A widely circulating video of Lara Trump singing was manipulated to sound wildly off-key
Lara Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2023, Friday, March 3, 2023, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md. Social media users are sharing a manipulated video of Trump singing to make it appear as if she was singing wildly off-key. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
CLAIM: Video shows Lara Trump singing an off-key cover of “I Won’t Back Down” during an appearance on Sky News Australia.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: Altered video. The clip’s audio was edited to make it appear as if Trump was singing very off-key. The original footage published on the news network’s YouTube channel shows Trump’s actual vocals, and the user who posted the manipulated version on social media subsequently acknowledged he had changed it with audio-editing software.
THE FACTS: Former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law recently released a cover of late rock musician Tom Petty’s 1989 song “I Won’t Back Down” and was asked to sing a few bars in an appearance last week on Sky News Australia.
In recent days, a clip that appears to show Trump then singing the song’s opening lines wildly off-key has circulated widely on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, where the original post received more than 9,000 likes as of Friday.
“Lara Trump sings her new original single ‘Won’t Back Down’ (which totally wasn’t stolen from Tom Petty) live on air… it goes about as well as you’d expect,” reads the post.
However, this video has been edited to change Trump’s vocals. The full segment posted on Sky News Australia’s YouTube channel last Friday shows Trump was not singing wildly out of tune, as the widespread video on social media suggests.
The original poster on X acknowledged in several subsequent posts that he had changed the vocals from the original using Melodyne, an audio editing tool. He did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
The original Sky video also shows Trump acknowledging the tune was a rendition of Petty’s song.
Sky News Australia’s caption on the YouTube reads: “The Right View host Lara Trump says she’s not a professional singer but has recorded a cover of Tom Petty’s ‘I Won’t Back Down.’”
Donald Trump has previously played the original song in a campaign rally, prompting a cease-and-desist order from Petty’s estate.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
