Did Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. testify before Congress that "China is putting gay chemicals in the vapes, coupled with fruity pina colada flavoring agents"? No, that's not true: The video uses generative AI to imitate Kennedy's voice and mouth movements, but it ends with a screen of text that says it is a deepfake. The account on which the video was posted describes itself as "Mostly satire. I make videos".
Though the video shows Kennedy in a congressional hearing room, Lead Stories found no evidence-based reporting of what would be a major story if the Secretary of Health & Human Services, who is globally famous and the subject of daily news stories by broadcast, digital and print newsrooms, had said those things.
The video appeared with a May 20, 2025 post on X.com (archived here) on the @MaverickDarby account under the title "The Chinese are putting WHAT in the vapes? Is RFK even allowed to say this? Unreal." The audio opened:
China is putting gay chemicals in the vapes, um, coupled with fruity piña colada flavoring agents. Many nicotine in this country are on the business end of an all-out circus of predatory endocrine warfare. Life isn't meant to be a strawberry margarita sideshow ..."
Here's what the post looked like on X at the time this fact check was written:
(Source: X.com screenshot by Lead Stories.)
The video ends with a black screen on which large white text reads:
The is a deepfake, quite obviously.
but let people dream
The @MaverickDarby account also pre-warned readers with a nine-word bio that begins: "Mostly satire."
(Source: X.com screenshot by Lead Stories.)
To cross-check the satire labelling by the account, Lead Stories used the search terms "RFK AND gay chemicals AND vape" in the GoogleNews.com search engine, which indexes thousands of news sites. There were no items found using that search string (archived here).
Lead Stories submitted the video for analysis by the University of Buffalo's Media Forensics Lab, where its AI detectors found evidence indicating up to a 95% likelihood the video was created by generative AI. Here's a screenshot of the DeepFake-O-Meter report (archived here):
(Source: Zinc.cse.buffalo.edu/ubmdfl screenshot by Lead Stories.)
More Lead Stories fact checks about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. can be found here.
