Recently we debunked the fake story about American Vice President JD Vance supposedly meeting Ukrainian protesters and telling them to go back to Ukraine and join the Armed Forces. Pro-Russian channels keep coming up with new ideas for fakes about JD Vance.
This time, they spread a fragment of a famous American show. The topic was Ukrainian refugees attacking the US vice president and his three-year-old daughter—after discussing the situation, the host of CBS, Stephen Colbert, supposedly called them “homeless, jobless beggars.” So, let’s get into the debunking of that one.
What happened?
On March 15, Russian sources spread a clip of a video with a host of the American show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where Ukrainian refugees were supposedly called “homeless, jobless beggars.”
Telegram authors that often spread Russian propaganda like Ukropskyi fresh “Укропский Фреш,” archive), Odessa for love (“Одесса zа победу,” archive), New Melitopol (“Новый Мелитополь,” archive) also shared the “news.”
“In the evening show of Stephen Colbert on CBS, Ukrainian refugees were called ‘homeless, jobless beggars.’ That happened after Ukrainians attacked Vance with his daughter,” Telegram authors wrote. “Ukrainian refugees attacked the vice president of America, the country that, for years, fed these homeless, jobless beggars.”
Analysis
First, we’ve looked into what happened to vice president of the USA, JD Vance—an event described as “the attack of Ukrainian refugees on Vance and his daughter.”
On March 8, JD Vance published (archive) a post on X that said the following:
“Today while walking my 3 year old daughter a group of “Slava Ukraini” protesters followed us around and shouted as my daughter grew increasingly anxious and scared.
I decided to speak with the protesters in the hopes that I could trade a few minutes of conversation for them leaving my toddler alone. (Nearly all of them agreed.)
It was a mostly respectful conversation, but if you’re chasing a 3-year-old as part of a political protest, you’re a shit person.”
As of March 21, the post collected over 52 million views.
A video of JD Vance meeting pro-Ukraine protesters was published (archive) on the next day, on March 8, by CNN. Journalists said the meeting was approved (by authorities) and was held in Cincinnati, Ohio.
“Cellphone video captured Vice President JD Vance being approached by pro-Ukrainian protesters in Cincinnati, Ohio, while out with his 3-year-old daughter. One of the protesters told CNN they were “extremely upset” with Vance’s subsequent post on X about that encounter.”
Both the video and JD Vance’s post on X say nothing about protesters being Ukrainian refugees.
For the next step, we analyzed the video with a clip of a talk show that was shared on pro-Russian Telegram channels.
It has three parts:
- The host in the studio says that the audience is going to see a funny video right now
- A clip of DJ Vance with protesters is shown, and then a voiceover calls Ukrainian refugees “beggars.”
- A host is shown again—he urges (the audience) not to laugh
We found a full version of this evening talk show (archive) — The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — that was used in a fake. The episode was released on April 16, 2024—over a year before Donald Trump was reelected as American president and JD Vance became vice-president in his administration.
In reality, the host talks about a criminal case against Trump that started in New York and jokingly asks the audience not to clap if they want to be accepted as a jury.
We noted that the voice of the host and the voice that’s used in the voiceover are different, so we suspected that the voice was AI-generated. We used the tool called DeepFake-o-Meter and confirmed that the background voice was indeed from an AI.
So, neither Stephen Colbert nor JD Vance called Ukrainian refugees “homeless beggars” — and the discussion about “Ukrainian refugees attacking” JD Vance also didn’t happen. In fact, there isn’t any evidence that pro-Ukraine protesters in the CNN video are Ukrainian refugees.
One of the prominent Russian narratives is discrediting Ukrainian refugees abroad—this fake is a good example of that, made by a combination of AI tools, accessible video from the internet, twisted-up real statements by politicians, and imagination.
Conclusion: Fake
Author: Vasylyna Haviak
Read more
- No, JD Vance didn’t urge Ukrainians who “protested against peace deal” to join Ukraine’s army
- No, Macron didn’t show map of Ukraine upside down during live Q&A
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