At first, the video looked to be AI: Rory McIlroy holding up a phone in selfie mode leading his victorious Ryder Cup team-mates on a chant of ‘Are you watching Donald Trump?’ from the locker room at Bethpage Black. The words were slightly out of time, the song was definitely out of tune, and it was all a bit slurred given the celebrations at hand.
But on second viewing the 14-second clip appeared genuine enough. AI content, surely, is not yet at the point where it could generate all 12 members of the European team and its captain Luke Donald singing in unison, let alone the little details from Donald lifting up the Ryder Cup to the camera to Matthew Fitzpatrick holding a Gatorade bottle in the background.
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The suspicion, though, came from the source. After a major sporting event like the Ryder Cup, social media feeds become a hive of behind-the-scenes clips and videos from the celebrating team, captured through a lens that is usually soaked in champagne. Late into the night Bethpage Black, the Team Europe accounts went into overdrive, feeding its hungry followers as much Shane Lowry content as possible.
But the video of McIlroy leading a playfully taunting chant towards the US president, after securing a rare victory on American soil, did not come from the Team Europe accounts. Instead, it emerged from Trump himself, posted on his Truth Social account along with the caption, ‘Yes, I’m watching. Congratulations!’
Given the behaviour of the American crowd at Bethpage Black, this was perhaps one of the more magnanimous actions from an American fan this week. Trump, who attended Bethpage Black on Friday, may not have congratulated Joe Biden when he finally conceded the presidential election in 2021, but he was more gracious when it came to sporting competition.
Or he appeared to have been gracious, at least. After all, Trump has a history of posting AI-generated content, from ‘Trump Gaza’, to literally the day after the Ryder Cup as he targeted Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer over reports of a government shutdown.
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But it turns out that this was real, with McIlroy behind it all. After receiving a text from Trump after Europe survived a frantic comeback from the hosts to win the Ryder Cup, McIlroy picked up a chant that had been sung by the European fans on the stands around the 18th green where Lowry had drained the winning putt. “Are you watching Donald Trump?” they sang.
Trump appeared at the Ryder Cup on Friday (AFP or licensors)
“The story is that we were in the dressing room and Rory got a text from the president while we were in there,” Europe’s captain Donald revealed. “Rory read it out to us and he was like, ‘Let’s do a video of us doing the funny chant the fans have been doing and send it back to him’.
“We read it out and thought [we’d have] a little bit banter [with him],” Donald added to the BBC. “He seemed to take it in good spirits.”
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That was the idea, anyway. McIlroy perhaps had not anticipated that Trump would take that playful bit of banter and send it out to the world. Trolling the US president would appear to be a bold move, unless you’re the Masters champion.
