A video of Liberian President Joseph N. Boakai reacting to a recent statement by President Donald Trump during a meeting at the White House is going viral on social media.
In the video, President Boakai can be heard expressing his dismay and anger about comments made by President Trump about Mr. Boakai’s English Language proficiency.
The video is going viral after a July 8 meeting between President Trump and five African leaders in which Mr. Trump praised the Liberian leader for his “beautiful English” following Mr. Boakai’s remarks recounting the relationship between Liberia and the United States and the potential investment opportunities his country has.
That exchange has sparked mixed reactions, with some terming the US President’s comments as demeaning, while others argue that it validates Liberians’ good English-speaking proficiency.
But the viral video, which has attracted over 205,000 views on Thread, purports that President Boakai attacks Mr. Trump and expresses disappointment.
The Claim
The exact caption on the video reads:
“Liberian President Joseph Boakai launched a direct ‘attack’ on Trump’s insult!”
But did Mr. Boakai make search statements? Is the video authentic?
Rating Justification
To verify the authenticity of this viral video, we first conducted a reverse image search and found that the footage only recently appeared online following the meeting on July 9, 2025, in the White House.
We reviewed the government’s official channels of communication, including the Executive Mansion Website and Facebook Page, and the Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism website and Facebook page. We did not see any information indicating that President Boakai made any statement such as “an attack on President Trump’s insult.”
We found that the video is similar to another video posted online eight years ago by the Voice of America on its YouTube channel. However, remarks made by Mr. Boakai in the 8-year-old video are completely different from the recent viral video.
The manipulated video (above) is an excerpt from the video published by VOA (below) about 8 years ago when Mr. Boakai was contesting for the Presidency in 2017
We then conducted an analysis focusing on voice and lip synchronization, and we identified a significant discrepancy – the lip movement and the speech do not align. We also analyzed the blinking of Mr. Boakai’s eyes in the video and found it to be unnatural blinking.
We then conducted further verification using online platforms Sensity and Deepware – two deepfake detection tools. The two platforms detected the video to be deep fake content.
Another review of the viral video shows that it originated from a TikTok handle called Entertainment Sprint, which frequently generates AI content. We also tested the image using an online tool and it confirms that the image is AI-generated.
Conclusion
Based on our analysis of the video, we conclude that the viral video of President Boakai expressing disappointment in the US President for his “beautiful English” comment toward him is misleading. The video is fake. It was manipulated out of an 8-year-old video published on YouTube by the Voice of America.
Fact Checker Siaway Miapue contributed to this report.
