A viral video of a man escorted from a Delta Airlines flight supposedly for speaking in Arabic is the work of Adam Saleh, a popular YouTube prankster with a history of admittedly fake videos and intentionally provocative antics on airplanes.
Saleh claimed that he was kicked off a Delta Airlines flight at Heathrow airport in London, England as twenty people supposedly complained about him speaking Arabic on the flight on a phone call with his mother.
Saleh has previously admitting to faking at least two videos on his YouTube channel, which boasts 1.6 million followers. where he mainly posts videos of him performing pranks and publicity stunts. In 2014, he admitted that a video supposedly illustrating real-life “Islamophobia” from a New York police officer was a “dramatization.” Just last week, an Australian airport and Tigerair proved Saleh falsely claimed to have boarded a plane and survived a flight while hidden inside a checked bag.
In another video Saleh and his friend dress in traditional Arab clothing and speak Arabic loudly on a plane, seemingly in an attempt to provoke a reaction from passengers. He also loudly counts down from 10 to 0 in Arabic in another video, filming the reactions of other passengers on the plane as he does so.
It didn’t take long for social media users to call Saleh out on his claims that he was racially profiled for speaking Arabic:
https://twitter.com/Communism_Kills/status/811598906194796545
Former CNN host Soledad O’Brien posted to Twitter that she had a friend that was actually present on the flight who disputes Saleh’s claims of racism and stated that another passenger alerted flight staff to Saleh’s history of YouTube pranks:
A LOT still unclear. But apparently woman sitting near my friend tipped off flight attendants he was a youtube star known for pranks.
— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) December 21, 2016
Furthermore, some are now disputing Saleh’s claim that he spoke Arabic on a call to his mother:
Also people on plane disputing call to mom
— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) December 21, 2016
Despite these claims, Saleh’s manager told BuzzFeed News that despite his previous fake videos, Slaeh’s claim of profiling for the use of Arabic on the flight is “as real as it gets.”
After posting his video, Saleh tagged his next tweet #BoycottDelta. The hashtag became a Twitter trend, even as Saleh’s story came under scrutiny.
However, the trend eventually disappeared from the social platform Wednesday evening. Some users noted that it happened soon after Saleh’s critics discovered a tweet from 2013 claiming now-convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dhokar Tsarnaev was innocent.
https://twitter.com/omgAdamSaleh/status/326899440910749696
https://twitter.com/nia4_trump/status/811704085321629700
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart Tech covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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