An old video of the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen laughing has been given false Chinese subtitles, which quote her mocking Taiwan’s leadership. The correction of the false subtitles was made by the global news agency AFP on 26 March 2024, but the video has been circulating online since it was published on TikTok on 11 March 2024. In reality the PM is laughing about an unfortunate deal to buy circus animals and she does not mention Taiwan in her speech.
According to the subtitles in traditional Chinese, she calls president-elect of Taiwan Lai Ching-te “not very smart”. The subtitles claim the Danish PM says Taiwan is a “very good country”, “very rich” and that “it would solve our financial problems, we will receive a lot of money, we just need to declare we love Taiwan”. Mette Frederiksen then begins to giggle and the other members of parliament are heard laughing.
The current video of the Danish Prime Minister is from 2019 and was originally posted by the Danish broadcasting network DR with the title “Mette Frederiksen burst out laughing during the opening parliament debate”.
She talks about an incident, where the state ended up buying a camel alongside the four elephants, which were the initial deal. One of the four elephants called Ramboline apparently had a camel called Ali as her best friend. The state was informed, that it would be cruel to separate the two. She starts laughing before revealing, that they found out Ali and Ramboline were not really “best friends” and therefore it was probably not the best deal.
Afterwards she jokingly makes the remark, that she was worried the right-wing political party “Nye Borgerlige” would pull out of the deal, when they found out the camel was named Ali.
The video included a disclaimer in which it states the video is only for entertainment purposes, but nonetheless the video has been spread widely on both TikTok and Facebook. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark has also posted a statement on the fake subtitles on its official Facebook page on 13 March. They call the video out for spreading “maliciously harmful disinformation.”
Source: AFP Fact Check
