Associated Incidents
Claim:
Videos authentically show conservative political columnist George Will speaking about U.S. President Donald Trump's administration and the Supreme Court in late December 2025.
Rating:
Fake
In late December 2025, online users discussed a series of YouTube videos allegedly showing conservative political columnist George Will commenting on fresh matters concerning U.S. President Donald Trump's administration and Supreme Court rulings.
Without specifying a particular video, a Snopes reader emailed, "George Will from the Washington Post reports a decision by SCOTUS for a 72-hour compliance by Trump to produce financial documents. The subpoena was apparently under seal."
That reader's email led us to search and find numerous YouTube videos supposedly depicting Will providing fresh thoughts about Trump and the high court. For example, one of the most-viewed videos (archived) was titled "BREAKING NOW: Trump's Financial Records Trapped by Supreme Court --- 72 Hours or Jail." The clip's thumbnail image depicted Trump in handcuffs, echoing the title's reference to jail time.
The video's text description read, in part:
In this breaking update, we explain the Supreme Court ruling that has stripped Donald Trump of any remaining legal cover. After a year-long sealed legal battle kept completely out of public view, the Court has ordered Trump to hand over critical financial records, internal communications, and sensitive documents within a strict seventy-two-hour deadline.
[...]
Will Trump comply, or will he defy the Supreme Court and risk jail? Either way, what he has been hiding is about to come out.
In short, this video and others like it were fake and generated with deepfake artificial-intelligence tools, as were some pictures of Trump featured in YouTube thumbnail images. Users fabricated the rumor about the 72-hour deadline and jail time.
According to Will's own Facebook, Instagram and X accounts, as well as a list of his Washington Post columns and the Internet Archive's TV News Archive, he did not provide any such commentary online or on TV news appearances between late December 2025 and Jan. 2, 2026.
Snopes contacted The Post to ask whether the publication or Will wished to comment and will update this article if we receive further information. The two YouTube channels prominently referenced in this article did not feature any contact details.
The fake videos circulated following Dec. 23 --- the day news broke of the Supreme Court declining, by a 6-3 vote, the Trump administration's emergency request to overturn a ruling blocking the deployment of National Guard troops in the Chicago area.
How users created the George Will deepfakes
Using deepfake AI technology, users manipulated genuine interview clips of Will to alter his mouth movements and vocals. Some of the videos displayed an "altered or synthetic content" label creators enabled during the YouTube upload process, as well as disclaimers near the bottom of the clips' text descriptions --- disclaimers viewers may have missed, as they were visible only for users who expanded the text to display in full.
For example, one YouTube video title read, "The Supreme Court's 'Hidden Warning' to Donald Trump | George Will." A user managing the LivingGolden (@LivingGolden60) YouTube channel (archived) uploaded the clip (archived) on Dec. 27. The thumbnail image displayed a diamond-shaped watermark indicating the user chose a Google AI tool to generate the fake Trump photo.
The user who created the fake video downloaded or screen-captured a genuine interview clip of Will appearing on the MLB Network TV channel in March 2025, then used an AI tool to manipulate his mouth movements and audio to read from a lengthy script. That script also contained signs of AI, including, for example, overdramatic phrasing commonly found in AI-generated text.
Other popular videos promoting inauthentic Will commentary appeared on YouTube channels named Capitol Transparency Watch, George Will Analysis, TwoNation News, Mind to George and Voices of Freedom. Some of the same, or similar, videos appeared on Facebook and TikTok.
A YouTube channel named Inside the Capitol also featured numerous deepfake AI videos with MS NOW host Rachel Maddow supposedly commenting about various political matters.
For further reading, we previously reported whether a video truly showed former President Barack Obama saying Trump was dying.