Bernice King criticizes deepfake video of MLK Jr. supporting Trump

Bernice Kingyoungest child of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.strongly condemned the fake video of her father that went viral after it was shared by supporters of the former president. Donald Trump in the last days before the elections.

Apparently, the video was originally posted back in February by an account on the platform formerly known as Twitter that describes itself as part of the “Dilley Meme Crew: Trump’s Online War Machine.”

“If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would support President Trump,” tweeted the @ramble_rants account, along with a nearly three-minute video that showed MLK criticizing Democrats and urging the audience to support Trump.

“We have been told over and over again that we cannot vote for a man who has done more for the black community than any other president,” the fake king says, imitating the voice of the slain civil rights leader, at the beginning of the video. “If the black dares to support Donald Trump, the Democrat will always be able to call this man Uncle Tom, the home black man or even worse.”

On Sunday, the video was reposted by another pro-Trump account called @MAGAResource, along with a similar caption claiming it reflected what MLK would say “if he could speak today.”

According to data provided in a tweet by @ramble_rants, the original post of the video received about 70,000 views, but the post shared by @MAGAResource became much more viral, receiving over 10.2 million views at the time of publication.

Unsurprisingly, the video received many highly critical responses condemning both the use of deepfake videos in general, and especially the use of technology to fake support for MLK in particular.

Bernice King, who was just 5 years old when her father was killed in Memphis in 1968, had harsh words about the video in a post Monday.

“Delete this,” she wrote. “This is vile, false, irresponsible and completely inconsistent with what my father would say. But you didn’t think about our family.”

More than five hours after Bernice King’s post, the video remains running, although a community note was attached to the @MAGAResource tweet saying the video “is a deepfake/digitally altered and may be misleading” and that King asked for it to be taken down.

Meanwhile, another one appeared in the @ramble_rants account tweet about the video, linking to a viral @MAGAResource post and urging followers to “please vote down this community nonsense as meaningless and unnecessary.” Brenden Dilleywho tweets under the username @WarlordDilley as another member of this “Dilley meme crew,” was also unrepentant, boasting about the millions of views the video received and mocking King for criticizing the appropriation of her slain father’s image.

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