A video of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) went viral on Sunday, with the clip appearing to show Beshear slurring his words and stumbling over his sloganeering as though he was drunk. Conservative influencers shared the video all over X and concluded that Beshear had to be imbibing some Kentucky bourbon to be in the state he appeared to be in.
“There will be disagreement. Yes, there will be times when we are very passionate about things,” Beshear says in the video, seeming to roll his eyes up at the ceiling. “We need to understand that other people can be a little different, and that’s OK,” he went on, before the screen-recorded video cuts away.
Beshear, the incumbent governor is up for reelection on Nov. 7 against Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the Republican nominee. Abortion has been a centerpiece of the race, with a 2019 law called the Human Life Protection Act on the books which bans abortion in almost any situation, reported NBC News.
Cuts in the video make it appear to have been edited, and at times there’s a metallic sound often associated with stretching or compressing audio clips, which was pointed out by users on X.
“there is a metallic distortion sound that occurs when you slow a video that you can plainly hear,” said @_bumpus_hound_.
“Playback slowed to .75x,” said @xcor057. “If this video is played at 1.25x he speaks normally.”
The video was shared on X by Steve Guest, a Republican operative who worked for the RNC, Ted Cruz, and in conservative media, according to his LinkedIn profile. Guest is now Director of Engagement for CRC Advisors, a political consulting firm that received tens of millions of dollars from the Concord Fund, a right-wing dark money group that also provided a pro-Cameron PAC with the bulk of its funding this election cycle, reported the American Independent.
“Nice deepfake,” commented @TravisAllen02. “Pretty pathetic you all would stoop to this level.”
“[They don’t] even know what meeting this ‘authentic’ video was from. [They] can’t even say it wasn’t edited,” said @Ari_stotle_.
The episode mirrors the fight over an edited video of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appearing to slur her words that went viral on conservative Facebook pages in 2019, with millions of views and shares by prominent conservative figures like Rudy Giuliani.
The video tested the limits of Meta’s new manipulated policy, put in place to stop deepfakes. Because that video wasn’t a deepfake, but an altered, satirical video, the site allowed the clip to say up.
Some users joked that it wasn’t a big deal even if it was true that Beshear was drunk. “Well, he is the governor of the birthplace of bourbon so cut him some slack,” said @thekennymiller.
Beshear’s press team didn’t respond to a question about whether the video was real or if they had a copy of the original footage.
