Did Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak at length about a cure for diabetes on the Joe Rogan podcast? No, that's not true: While this video footage originated from episode #1999 of the "Joe Rogan Experience," a fake audio track mimicking Kennedy's distinctive voice has been added. The topic of diabetes did come up, but the podcast transcript does not match what's said in this deepfake promotional effort.
The video appeared in a sponsored post (archived here) published by the Facebook page "Wellness Tips Archive" on January 19, 2025. The post is captioned:
BREAKING: January 2025 Study RevealsThe REAL Cause of Diabetes!Watch now and discover how to reverse it in just 14 days!
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Jan 20 19:36:07 2025 UTC)
The scope of this fact check is not the medical claim regarding how to "escape diabetes for good," it is the question of whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made this promotional video talking about a lemon-based diabetes cure -- which he did not.
Kennedy was a guest on episode #1999 (archived here) of the "Joe Rogan Experience," posted on YouTube on June 27, 2024. Lead Stories pasted the transcript of the entire 3:05:35 hours of the show into a searchable document to compare what was actually said to what the fake Kennedy voice says.
The AI-generated audio track in the Facebook ad begins:
If I were to die tomorrow, I'd want every diabetic including you to know this. It sounds crazy but give me 60 seconds to explain. Well, everything you thought you knew about diabetes is 100 percent wrong. Your diabetic weight and numb limbs have nothing to do with how many donuts or cookies you eat.
Lead Stories searched for the phrases, "die tomorrow" and "thought you knew" in the podcast transcript and they do not appear. The word diabetes does appear three times in the podcast, together, at the same point after the 1:07:47 hour mark. Kennedy says:
If you're my age and you're listening to this you know and I know you got a younger demographic but you will remember that you didn't know anybody who looked like this when you were you know in school we didn't know kids who had diabetes. We didn't know kids would were had epi pens. The autoimmune diseases like diabetes, juvenile diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Crohn's disease, all of this stuff suddenly appeared. I didn't know any of these diseases when I was a kid.
The Wellness Tips Archive Facebook page only has 50 likes and 164 followers, the contact info appears to have been filled out by a random means, [email protected] and http://jhgtf.com/ (which is not functional). The page transparency report says the page manager is in Ukraine and the page is running ads (pictured below). The ad's caption reads:
How to Become Diabetes Free in 14 Days?
Yes, It's Possible
Watch Now to Know the Real Cause of Diabetes Revealed in January 2025
(Source: Meta ad library screenshot taken on Mon Jan 20 22:36:45 2025 UTC)
Each ad features a "Learn More" button that directs to the website fullslawnmowers.com. The website employs a method to hide the deceptive page called cloaking, the archived page for fullslawnmowers.com, here, contains nothing about a diabetes treatment and instead displays a blog post about "20 Ways to be Healthy." This webpage has a fake "CNN Health" logo at the top of the page and fake CNN Medical News copyright information at the bottom of the page (both pictured in the composite image below).
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with fullslawnmowers.com screenshots taken on Mon Jan 20 22:44:45 2025 UTC)
Lead Stories submitted the video to be analyzed by the verification tools at TrueMedia.org (archived here) and the verdict was that there was "substantial evidence of manipulation" due to semantic inconsistencies.
Although unable to identify the specific AI voice generator that was used to make this fake voice, a Google search (archived here) for "RFK AI generated voice" shows Kennedy's voice offered in the menu of several AI voice-generating websites such as ParrotAI and Jammable (archived here).
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims to cure diabetes can be found here and here.
