On Truth Social, Trump has embraced AI media to attack foes and boost his image

Not long before midnight on Thursday, with the government shutdown underway, President Donald Trump posted a video to Truth Social of himself in the Oval Office appearing to throw one of his red hats onto someone’s head as the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.”

Not long before midnight on Thursday, with the government shutdown underway, President Donald Trump posted a video to Truth Social of himself in the Oval Office appearing to throw one of his red hats onto someone’s head as the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” plays. Trump points and laughs.

The scene was fiction: It was a clearly manipulated video meant to play off a recent meeting between Trump and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Just a few days earlier, Trump had posted an altered video of Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that included fake audio and showed Jeffries in a cartoon sombrero.

Democrats lambasted Trump. His allies laughed.

Love it or hate it, Trump’s embrace of synthetic media has proved effective at drawing attention at a time when meme-infused politics have exploded on social media, with many on the right and some on the left routinely launching barbs in the form of internet-friendly humor. AI videos have begun to enter that world, but few if any politicians are more prolific in posting them than Trump.

Trump’s sharing of generative AI media appears to be picking up speed. He has posted dozens of pieces of synthetic media including AI-generated images and deepfake videos on his Truth Social account since he returned to the White House in January, according to an NBC News review, with about half of those posts coming in the months of August and September. Many if not most of the posts appear to be taken from other people who first posted them on the internet.