A video of US President Donald Trump has recently gone viral where he can be seen blaming the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for inciting riots in Arunachal Pradesh and fueling conflict among the ethnic Tani tribes.
BOOM found that the video is a deepfake. Several discrepancies typical of AI-manipulated content were identified in the video. Furthermore, AI detection tools have also confirmed that the video is a deepfake.
The New Indian Express reported on March 6, 2025, that thousands of Christians are protesting against the Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act (APFRA), 1978. Introduced to protect the traditional religious practices of indigenous communities from external influence or coercion, the act was never implemented. While Christians in the state oppose APFRA, indigenous faith believers support it and recently took to the streets, demanding its early implementation.
Indigenous faith believers, Christians, and Buddhists are the three major communities in Arunachal Pradesh. The Tani people, one of the significant tribes in the state, is known for worshipping the Sun (Donyi) and the Moon (Polo).
In the 3-minute, 20-second viral video, Trump appears to claim that certain individuals within the Donyi Polo community are selling their identity and faith to the RSS for political purposes, fueling conflict among Christian Tani people using the APFRA act. He also seemingly urges the community to identify those who accepted money to aid the RSS in dividing the Tani people. Additionally, Trump can be heard calling on 'true followers' of the Donyi Polo faith who have not received funds from the RSS to unite and remove these influences from the state, accusing them of exploiting religion to incite political violence among the Tanis.
The video is being shared with a caption, "WARNING: ALARMING NEWS FOR NORTH EAST PEOPLE *Listen the speech of the US President Donald Trump.* #TIME BOMB TICKING FOR NORTH EAST INDIA".
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a keyword search on Google to check for results related to the statements attributed to Trump in the video. However, we found no credible reports confirming that Trump made those statements about the RSS and Arunachal Pradesh.
We then closely examined the video of Trump's speech and noticed multiple discrepancies between the audio and Trump's lip movements. Additionally, the video contains several abrupt jump cuts during his speech, with no changes in voice modulation.
A closer look at Trump's speech in the viral video, where his unsynchronised lip movements can be observed, is shown below.
Taking a cue, we cropped different segments of the video and ran them through the AI detection tool Hive Moderation, which indicated the presence of AI manipulation in the video.
To verify further, we divided the audio into four segments and tested them using Resemble AI, a tool for detecting AI-generated audio. Resemble AI's audio detector concluded that all four segments were AI-generated. Click here, here, here and here to view the results.
