Audio included in a viral video shared on X, formerly Twitter, claims President Joe Biden has purportedly threatened to “wage war against Texas.”
Well according to this hot mic it appeared that Biden’s voice is stating to attack its own in Texas pic.twitter.com/gY2shBhauS
— Cindy (@Cindy_youwho) January 15, 2024
Verdict: False
There is no evidence supporting the claim. The audio included in the video appears to have been generated with artificial intelligence (AI), according to Politifact. A media forensics and AI expert denied the claim’s validity in an email to Check Your Fact.
Fact Check:
The Texas State Police has been arresting migrants in Shelby Park amid a refusal to comply with Biden’s order to allow Border Patrol agents to access the area, according to Newsweek. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently seized control of Shelby Park in an effort to enforce immigration, NBC News reported.
“We’re going to make sure those cowboys don’t stop the surge of military-age men from entering. If we have to send F-15s to Texas here and wage war against Texas, so be it,” Biden appears to say, according to the audio included in the X video, which has garnered over 100,000 views. The claim also circulated on TikTok.
The claim is false, however. Check Your Fact found no credible news reports suggesting Biden made the purported remark. While the Biden administration said it would take action against Texas officials blocking federal Border Patrol agents from entering the U.S. border, according to a Jan. 15 article from CBS News, they did not mention sending F-15s to the area. The administration also did not say they would “wage war against Texas.”
Likewise, the remark attributed to Biden does not appear on the White House’s website or its verified social media accounts. Biden also has not publicly referenced the remark via his personal or government X accounts. (RELATED: Did Texas Bar Border Patrol From Rescuing Three Migrants Who Drowned?)
The audio included in the video appears to have been generated with AI, according to Politifact. The outlet spoke with Hany Farid, a digital forensics and misinformation expert at the University of California, Berkeley, who said, “the cadence of the voice is typical of AI-generation.” The Dallas Morning News shared Politifact’s article debunking the claim. In addition, Snopes also labeled the claim as false.
Dr. Walter Scheirer, a media forensics and AI expert at the University of Notre Dame, denied the claim’s validity in an email to Check Your Fact.
“President Biden is a major public figure who is under constant media scrutiny. If he had said such a thing, it’d be in the mainstream news, and everyone would be talking about it. This clip is easily debunked: it is only circulating in a limited capacity on social media, and no news outlet of record is reporting on it, nor are any public officials in the government commenting on it,” Scheirer said.
Check Your Fact has also contacted the White House for comment and will update this piece accordingly if one is received.