WASHINGTON — In early November, a wave of videos spread across Facebook and Instagram appearing to show President Donald Trump announcing an imminent 90-day blackout of the United States' power grid. The clips look convincing at first glance. The announcement never happened.

The Claim

The videos, pushed by accounts including Shythechosen, Derrick Speaks, Josh Smith and Aug Crypto, present Trump as telling Americans that the country's power grid will go dark for 90 days. Some versions pair the supposed announcement with promotions for cryptocurrency tokens, urging viewers to buy before the blackout hits. The claim has travelled fast because it is built on a grain of truth: the Pentagon really did launch a programme in September with the word 90 days attached to it. But the programme is about military bases, not about switching off the civilian grid, and Trump announced no blackout at all.

What the Videos Actually Are

There is no record of Trump making any such announcement — no White House statement, no press conference, no briefing, and no credible news report of one. The footage in the viral clips comes from genuine clips of Trump speaking at the Lincoln Memorial, but the original audio has been completely replaced. The lip movements and the voice are AI-generated, creating a deepfake in which the president appears to say words he never uttered. An independent fact-check published on November 10, 2026, confirmed the clips are fabricated and found no evidence of any impending nationwide power failure. The cryptocurrency tokens promoted alongside the videos are part of a coordinated financial scam, not a warning about the grid.

The Real Programme Behind the Confusion

The grain of truth is FORTRESS — Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy, Supply, and Survivability — a Pentagon initiative announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on September 30, 2026, in a speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, where he signed a formal memo establishing the programme. Its aim is to make major American military installations generate their own power and operate independently of the civilian grid, so that the Pentagon's recent military posture is not hostage to a grid failure or an attack on civilian infrastructure.

The 90-day figure comes from a different place. On October 25, 2026, Fox News Digital reported, citing internal planning documents, that major bases in the lower 48 states would be required to sustain power, water, fuel and communications on their own for at least 90 days. Fact-checkers at Snopes reviewed the claim on October 26 and found the programme itself is real, but the 90-day standard appears in no public Pentagon paper: the September 30 memo and its five pillars set a goal of power independence for major bases without naming any number of days, and Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell has not confirmed the 90-day requirement publicly. In other words, even the real 90-day figure concerns military bases keeping the lights on for themselves — the opposite of a blackout imposed on the public.

Why the Claim Spread

The blackout deepfake is the latest in a wave of AI-generated Trump videos that followed the November 3 midterm elections, in which Democrats retook both houses of Congress. Within days, separate viral clips falsely showed Trump destroying his office with a baseball bat after the Republican defeat — debunked by The Quint and Newschecker after detection tools traced the footage to an AI parody account — and fake images showed him being carried out of the White House after fainting, debunked by Full Fact on November 5. Each fabrication exploits a real moment of political tension and dresses it up as footage. The blackout version adds a financial motive, steering frightened viewers toward crypto tokens.

Our Finding

The claim is False. President Trump never announced a 90-day blackout of the United States' power grid. The viral videos are AI-generated deepfakes built on genuine Lincoln Memorial footage with a cloned voice and altered lip movements. The real programme they twist — the Pentagon's FORTRESS initiative, announced by Secretary Hegseth on September 30, 2026 — is designed to keep military bases running independently of the civilian grid, and the 90-day figure reported by Fox News Digital on October 25 concerns those bases sustaining themselves, not a blackout for the public. Readers who see the clips should not share them, and should treat any cryptocurrency promoted alongside them as a scam.