Video deceptively edited to make it appear Michael Moore expressed support for Trump
FILE - In this May 16, 2016 file photo, Michael Moore attends the 20th Annual Webby Awards at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. Social media users are falsely claiming that a clip from Moore’s 2016 film “Michael Moore in TrumpLand” shows the documentarian supporting former President Donald Trump. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File)
CLAIM: A video shows liberal filmmaker Michael Moore supporting former President Donald Trump in 2024.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The video is from Moore’s 2016 film “Michael Moore in TrumpLand,” released weeks before that year’s presidential election. It has been trimmed to make it seem as though the documentarian is backing then-Republican candidate Trump. In a longer excerpt from the same monologue, Moore argues that people will regret voting for Trump when they find out he “wasn’t going to do a damn thing for them.”
THE FACTS: After Trump scored a record-setting win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, the edited clip was shared on social media to falsely claim Moore recently expressed support for the frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“Who did NOT have this on their bingo card for 2024?? #holdtheline,” reads the caption on one Instagram post sharing the clip. Text on the video itself reads: “Michael Moore Supporting Trump.”
In the video, Moore explains why people love Trump. He cites a threat the then-candidate made during his 2016 campaign to the Big 3 automakers, telling them if they moved plants to Mexico he would put a 35% tax on every Mexican-made car sold in the U.S. He uses this as an example of what Trump says to appeal to “every beaten down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class.”
But cut from the clip is what Moore says later in his monologue, comparing would-be Trump voters to people in the U.K. who voted to leave the European Union in a 2016 referendum and now regret it.
“So when the rightfully angry people of Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin find out after a few months in office that President Trump wasn’t going to do a damn thing for them, it’ll be too late to do anything about it,” Moore says in a longer excerpt from the film on his YouTube channel. “But I get it, you wanted to send a message. You had righteous anger. And justifiable anger. Well, message sent. Goodnight America, you’ve just elected the last president of the United States.”
“Michael Moore in TrumpLand” features the documentarian speaking on stage in Wilmington, Ohio, a hotbed of support from Trump, about the then-nominee and his opponent, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
Moore has famously liberal views and has spoken out against Trump on many other occasions. For example, he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in August that “it’s time 2 ensure this mobster FINALLY faces Justice” and called Trump the “HUGEST LOSER EVER” in a 2021 post.
A representative for Moore did not respond to a request for comment on the recent false claims.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
