Video of Ron DeSantis dropping out of the U.S. presidential race is a deepfake

Context

A deepfake of Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis announcing he is dropping out of the U.S. 2024 presidential race is circulating on social media. 

The video appears to show DeSantis, sitting at a desk, saying, “After the last week’s events, including my poor performance at the debate as well as President Trump rejoining X, I’ve realized I need to drop out of this race immediately.” In the video, DeSantis goes on to express his support for former president Donald Trump, calling him “the greatest president of my lifetime.”

The video is a deepfake made by social media meme-makers. However, it is being shared on social media without this context. 

In fact

The video of DeSantis contains a watermark at the bottom, reading, “LEAHMEMES, C3PMEME, RAMBLE RANTS” – all names of X (formerly Twitter) users with a history of making memes regarding, among other things, U.S. politics. 

The video was originally uploaded to the X and YouTube accounts of C3PMeme on September 1, 2023, on Twitter with the caption, “What Ron DeSantis should say but won't... #deepfake” and on YouTube with the description, “A deepfake of what Ron DeSantis might say if he dropped out of the race (which he should)” and hashtagged #deepfake. 

The footage used for the deepfake seems to have been taken from a virtual press conference that DeSantis held with local New England media on August 15, 2023. 

Polls show DeSantis trailing former president Donald Trump by a considerable margin in the Republican primaries. The Republican party will vote to elect its presidential candidate during the first half of 2024, with the general election to be held in November of that year. 

Logically Facts has contacted DeSantis’ campaign for comment. 

The verdict 

At the time of publishing, Ron DeSantis has not dropped out of the Republican primaries. The video is a deepfake made by social media users with a history of making memes about U.S. politics. Therefore, we have marked this video as fake.