In brief
- A deepfake video of Donald Trump proposing dinosaur border patrols went viral, fooling many viewers.
- The clip, labeled as a deepfake, featured Trump endorsing velociraptors for border security.
- The viral clip was viewed by over 1.2 million times on X and received 20,000 likes.
Perhaps it’s a sign of the times when nothing is too weird to be discounted.
A deepfake video of U.S. President Donald Trump calling for the return of Velociraptors and Pterodactyls to patrol the border with Mexico went viral on Tuesday, racking up more than 1.2 million views and 20,000 likes.
The clip, clearly labeled at the end as a deepfake and uploaded to X Monday, features a convincingly rendered Trump in the White House Oval Office, suggesting that the Department of Homeland Security could one day unleash the prehistoric creatures on the southern border.
“My administration and I have been taking careful note of the work of Colossal Labs, the biotech company that resurrected the dire wolf,” the Trump deepfake said. “But picture this, folks: Velociraptor mounted Border Patrol agents. They’ll rip your head clear off. Pterodactyls patrolling the skies, velociraptors on the ground.”
“To prevent the immigration apocalypse, we may have to counter with a dinopocalypse.”
In April, Texas-based genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences claimed to have”de-extincted” the dire wolf. The announcement and reveal of the genetically engineered wolves sparked speculation of what other extinct species, including dinosaurs, could be brought back.
If it sounds absurd, that’s because it is. But for many viewers, it was just believable enough to look real. Many turned to Grok, the native AI assistant on X, which tentatively concluded the clip was “almost certainly AI-generated,” but stopped short of calling it definitively fake.
“The video you mentioned, showing someone resembling Donald Trump discussing dinosaurs for border enforcement, is almost certainly AI-generated,” Grok responded. “No credible sources, official records, or news outlets confirm such a statement from Trump, whose actual border policies focus on walls and enforcement, not fantastical scenarios.”
Thanks to advances in AI video clip generators like Google Veo 3, OpenAI’s Sora, and Kling AI, distinguishing between synthetic and real content is becoming increasingly difficult.
Despite the clip being AI-generated, some users noted that the idea of Trump suggesting the use of dinosaurs to patrol the border wasn’t entirely out of character.
“Obviously this is AI…but the fact that it seems like something he’d say is perturbing,” one X user said.
“It’s sad that I had to verify that this is satire,” another said.
As AI-generated content becomes more sophisticated, even the most outlandish clips can slip through the cracks.
Maverick Alexander, host of the storytelling comedy podcast DarbyCast, took credit for the viral video clip.
“Many people are trying to make Trump deepfakes now, but I haven’t seen any land the plane on his voice and word choice,” Maverick said in a later post. “As a result thereof, I should probably keep making these, no?”
Welcome to 2025, where reality is negotiable, and a U.S. raptor-enabled Border Patrol sounds plausible.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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