In late February 2025, a video circulated on social media claiming to show U.S. President Donald Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. stating on his "Triggered with Don Jr." podcast that the U.S. should have sent weapons to Russia instead of Ukraine, in the Russia-Ukraine war.
In the video, two voices can be heard:
First voice: But they forget that Ukraine isn't the kind of country you go all in on, this is ridiculous.
Second voice (allegedly Donald Trump Jr.): I, honestly, can't imagine anyone in their right mind picking Ukraine as an ally when Russia is the other option. I mean, just think about it. Massive nuclear power, loaded with natural resources everyone needs, literally, the biggest country on the planet. And "haha," there's Ukraine, which has Chernobyl and some radiation-proof dogs.
First voice: Yeah, the …
Second voice (allegedly Donald Trump Jr.): Meanwhile, the Biden administration is like, "oh yeah, this is definitely the ally we need. Let's dump all our money into them." Honestly, if anything, the U.S. should have been sending weapons to Russia.
Numerous accounts amplified the video on X, including @RpsAgainstTrump, which garnered over 525,000 views, and @FactPostNews, an official rapid response account of the Democratic Party. However, the posts have since been deleted from both accounts.
The video was not authentic. It was digitally created, likely using AI-powered software to generate synthetic audio mimicking Trump Jr.'s voice.
Let's see, from hippie weed, DOGE in every state and in the Ukraine, 100%. That would be huge. That's a really big deal. I want to know where that Ukraine money is going. You're in there for a quarter of a trillion dollars and probably a lot more. Zelenskyy says he hasn't even got half of it. I don't really trust anything that he says, so it doesn't necessarily matter. I think the American taxpayer deserves to do that.
Trump Jr. addressed the fake video on his X profile, reposting a statement from his spokesperson Andrew Surabian, that read: "This is 100% fake AI generated audio, but I'm sure that won't stop anti-Trump resistance accounts from continuing to dishonestly spread it."
(@DonaldJTrumpJr X profile)
"Media forensics expert Hany Farid analyzed it and told me two models classify 'the voices with high confidence as AI-generated,'" AFP Fact Check journalist Bill McCarthy wrote on X. Moreover, Farid told fact-checking organization Logically Facts it "was not a simple voice cloning as it involved the interplay between two voices," underscoring this technique is expected to become more common as AI technology improves. "I've been seeing this trend recently and it is somewhat expected as the technology gets better and the adversary becomes more proficient and sophisticated in their use of these AI tools."
Shayan Sardarizadeh BBC Verify journalist further commented: "Worryingly, it's one of the best AI audio clips I've ever heard. It's almost unrecognizable from Don Jr's real voice. Gen AI is rapidly improving, and the online information space is going to become even more confusing."
We have investigated several other claims related to Trump Jr., including a viral video that alleged he was using cocaine while standing next to his father, then-President-elect Donald Trump. In February 2025, we examined a claim that he illegally hunted a protected bird in the Venice region of Italy.