President Trump late Tuesday mocked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) with a second AI video, after a similar video was widely criticized by Democrats and other observers as racist.
In the new fake video on Truth Social Tuesday night, Trump again showed Jeffries, who is Black, with a sombrero and an exaggerated handlebar mustache, as mariachi music played over the Democratic leaders’ MSNBC interview. The second one was posted just a little before the government shut down at midnight.
Jeffries had slammed the first video posted by Trump, calling it racist and challenging Trump to make his attacks in person.
A White House meeting on Monday to discuss the impending shutdown was the first time Jeffries and Trump had been together at a business meeting.
The new video from Trump and his team indicates they are brushing off the accusations of bigotry. It opens of Jeffries criticizing the previous one.
“It’s a disgusting video and we’re going to continue to make clear bigotry will get you nowhere,” Jeffries said before four AI-versions of Trump appear behind him playing mariachi music. The Trumps in the videos are all wearing sombreros. A second later, a fake mustache and sombrero is added to Jeffries.
“We are fighting to protect the health care of the American people in the face of an unprecedented Republican assault,” Jeffries continues while the music plays.
The allusions to Mexican culture in the deep fakes are designed to highlight claims from Trump and the GOP that Democrats are demanding federal benefits for migrants without legal status as a condition to keeping the government open.
Trump insisted Tuesday that Democrats want to give health care to immigrants who are in the country illegally, though their only demands were centered on an extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act benefits to U.S. citizens that are set to expire at year’s end.
After Trump met with Jeffries and other congressional leaders at the White House on Monday, he said Jeffries was “a very nice gentleman who I didn’t really know.”
The federal government shut down for the first time in six years early Wednesday morning, after both parties blocked spending bills from the other. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought issued a memo directing agencies to begin executing their plans for an “orderly shutdown.”
