos. None of them was AI-generated, either. Here are the sources:
We were unable to find the source for a 1-second video of Biden smiling at the 0:45 time stamp in the ad. We reached out to the Lincoln Project and will update this story if it responds.
But of the 21 Trump-related images and clips in the ad, we found no evidence that they were created or altered using AI.We rate Trump’s claim that the Lincoln Project is using AI in its television commercials about him False.
PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.