While the Trump administration has proven no hesitation to bash Canada – particularly after the US males’s Olympic hockey crew won gold in extra time – one of many gamers took subject with a current AI-generated TikTok posted by the White House that made it sound like he was trash-talking Canadians.
“They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple-syrup-eating-f**ks a lesson,” Team USA’s Brady Tkachuk appears to say within the video posted on the White House TikTok earlier this week. A disclaimer on the backside of the video notes that it “contains AI-generated media,” with the clip showing to switch footage from one among Tkachuk’s press conferences.
While Tkachuk received gold on the US males’s Olympic hockey crew – beating Canada 2-1 – he performs professionally on a Canadian-based National Hockey League crew, as captain of the Ottawa Senators.
But no matter animosity the White House directed towards Canada was not shared by the player himself, who advised reporters on Thursday that he didn’t condone the video.
“It’s clearly fake, because it’s not my voice and not my lips moving,” Tkachuk mentioned. “I’m not in control of any of those accounts and, uh, yeah so, I know that those words would never come out of my mouth, so can’t do anything about it.”
Pressed, if he appreciated the video, Tkachuk mentioned, “I would never say that. That’s not who I am, so yeah, I guess I don’t like that video.”
“If you watch the video, that’s not my voice and something that I never say, and I don’t really know how that, kind of, took a storm on its own when I play here and give everything I have here,” Tkachuk mentioned. “That’s something that – never a thought would happen in my head, and especially would never say it.”
“I would never say anything like that,” he added.
Four different gamers on the US males’s Olympic hockey crew additionally play for Canada-based groups.
NCS has reached to the White House for touch upon Tkachuk’s remarks and the video itself.
Commenting on Trump’s prior taunts to make Canada the 51st US state, Tkachuk advised reporters, “I know I don’t want that, because I still want to play in the best-on-best tournaments.”
The TikTok is simply the most recent instance of the White House mocking Canada because it promotes Team USA’s win and subsequent go to to Washington on social media.
On Monday, Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself enjoying hockey in a go well with and purple tie, throwing one Canadian player down on the ice and beating up one other. Below the video was an outdated social media publish from former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom Trump sometimes called “Governor,” which mentioned, “You can’t take our country – and you can’t take our game.”
The video ends with the AI-generated USA gamers hugging him.
Trump’s feedback in regards to the US girls’s Olympic hockey crew, which additionally received gold towards Canada within the Olympics, additionally sparked controversy this week.
“I must tell you, we’re gonna have to bring the women’s team — you do know that,” Trump mentioned over a speakerphone held by FBI Director Kash Patel, when inviting the boys’s crew to the White House and his State of the Union Address. If he didn’t invite them, Trump mentioned, “I do believe I probably would be impeached,”
The captain for the US girls’s Olympic hockey crew known as Trump’s feedback a “distasteful” joke. The girls’s crew declined to attend the State of the Union handle, citing scheduling points.
It’s additionally not the primary time the White House has gotten in sizzling water for an AI-generated video. Just weeks in the past, Trump posted a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and first woman Michelle Obama as apes, which he blamed on a staffer who didn’t watch it throughout. While the White House usually doubles down when criticized, the video was deleted after widespread bipartisan backlash, together with pushback from the one Black GOP senator, Tim Scott.