Right-wing influencers turned to social media on Tuesday and Wednesday to warn of the future deepfakes that may appear of Donald Trump. All this chatter has made people extremely skeptical about the sudden appearance of these deepfakes now.
Jack Posobiec wrote on Wednesday X, referring to Joe Biden’s administration, which he calls “the regime”: “Breaking: The regime is hitting the despair button, and deepfakes will remain imminent.”
Posobiec is a Trump-supporting influencer with “extensive ties to white supremacists,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, who first made a name for himself online by promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. But Posobiec is not alone in warning social media users about the supposed impending deepfakes. Charlie Kirk, leader of the pro-Trump group Talking Points USA, also sent a warning on social media.
“You are about to see frantic desperation by the Democrats. We expect a fake foolishness created by AI about Trump soon. Stay focused and vote!” Kirk wrote on Tuesday X.
You are about to see frantic desperation by the Democrats. We expect a fake foolishness created by AI about Trump soon. Stay focused and vote!
– Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 23, 2024
Trump has a history of describing very real videos and images as fake, or “completely fake” as he once called them. Once again in December 2023, the anti-Trump conservative advocacy group The Lincoln Project released a video several times when Trump misspoke or seemed foolish.
The video included a reputation-damaging clip of the former president staring at a solar eclipse from the White House, struggling with the word “anonymous” in 2018, and dubbing the city of Paradise, California, “Pleasure,” among other highlights.
But Trump insisted that the video was produced using artificial intelligence, even though none of the clips in it were altered.
“The losers and rascals of the failed Lincoln Project, and others, are using AI in their fake TV ads to make me look bad and pathetic like the con man Joe Biden, it’s not easy to do,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time.
Also in September, Trump claimed that the photo taken of him with E. Jean Carroll, the woman he sexually assaulted in the 90s and who lost a lawsuit against him after lying about it, may have been taken using artificial intelligence. The photo was not taken using AI.
Here’s Trump falsely claiming the photo he took of himself with E Jean Carroll could be “AI-generated”.
This came during his “press conference” where he announced his legal team would appeal his rape conviction.
Donald Trump is a rapist. pic.twitter.com/1Hv5ndfPRQ
– Dark Politics (@darkopolitics) Sept 6, 2024
There has been a lot of online talk about Trump supporters being horrified about deepfake this week, with many people expecting either a video of Trump saying the “n” word on the set of his TV show “The Apprentice” or that “urination tape” referred to in the Steele dossier to surface.
“As someone who believes the urination tape is real and exists, I just want to point out that the ‘damn’ video of Trump at the last minute is likely the one saying the ‘n’ word on The Apprentice set, 100 times more. ‘We already know for sure the tape exists at some point,’ Michael Trace Swinney wrote on Bluesky.
Journalist Mark Halperin suggested this week that he was shown something fake, although he didn’t specifically mention whether he believed it was just a fake story or if there were some elements of AI involved.
Halperin said in a video published on Wednesday: “I know of one story that has been promoted to a major newspaper and to me, and to all I know of that many others, that I don’t believe is true.” And he added: “But if it is true, as I said yesterday, it will end Donald Trump’s campaign, just as if the US intelligence community now fully exposed the charges and attributed them to Russia regarding Tim Walz.”
Walz was the target of a recent disinformation campaign that accused him of sexually assaulting a student, using a representative or an AI-generated face to make these false claims. In another video, Halperin said that the last two weeks of the election cycle will be “full of things like this.”
The journalist Mark Halperin:
“A story about Donald Trump has been promoted for about a week, and if true, it will end his campaign.”
Why isn’t the media covering it?pic.com/lfEttMCVAy
– Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) October 23, 2024
No one knows for sure what may come, obviously. It may be just coincidental that many right-wing influencers are warning of the potential use of deepfakes against Trump. But it’s strange to think about what could happen less than two weeks before Election Day, especially as former top Trump aide John Kelly told The Atlantic and The New York Times on Monday that Trump fascist repeatedly talked about his admiration for generals like Adolf Hitler during World War II.
It’s entirely possible that a video of Trump speaking about Hitler could be released soon. But even if that were to happen, don’t count on Trump losing the election because of it. If we’ve learned anything about Trump’s supporters, it’s that no amount of evidence will deter them from voting for this convicted criminal. It’s either “fake news” or they insist it’s entirely reasonable for Trump to say he wants generals like Hitler.
