Was That Video Of Trump Shooting His Political Foes In The Face Doctored? An In-Depth Analysis

A video of Trump shooting various news oulets and other political foes in the face was shared at a Trump resort. 

But was the footage real, or doctored? That’s the question, and we got our best video analysts on the case right away.

The first clue that this footage might have been altered is this shot:

Appears to be a regular church sign, right? Nope. The text is clearly overlaid on the sign. It’s too saturated and bright and does not blend in well with the surrounding shot. Furthermore, we googled and could not find a “Church of Fake News” anywhere in the United States, Canada, or Mexico, suggesting that this is possibly a satirical take on Trump’s liberal use of the word “Fake News.”

Let’s take a look at this side-by-side comparison shot next:

In the real image on the left, if you look closely, you can see that Donald Trump is just standing there. In the image on the right, however, you can see that the footage has been digitally altered to show Trump shooting news outlets in the face. If you enhance the image, you can clearly see that Trump’s neck is a little bit out of alignment with the body of the actor from the original footage. 

Our verdict? Doctored footage.

Here’s another part of the video that appears to have been altered:

Seems to be real at first blush. But let’s take a closer look.

Our video experts quickly recognized this as a fake. Trump’s neck is not properly aligned once again. Furthermore, his Calypso Orange skin tone does not match the paler skin tone of the source image, providing more evidence that this footage was tampered with.

But the real smoking gun here is the gentleman with the Vice News logo for a face. At first glance, it appears his head was actually surgically removed and that he had the logo implanted on his neck. But further review appears to prove that this was all doctored in post. You can tell because the face appears to only move in two dimensions, as though someone just downloaded the Vice News logo from Google images and added it to the footage using Windows Movie Maker.

Pretty conclusive. But let’s look at one more frame just to be sure.

We know what you’re thinking: “Wow, did President Trump really hurl Obama through a pulpit? If so, he should be impeached.” 

We thought the same thing, but then we took a closer look:

Yep, you’ve been duped. There are some classic signs of a hack video editing job here: first off, the skin tone once again does not match. Second, his head appears to be tweaked approximately 135 degrees, which medical experts assure us is an impossibility. Finally, you can tell from the pixels that the editor left in the shot around Obama’s head: a clear sign of having been altered.

What’s the lesson here? Be careful when you see a meme video on the internet. It’s quite likely that it’s been doctored.

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