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| - On March 23, 2025, an audio clip circulated online in which U.S. Vice President JD Vance appeared to criticize tech billionaire Elon Musk, an adviser to President Donald Trump. Social media users posted the clip across YouTube (archived), Facebook (archived), X (archived), Threads (archived), Instagram (archived), Reddit (archived) and Bluesky (archived).
According to the posts, Vance said:
Everything that he's doing is getting criticized in the media. And he says that he's helping, and he's not. He's making us look bad. He's making me look bad. And I'll tell you this, and he wouldn't like it if I said it, but he's not even an American. He's from South Africa and he's cosplaying as this great American leader in a room that has the portraits of some of the greatest men that ever led this country, and he has the audacity to act like he is an elected official. I am an elected official, I am the important one in this situation, not him. So if he wants to tank the economy and his cars maybe that's what he deserves.
However, on March 24, Vance's communications director William Martin said (archived) on X that the audio was "100% fake and most certainly not the Vice President." The origins of the audio were unclear, but several artificial intelligence detectors said the audio was likely not authentic. There were no reports from reputable sources about the audio or who might have recorded it. As such, we have rated this video fake.
We reached out to the White House for clarification on Martin's statement.
We also reached out to two early TikTok posters, whose videos were widely shared by other social media users, about where they got the audio and await their replies. One of the TikTok profiles that posted an early version of the audio told a commenter who asked how they knew the audio was authentic: "Becouse...if it was AI..I would label as such...I don't post...lies."
Both profiles that posted early versions of the audio have posted other political content with an anti-Trump lean.
We passed the audio through Hiya's Deepfake Voice Detector and the University at Buffalo Media Lab's DeepFake-O-Meter. (Deepfake audio is audio generated by AI to sound like a real person, in this case Vance.)
According to Hiya, audio samples from the beginning, middle and end of the 55-second clip scored from 32 to 52 of 100 points, with 100 being a 100% authentic voice. The beginning of the clip was "likely" to be fake, according to the the detector scoring 32/100. The detector was uncertain about the other samples.
(Screenshots from Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector)
DeepFake-O-Meter's seven detectors said the audio was between 70.2% and 100% likely to be AI-generated. Whereas Hiya took a short sample of several seconds, DeepFake-O-Meter analyzed the entire audio clip.
(Screenshot from University at Buffalo Media Lab's DeepFake-o-meter)
Though all the available evidence points to the recording not being real, it does play on swirling rumors that Vance felt pushed aside by Musk's prominence in the Trump administration. Since Trump's inauguration, Musk has appeared alongside Trump at least once for a news conference. Vance has not. Musk also has met with several foreign leaders alongside the president, a role usually filled by the VP.
In a March 14 interview with NBC News, Vance conditionally supported Musk's work with the Department of Government Efficiency. Vance said he was "accepting of mistakes" but "I also think you have to quickly correct those mistakes."
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