Altered Pelosi video draws Congress to manipulated media
A video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, slowed so her words sounded slurred, spread online in May 2019. YouTube removed it; Facebook kept it up but showed it to fewer people. President Trump tweeted a different edited clip. The House Intelligence Committee held a hearing on deepfakes.
Why it mattered Lawmakers and platforms began treating manipulated video as a policy problem of its own, ahead of the 2020 United States election.
Corrections
-
2026-09-07 - This entry originally said the video was “slowed to make her sound impaired,” spread “on Facebook and Twitter after a 22 May 2019 speech,” was “shared by President Trump,” and that “YouTube took it down; Facebook limited its reach and left it up.” Neither cited source supports the slowing mechanism, the exact speech date, Trump sharing the video, or any YouTube action; both describe only Facebook’s decision to leave an edited video up. The summary now states only what the cited sources confirm, and YouTube and Twitter have been removed from
orgs. -
2026-09-13: Added the missing publication date (2019-06-13) for the PBS NewsHour source.
-
2026-09-14 - The 2026-09-07 correction removed facts that the sources cited then did not cover. CNN’s report of 23 May 2019, now cited, confirms that the video was slowed, that YouTube removed it and that Facebook showed it to fewer people, so those facts are restored. The same report shows that President Trump tweeted a different edited clip rather than the slowed video, and the entry now says so. YouTube is listed again among the organizations.