Does a real video show the Saudi foreign minister stating that "the era of relying on the US has ended"? No, that's not true: According to three translation tools, the caption fabricated the content of the video it claimed to summarize. In reality, the clip showed Faisal bin Farhan discussing in 2022 Saudi Arabia's cooperation with the West and the East in broad terms. He did not even mention Donald Trump, who was not president at that time, in the short clip widely shared on social media four years later.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here and here) published on X on April 14, 2026. It opened:
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan: 'The era of relying on the US has ended. How can Trump protect us when he cannot even protect his own country?'
The post included a 51-second clip of bin Farhan speaking Arabic. This is what the thumbnail from the video looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @gbx_press on X.)
Lead Stories used Whisper AI to transcribe the clip. According to the tool, bin Farhan said the following:
يعني، المملكة العربية السعودية، وحسب ما أعلم، أغلب كل الدول العربية لا تضع سياساتها بناءً على مصالح الآخرين، تضع سياساتها بناءً على مصالحها هي. وسوف نتابع مصالحنا، وسوف نصيغ، نستمر في صياغة سياساتنا بناءً على تلك المصالح، بغض النظر عن وجهات النظر.
وسوف نبقى في نفس الوقت منفتحين للحوار مع جميع شركائنا، غربًا وشرقًا، لضمان أن يكون هناك تفهم كامل لما نقوم به، وليكون هناك سعي لتحقيق أيضًا هذه المنافع المشتركة. المنافع المشتركة ليست فقط لنا مع الصين، لكن لنا مع أمريكا، لنا مع غيرنا. فنحن نسعى خلف مصالحنا، ومصالحنا نجدها في الغرب ونجدها في الشرق، وأينما وجدناها سوف نعمل على تحقيقها.
As translated by Whisper AI to English, that meant:
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as far as I know, and most Arab countries, do not base their policies on the interests of others. They base their policies on their own interests. We will pursue our interests, and we will continue to formulate our policies based on those interests, regardless of other viewpoints.
At the same time, we will remain open to dialogue with all our partners, both West and East, to ensure a full understanding of what we are doing, and to strive to achieve these common benefits as well. Common benefits are not only for us with China, but also for us with America, and for us with others. So we pursue our interests, and we find our interests in the West and in the East, and wherever we find them, we will work to achieve them.
This is how Google Translate translated the same fragment:
That is to say--and as far as I know, this applies to the vast majority of Arab nations--Saudi Arabia does not formulate its policies based on the interests of others; rather, it bases them on its own interests. We will continue to pursue our interests, and we will persist in formulating our policies based on those interests, regardless of differing viewpoints. At the same time, we will remain open to dialogue with all our partners--both in the West and the East--to ensure a full understanding of our actions and to foster a collective effort to realize these mutual benefits. These mutual benefits are not limited to our relationship with China; they extend to our ties with the United States, as well as with others. We pursue our own interests--interests which we find in the West just as we do in the East--and wherever those interests lie, we will work to achieve them.
And this is the translation from DeepL:
I mean, Saudi Arabia--and as far as I know, most Arab countries--does not base its policies on the interests of others; it bases its policies on its own interests. We will pursue our interests, and we will continue to formulate our policies based on those interests, regardless of other points of view.
At the same time, we will remain open to dialogue with all our partners, in the West and the East, to ensure there is a full understanding of what we are doing, and to ensure that we also strive to achieve these mutual benefits. These shared benefits are not only with China, but also with the United States and with others. We pursue our interests, and we find them in the West and in the East; wherever we find them, we will work to achieve them.
None of the three automatic translation tools mentioned the words attributed to bin Farhan in the video's caption.
Lead Stories found a longer recording of bin Farhan's speech. It was published on YouTube (archived here) by an Egypt-based TV channel, Extra News (archived here), which broadcasts in Arabic. The date of the upload was Dec. 9, 2022. At the time, Donald Trump hadn't become president of the United States for the second time (archived here); Joe Biden held the office (archived here and here).
(Image source: YouTube.)
As automatically translated to English by Chrome's automatic translation feature, the full version of the video was published under the following caption:
Press conference at the conclusion of the Arab-Chinese and Gulf-Chinese summits, December 9, 2022.
Lead Stories used Whisper AI to produce another version of the transcript and corresponding translation, which can be found here. According to it, the fragment reused in the viral post on X began at the 00:38:19 mark. In the 2022 version of the video, it still contained no words from the post on X:
And I do not mean that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and as far as I know, all Arab countries do not set their policies based on the interests of others, they set their policies based on their own interests. And we will pursue our interests, and we will continue to formulate our policies based on those interests, regardless of viewpoints. And we will remain at the same time open to dialogue with all our partners, West and East, to ensure that there is a full understanding of what we are doing, and to strive to achieve these common interests as well. Common interests are not only for us with China, but for us with America, for us with others. So we pursue our interests, and we find our interests in the West and we find them in the East, and wherever we find them, we will work to achieve them.
A little longer quote from the YouTube automatically-created transcript translated to English by Chrome did not include the words in question, either:
As I mentioned, the partnership with China is of paramount importance, and its primary importance lies in its being a crucial partner for Saudi Arabia. Most Arab countries have not had China as their primary trading partner. Therefore, building a strong relationship and a network of shared benefits must be a top priority for us. This does not only apply to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but, as far as I know, to all countries. We will pursue our interests and formulate our course of action based on those interests, regardless of differing viewpoints. At the same time, we will maintain dialogue with all our partners, both in the West and the East, to ensure a full understanding of our actions and a willingness to achieve these shared benefits. These benefits are not only for us with China, but also for America. We pursue our interests, and we find them in the West and in the East, and wherever we find them, we will prevail.
Had bin Farhan said what social media claimed he did in the official capacity (archived here), that would have likely been mentioned in news reports. However, as of this writing, a search on Google News (archived here) showed no such articles.
Lead Stories also manually browsed the statements and news sections (archived here and here) on the website of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but found no corroborating evidence to support the claim reviewed in this fact check.
