A video of former United States President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump advising against complying with lockdowns and vaccine mandates intended to address any new variant that might disrupt the 2024 US presidential election is being widely shared across social media platforms (here, here, here, and here). The claims accompanying the video suggest that Trump is referring to the recent Mpox outbreak, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a public health emergency of international concern. In this article, let’s fact-check the claims made in the post.
Claim: A video of Trump warning about potential election fraud in the upcoming 2024 U.S. presidential election, claiming that a resurgence of lockdowns and mandates to combat the spread of Mpox could be used as a tactic.
Fact: This viral video dates back to August 2023 and is unrelated to the 2024 Mpox outbreak. This video shows Trump opposing a resurgence of lockdowns and mandates amid the spread of a new COVID-19 variant in the US during August 2023. Hence the claim made in the post is Misleading.
Upon carefully reviewing the entire video, we can see that at no point in his speech did Trump mention Mpox. To learn more about this viral video, we conducted a Google reverse image search using keyframes from the video. This search led us to the same video shared on Donald Trump’s official Instagram page on 31 August 2023, with the caption: “COVID Tyrants want to take away our Freedom. Hear my words—WE WILL NOT COMPLY!”. The viral video was also posted on Truth Social, a social media platform, by former US President Donald Trump on 31 August 2023, with a similar caption. From this, it is clear that the viral video is nearly a year old and completely unrelated to the recent spread of Mpox cases (here, here).
Further search led us to multiple news reports (here, here, here) about this video, published in August 2023. According to these reports, several hospitals, colleges, and institutions in the United States reintroduced mask requirements for staff and visitors in August 2023 to limit the spread of new coronavirus variants, EG.5 and BA.2.86 (here, here). Following this, Trump released the video, urging the people of the United States to stand firmly against the resurgence of mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and lockdowns. He alleged that the sudden alarm over new COVID-19 variants in the US was intended to manipulate the upcoming elections. From this information, it is clear that in the viral video, Trump was talking about the new variant of COVID-19 that was spreading in the US in August 2023.
Mpox or Monkeypox is an infectious disease characterized by a painful rash, fever, and swollen lymph nodes. More details about Mpox can be seen here, here, and here. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended replacing the term “monkeypox” with “Mpox” in 2022 due to concerns about “racist and stigmatizing language online.”
On 14 August 2024, the WHO declared the increasing spread of Mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) in Africa a global health emergency after a new variant of the virus was identified. Since the current outbreak began in January 2023, more than 27,000 cases have been reported, and 1,100 people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo (here). The highly contagious disease has now spread beyond the continent, with cases emerging in Sweden and Pakistan. The Philippines reported its first case on 19 August 2024. The Government of India has said that the risk of a large outbreak of Mpox is low in India as of date.
To sum up, an old video of Trump talking about COVID-19 is being shared linking to the 2024 Mpox outbreak.
