Trump or chat bot? Right-wing hosts seemingly fooled by prank caller claiming to be ex-president

A pair of broadcasters on the fringe-right channel Real America's Voice may have been fooled by a prank caller claiming to be Donald Trump.

John Solomon, a former Fox News contributor whose reporting inadvertently played a key role in Trump's first impeachment, hyped an "exclusive" phone interview with the former president on the low-rated channel, but viewers and social media users immediately suspected something was wrong when they viewed clips of the 17-minute conversation, reported The Daily Beast.

“This is not the company values that the American people tune in for,” said network owner Robert J. Sigg. “This is a major oversight by John and Amanda both. Our news directors will need to go through additional training about journalism practice and how to present the facts and truth to the American people.”

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Sigg told The Daily Beast the caller sounded like an artificial intelligence tool to him, as many social media users agreed, and he called for an internal investigation to determine whether his hosts were tricked -- but Solomon insists the ex-president was indeed on the other end of the call, which was plagued with technical glitches.

“It’s not AI, it was President Trump,” Solomon said. “You can call the staff and check with them yourself. It was definitely President Trump without any doubt.”

Solomon disputed the network's owner's suspicions about an artificial intelligence bot and claims he set up the interview with Trump's staff and discussed topics they would cover in advance.

Trump's campaign did not return a request for comment before The Daily Beast published its report, but the former president on early Friday morning posted a portion of the interview where whoever -- or whatever -- Solomon was speaking to speculated that health or age-related issues would prevent "crooked Joe Biden" from running for re-election.