Donald Trump’s AI posting habit reared its ugly head again Monday amid a looming government shutdown in the form of a racist video featuring top Democratic leaders.
The president posted the deepfake clip showing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaking to reporters alongside House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is wearing a sombrero and has a mustache. The Truth Social video was posted just hours after he hosted the pair at an Oval Office meeting.
“Look, guys, there’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nobody likes Democrats anymore. We have no voters left because of all of our woke, trans bull---,” Schumer’s likeness says as mariachi music plays in the background.
“Not even Black people want to vote for us anymore. Even Latinos hate us. So we need new voters, and if we give all these illegal aliens free healthcare, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us,” he goes on. “They can’t even speak English, so they won’t realize we’re just a bunch of woke pieces of s--t, you know? At least for a while, until they learn English and they realize they hate us too.”
The video comes a few days after the president posted—and then deleted—another AI video of himself promoting a non-existent product called “medbeds.”
Schumer soon responded on X, saying, “If you think your shutdown is a joke, it just proves what we all know: You can’t negotiate. You can only throw tantrums.”
Jeffries went a different route. “Bigotry will get you nowhere. Cancel the Cuts. Lower the Cost. Save Healthcare. We are NOT backing down,” he wrote on X, before posting a photo of Trump with one-time pal and future sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“This is real,” he wrote.
Earlier in the day, Schumer, Jeffries, Vice President JD Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune had all offered statements following a joint meeting that afternoon on the potential shutdown. The meeting ended with little movement on the issue and both sides blaming each other. Trump’s AI post was the first time he had weighed in publicly.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
Later, on CNN, The Source anchor Kaitlan Collins wondered what kind of message the video sent.
Chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju replied that Trump seemed to be firmly on board with what Republicans angling for.
“Democrats actually had thought coming out of that meeting that Trump was actually receptive to some of their ideas, including to extend those expiring subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, those that expire at the end of the year,” Raju said. “That‘s been part of the Democratic demand. Chuck Schumer said that he thought there was ‘real division’ between Trump and the Republican leaders who have rejected those demands.”
“But that video there shows very clearly Donald Trump‘s head is,” Raju added. “He is very much in line with the Republican position, which is to reject these Democratic demands, not just on the expiring subsidies, but also to reverse those Medicaid cuts...and provisions to constrain Trump’s ability to cut federal spending without the consent of Congress.”
During a panel discussion, California Rep. Ro Khanna said Trump’s AI video should be “condemned.”
“We have to understand how abnormal this is,” he said. “You don’t mock someone and put a video out about how they look. You don’t ever mock people’s ethnicity. How do you negotiate with that? And how have we made this normal?”
