Does a real soldier appear in uniform in the "Troops Against Trump" video, asking "I swore an oath to defend the constitution...What happened to us?" No that's not true: The video is the production of a social media account that labels itself a satire producer. In addition to the account's disclosure that it uses AI to produce videos, there are several visual clues that the video is not real.
The video appeared in a July 23 Instagram post (archived here) on the 8secondthings account, captioned "Troops Against Trump - What Happened To Us?". It opened:
I swore an oath to defend the United States Constitution. I watched friends die for democracy. Now I watch you worship a fucking pedophile con man who thinks he's a king. What happened to us?
Here's what the opening frames of the video looked like on Instagram at the time this fact check was written:
(Image source: Screenshot by Lead Stories of post at www.instagram.com/8secondthings.)
The 8secondthings account's transparency page describes itself as an Artist account, creating AI satire:
In addition to that disclosure, Lead Stories observed common shortcomings of some generative AI image-making: mangled text. In both the Instagram and TikTok (archived here) versions of the video, the letters on the name tape above the soldier's breast pocket are gibberish more like a license plate code, not a name. The second character isn't even an English alphabet letter and there's one vowel among seven consonants:
(Image source: Screenshot by Lead Stories of post at www.instagram.com/8secondthings.)
Videos of soldiers in uniform making partisan political statements are rare because doing so is both a violation of Department of Defense rules (archived here) and, in some cases, a violation of federal law that may result in termination of employment.
