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On Sunday, our thoughtful and modest president reposted an artificial intelligence-generated video on his true social site, which mistakenly showed former President Obama being arrested and incarcerated.
Some people think this is humorous. The people inside you find it as troublesome as it is offensive. And the people among you blissfully do not know the true society of spiritual mischief.
Even if you fall into camp, the video will surpass all demographics as expected. Another crazy card stunt in the repetitive cycle of division and diversion makes Groundhog Day look fresh. Who is Epstein?
However, there are three reasons why this particular video (not made by the president, but amplified by thousands) is remarkable and even worth fearing.
First of all, it’s completely racist. In it, Obama is torn from an oval office chair, pressed against her lap, almost bowing and laughing on a Trump. That image is not difficult to interpret. America’s most respected black man — who recently warned us that we are on the verge of losing our democracy — was forced to submit to his leader.
The video alleges that Trump claims that National Intelligence Director Tarsi Gabbard revealed the “unpleasant 2016 conspiracy” that Russia conspired to disrupt the election. Democrats say the claim is at best false.
If you tend to give Trump the bounty of doubt, then just before this scene with Obama forced him to kneel, the Pepe the Frog meme – a symbolic image of far-right and white hegemony – flashes on the screen.
It’s not subtle. But it’s also not the first time racism has come straight from the White House. On Monday, Rev. Amos Brown, a pastor at San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church and a student at Martin Luther King Jr., reminded me too long ago that then-President Woodrow Wilson had screened the pro KKK film “The Birth of a Nation” in Executive Magnotion. It was the first film screening ever held, and its anti-black perspective sparked controversy and protest.
That wasn’t just a part of the truth that Hollywood knows well. Fiction has a great power to stir the heart. Brown sees direct similarities in how Wilson amplifies the fictional anti-blackness, and how Trump is doing so for political gain now.
“Trump should realize that Obama hasn’t done anything to him, but the mere idea, that black people are human, is a threat to him and his supporters,” Brown told me.
Brown said he prays the president “stop this bias” and sees the error in his way. I pray that the great gods will give good luck to the pastors.
But on planes on the ground, Brown said, “The more they change, the more they stay the same.”
Trump has his supporters among people of all colours and ethnicities, but he has also been played in racist ratios for political success, from robbing fear around Central Park 5, known five years ago, known around black immigrants eating cats and dogs in Ohio during the recent election. It’s an old playbook, as it works.
It’s scary to repost Obama’s image on his lap because it reminds us that racism is no longer an undercurrent of our society. It is motivation and the power to act openly. This is how Wilson returned to 1915.
But the differences in media from now to now should spark a second fear about this video. A fictional movie is one thing. AI-generated videos that appear to portray reality for many people are a whole new level of reality.
The fear of deepfakes in politics is nothing new. It’s a global issue, and to be fair, this is not the first time Trump and other politicians have used deepfakes.
Last year, Trump reposted an image of Taylor Swift supporting him (this never happened). Also last year, between the election and the heights of Elon Musk Trump Bromance, the billionaire posted a fake photo of political challenger Kamala Harris dressed in what looked like a communist military uniform.
Trump himself was not immune. In 2023, Eliot Higgins, founder of research outlet BellingCat, said he was messing around with AI tools and created an image of Trump being arrested.
Of course, it did, and millions of people saw these fake photos. At least they assume they are real.
The list of political examples of deepfakes is long and ominous. This brings us to the third reason for the latest use of Trump.
He clearly sees the effectiveness of manipulating race and reality, and is increasing his strength and increasing his agenda.
Obama on his knee strikes a chord that gets too close to the image of Latino Sen. Alex Padilla being taken to the floor by federal authorities during a press conference a few weeks ago. It is surprisingly similar to the thousands of images of migrants who are overthrown and often detained in violent ways, killing us every day.
Videos like Obama are celebrations of normalization, ock ha ha, civil rights and erosion of violence.
There is no innocent or unplanned video about these types of videos. They are political weapons used for purposes.
If repetition blunts our shock, how long does it take for us to be no longer shocked by the real image of a real arrest?
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