The Dictatorship
Trump’s fake Truth Social videos are creating a world untethered from reality
Franklin Roosevelt mastered the use of radio. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were top of the game on TV. And Donald Trump is the first AI slop president.
Since January, Trump’s administration has used artificial intelligence to churn out a steady stream of fake images on social media, from alligators in ICE hats to crying members of Congress,while the official White House account on X has used it to portray the president as Superman, the pope and a villain from “Star Wars.”
Earlier this week, Trump used his account on his personal social media platform, Truth Social, to share an AI-generated clip showing former President Barack Obama being forcibly detained by the FBI. As bizarre as it was, it fit in with his other nonsensical memes, which included various Democrats in orange prison jumpsuits as the “Shady Bunch” and a fake-looking video of a woman in a bikini catching a snake with her bare hands.
There’s a term for someone using social media this way that can’t be repeated in polite company, so let’s just call it slop-posting. It’s usually done by a 14-year-old boy, or someone who still acts like one, and it’s mostly just absurd or mildly offensive. It’s not harmless, necessarily, but it’s mostly just lame trolling.
But when the president does it, it’s something else entirely. Even in the most harmless AI-generated memes, Trump is muddying the waters on what is real, encouraging his supporters to believe everything and nothing. Did a woman in a bikini really catch a snake? Is Obama really going to be arrested? To a Trump supporter steeped in these memes, the answer may not even matter.
The president is supposed to be the ultimate consumer of facts, not a producer of falsehoods.
Still, reality matters. The White House is supposed to be the command center of a vast machinery of intelligence agents, analysts and military strategists who come together every day to figure out what is really happening in the world so that the president can make an informed decision. The president is supposed to be the ultimate consumer of facts, not a producer of falsehoods.
That isn’t always the case, of course. Presidents have lied or cited false evidence in the past, but they paid a price. It became a huge scandal when the president said that a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin was attackedthat he did not know anything about a break-in at the Watergatethat he did not have sexual relations with that woman or that Iraq sought yellowcake uranium.
A sitting president posting a falsified video of a former president would have been a much bigger deal just a few years ago, but at this point, we are all so tired. Trump has made it his mission to blame everyone else for the problems he’s created, going so far Tuesday as to accuse Obama of “treason” and continuing to push the conspiracy that the left rigged the past two elections.
Obama, who typically tries to remain above the fray, even came out against this latest shock, stating through a spokesperson that while his office normally ignores the “constant nonsense and misinformation” coming from the Trump White House, the “bizarre allegations” of election-rigging are “ridiculous” and a “weak attempt at distraction.”
Outside of the United States, fake images have long been a tool of autocratic governments. In the then-Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin had photographs retouched to remove his political rivals, make himself look more attractive and make his crowds seem larger than they were. In more modern times, North Korea’s Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un have photoshopped out their blemishes and tweaked their PR appearances to boost their reputations.
Not every use of altered media was nefarious. According to the Walt Disney Archivesthe company’s namesake never wanted to be photographed with a cigarette in his hand, although he was a prolific smoker who ended up dying of lung cancer. Over the years, the company he helped create systematically removed cigarettes from old photos of Walt Disney to avoid encouraging children to take up the habit.
These efforts used to take weeks. These days, Marvel can casually insert the Red Guardian into archival video of a Soviet parade in an afternoon. What was once a painstaking tool of an authoritarian government is now a quick CGI moment of comic relief. The technology is becoming cheaper, easier to use and more realistic every day.
Not that long ago, the best AI could do was a bizarro version of Will Smith eating spaghetti.
Not that long ago, the best AI could do was a bizarro version of Will Smith eating spaghetti. Now, the only clues a video is fake are its awkward handling of fingers or flubbed lettering. Those problems will be solved soon enough.
There are two risks. One is that malevolent forces disseminate a fake video that is widely believed, leading to real-world consequences. (Wars have been launched on far less believable evidence than you can see routinely on social media these days.) The other is that people stop believing video entirely. The next time video leaks of prisoners of war being tortured or a presidential candidate bragging about committing sexual assaultmany Americans may just shrug and say it’s fake.
The world that Trump is helping create is one in which you can’t trust anyone, facts are fungible and the truth is whatever your political side says it is. That world helps people in power; it only hurts the rest of us.
Steven Asarch
Steven Asarch is a perpetually online digital culture writer who has written for Business Insider and Rolling Stone, among other outlets.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifawere sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer. Prosecutors have called the shooting an act of terrorism.
One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.
The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Songreceived the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”
“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.
The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.
Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a targetof the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.
The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.
Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.
“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”
Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.
“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”
Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.
Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.
“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”
Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.
Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”
Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.
“She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.
Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.
Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.
Critics warn the case could have a wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.
Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 peoplewith impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdownin Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.
The Dictatorship
Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her ‘guru’
About a month into Donald Trump’s second term, Senate Republicans weighed whether to confirm one of the president’s worst nominees. Indeed, the list of reasons to reject Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for director of national intelligence was not short.
The former congresswoman lacked the requisite experience in intelligence matters. She had an indefensible habit of echoing Russian propaganda. She struggled to explain her record of defending Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. Senators heard from former national security officials who issued unsubtle warnings about elevating Gabbard to an important and influential position.
But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not overlook the fact that Gabbard was a member of a secretive Hare Krishna offshoot religious sect that is considered by many of its former members to be an abusive cult.
Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her “guru,” is just bigotry against her faith.
But it’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.
After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbard’s secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler.
The memos, starting in 2013, when the Hawaiian first arrived on Capitol Hill, reflect a dynamic in which Gabbard didn’t just take direction from the materials, but essentially took dictation from the alleged cult leader: Memos told Gabbard what she should do as a member of Congress, and she often did exactly that, sometimes word for word.
The Post’s Jon Swaine spent months trying to get Gabbard to respond to questions, but to no avail. Her spokeswoman reportedly encouraged Swaine to drop the story, saying, “I cannot imagine WaPo’s readers would be interested in yet another uncredible, bigoted attack on the DNI’s faith.”
On May 20, Swaine nevertheless alerted the DNI and top members of her staff to the fact that the Post was prepared to publish his reporting anyway on her association with Butler.
On May 22, Fox News reported that Gabbard was leaving the administration, ostensibly because of a health issue involving her husband.
This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:
There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it’s true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. … We need answers.
The New York Democrat’s comments made sense, though it’s worth considering who, exactly, “we need answers” from.
It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but I’m also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.
In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbard’s nomination, 52 Senate Republicans — every GOP member except Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nation’s DNI, including so-called “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
In the lead-up to the Iran war, President Donald Trump dismissed the possibility that Tehran would close the Strait of Hormuz despite warnings from his top military adviser, authors of a new book told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday.
In their first televised interview about “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan said Trump also disregarded warnings from Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the potential effects on American weaponry and about casualties.
The initial closure of the strait, a narrow passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, led to a spike in gas and oil prices. According to Swan, Trump thought Iran would have limited time to take action because the war would be over quickly — a claim he has made repeatedly during the nearly four-month-long war.
“He felt that this regime was a paper tiger, that this was going to be a fast war,” Swan said on “The Last Word.” “He just said he felt that that was going to be the case, that they were going to collapse very quickly.”
“It’s a form of magical thinking, actually, is what it all boils down to,” he added.
The revelation is just one of several in the book — which is based on more than 1,000 interviews — that illustrate how Trump repeatedly bases geopolitical decisions on his own whims rather than experts’ assessments.
Another example of such thinking was when Trump floated a plan to expel 2 million Palestinians from Gaza so he could turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Haberman and Swan wrote in the book that one senior aide characterized the idea as “legitimately nutso … but very on-brand.”
Haberman also spoke about “how scared” people were inside the White House ahead of last year’s so-called Liberation Daywhen Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs. (The Supreme Court struck down those tariffs in February.)
“They were scared at how close the bond markets came to just completely melting down seven days later, which was finally what got him [Trump] off of it, but again, it was the willingness to just go straight to the brink” that was jarring, Haberman said.
Despite such fear among Trump’s staff, Haberman added, the White House makes up “a group of people who genuinely want to see him succeed.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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