A CNN host sought to deflect blame for broadcasting a truly filthy AI-generated video by reminding viewers just whose social media escapades had made the clip newsworthy.
“I just have to warn our Sunday morning viewers here, this the president of the United States posting this,” network mainstay Manu Raju said Sunday morning before playing the clip, which features a computer-rendered, crowned version of Donald Trump flying a fighter jet that proceeds to dump mounds of feces over crowds of protesters.
Trump had indeed himself posted the video to Truth Social, later also shared on X by the official White House account, the evening before. The post was shared in response to more than 2,600 “No Kings” demonstrations across the country and at U.S. embassies around the world. The protests were organized by opponents of what critics describe as the Trump administration’s accelerating slide into authoritarianism.
The president insisted on Friday he’s “not a king,” despite a history of referring to himself as such and sharing images of himself as a monarch.
Saturday’s demonstrations, estimated to have attracted more than seven million people, clearly got under the president’s skin. It prompted not only that evening’s filthy AI clip but nine other videos in quick succession, including a fan edit of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, footage of National Guard troops in Memphis, and a video originally posted by Vice President JD Vance that shows Trump with a crown and sword.
After playing the fighter jet clip with the caveat the network was only “showing his response” to the rallies, Raju went on to ask network White House correspondent Alayna Treene what she made of the president’s social media response to the protests.
“Every time he posts a video like this… it’s obviously not the first time he’s shown some crazy AI video online… every time you think it can’t get weirder, and then it does,” she replied.
Treene is correct. Since assuming the presidency for the second time earlier this year, the 79-year-old president has shared computer-generated videos and images of himself as an Apocalypse Now character laying waste to Chicago, of Democratic officials as mariachi band musicians, and of Office for Management and Budget chief Russell Vought swinging a scythe against Washington D.C, to name but a few.
“The president‘s very unhappy. And the fact that he‘s sharing this video as his way of responding,” Treene went on. “I mean, I don‘t really know what to say about it. It‘s crazy how I‘m always shocked by some of these videos. And then more and more, you‘re like, all right, the White House, they‘re sharing this on the official White House account.”
