There’s seemingly no end to the number of celebrities supposedly hawking diets — through pills or gummies — on Facebook.
PolitiFact has debunked many claims over the years about a wide range of celebrities endorsing these products, including Oprah Winfrey, actor Kevin Costner, Dr. Phil McGraw, country singers Tim McGraw and Miranda Lambert, and former “Shark Tank” contestants.
In a new claim, CNN host Anderson Cooper supposedly interviewed MSNBC host Joy Reid about diet gummies on his show.
A July 21 Facebook post shares a video with a screenshot of Cooper on his show, with an image of Reid inset. “Joy Reid weight loss formula,” read a chyron with smaller text that reads, “Americans are losing weight with NTX Keto.”
In the video, Cooper says, “Joy Reid’s provocative photos of her weight loss results using NTX Keto are all over the internet. Is this true? We decided to ask Joy herself, and this is what she told us.”
The video cuts to Reid, with the logo of her MSNBC show “The Reid Out” in the background.
A link on the Facebook post goes to a fake Joy Reid Facebook post where she supposedly endorses the gummies. That page links to an order page from a company called KetoBites.
We found two other Facebook posts with the same video.
This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
If it seems strange that a cable news show would switch to the set of another cable news show, and that a journalist would then hawk a product on air, that’s because it is.
Another sign that something is amiss in the video is the unnatural look of Cooper and Reid’s mouths, which at times move when no words are coming out, and at times appear blurry and off-center, clear signs of a deepfake video.
A screenshot of Joy Reid in a deepfake Facebook video shows a blurry, off-centered mouth. (Screenshot)
We searched a CNN webpage containing transcripts of “Anderson Cooper 360” and found Reid’s name in none of the show descriptions. Shimrit Sheetrit, a CNN spokesperson, told PolitiFact a Cooper-Reid interview “did not happen.”
And Reid herself debunked the video, writing in a July 23 Facebook post, “Welp… I guess I’ve made it in the world. I’ve been deep faked.”
Reid wrote that she doesn’t take weight loss gummies and hasn’t endorsed them. Her weight loss regimen? She works out twice a week with a coach, who advises her on nutrition.
“What a wild world AI has created,” Reid wrote.
We can add Reid to the list of celebrities who are not hawking diet gummies or other products on Facebook. The claim is Pants on Fire!
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.
