On Sunday, President Donald Trump reposted an AI-generated TikTok video to his Truth Social Platform, depicting former President Barack Obama being arrested. The approximately 40-second video seems to be manipulated footage from a November 2016 meeting between then-President Obama and Donald Trump.
The video begins with a compilation of real footage of Democratic leaders, including former President Obama and former President Joe Biden, repeating the phrase, “no one is above the law.” The video shows President Trump sitting in the White House’s Oval Office, smiling and laughing while FBI officers handcuff former President Obama, pushing him into a kneeling position. The video is set to the song, “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People, and ends with more AI-generated footage of Obama pacing around a jail cell in an orange jumpsuit.
Another notable factor of the video posted to President Trump’s social media platform is the appearance of “Pepe the Frog,” a symbol that the Anti-Defamation League added to its list of hate symbols in 2016. The meme has become a politicized symbol for Trump’s audience, after President Trump posted a “Trumpified” version in 2015.
Know Your Meme Editor Brad Kim told The New York Times in 2016, “Pepe plugged into the ideology of the alt-right because it was a reaction against the people they call ‘normies.’ Pepe had been a symbol of the disenfranchised, social outcasts. It was Trump’s natural audience.” The inclusion of a figure that promotes bigotry and hate is unsurprising given President Trump’s often populist, nationalist rhetoric that has so energized the alt-right.
The hyper-realistic video has sparked outrage, with commenters online calling President Trump’s actions “deeply irresponsible” and warning that “dangerous misinformation” could be spread as the use of deepfakes increases without accountability. Former President Obama has yet to respond to the video.
The video comes days after the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, claimed that Obama officials “manufactured intelligence” in a report that found Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election. The announcement and subsequent report by the Director of National Intelligence comes as the latest in a series of attempts to undermine critics of the Trump administration.
On Friday, Tulsi Gabbard declassified several documents and released a press statement outlining alleged information that “details a treasonous conspiracy by officials at the highest levels of the Obama White House to subvert the will of the American people and try to usurp the President [sic] from fulfilling his mandate.”
The Obama administration’s assessment of the 2016 election found that while Russian hackers probed election systems to see if it was possible to change vote outcomes, and extracted voter registration in at least two states, they did not find that Russian hackers actually manipulated votes, in line with multiple other intelligence reports and Senate Investigations.
Despite this, Tulsi Gabbard claimed last week that she would be turning over the evidence to the Justice Department for possible criminal referrals. President Trump’s posting of such a deplorable video seems to be a definitive attempt to distract the public from his administration’s mishandling of the Epstein files, and his alleged birthday letter to sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, which have divided MAGA supporters.
