In the last few months a video has been circulated all over the internet showing New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern smoking marijuana through a glass pipe.
The video was shared everywhere including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. Ardern as in the past agreed to the fact that she has consumed cannabis in the past and for many, this video was a confirmation of that.
The videos posted on YouTube and Twitter have thousands of views.
The first video is the frame of Jacinda Ardern at an event organised by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. You can watch the full video here.
Fact-Check:
The video of Ardern doing drugs looked real to us at the first go. We however performed a keyframe search on Google and found the original video posted by a channel called Genuine Fake which is known to make deepfakes of politicians.
This particular deepfake was posted on October 9, 2020.
Since we have now established that this is a deepfake we did some further searches to find the original video on which Ardern’s face was morphed. Upon cropping the face out of the video, we were able to find the original video of Youtuber Kush Evelia who is the original creator of the video. Ardern’s face was morphed onto her body.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of the same videos.
Since the video is clearly a deepfake, this claim too is fake.
