A false video is circulating on social media that purportedly shows United States President Donald Trump berating the Irish government for its immigration policy.
The video appears to show Trump blasting Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin and Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Simon Harris as "weak and useless leaders", who have supposedly allowed their country to be invaded by criminals.
The speech contains a rambling, xenophobic tirade against the pair and their government, with Trump even appearing to call their actions "evil".
"I will punish, humiliate and belittle you, for your sick globalist and woke ideology, anti-Irish agenda, you who say Irish identity, sovereignty and culture is backwards," Trump apparently says in the video.
It has been shared thousands of times on Facebook, but the speech never happened.
The footage of the press conference itself is real. It can be traced back using a reverse image search to a legitimate announcement by Trump about Apple's $600 billion (€513 billion) investment in the US.
However, in the false video, Trump's voice appears to be AI-generated—it sounds robotic and doesn't sync with his lip movements. While the voice does bear a likeness to that of Trump, the speech pattern is stilted with numerous unnatural pauses and cadence.
Nowhere in the real speech did Trump mention Ireland, Martin or Harris.
The fake speech, however, is riddled with misinformation about immigration in Ireland, such as false claims about social housing being given to asylum seekers over Irish citizens. In reality, asylum applicants are placed in a separate system from social housing.
This is known as the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS), which provides accommodation and other basic support to people applying for international protection.
If they are permitted to remain, they can apply for social housing on the same basis as an Irish citizen. There is no special priority, and they must meet the same eligibility criteria.
