President Trump posted an AI-generated video on Thursday on Truth Social that showed him tossing a “Trump 2028” hat at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
The video depicts Trump, seated behind his desk in the Oval Office, throwing the hat in slow-motion before it lands on Jeffries’s head. The video concludes with Trump pointing and laughing, all while Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.,” perhaps the Trump political campaign’s signature tune, plays in the background.
The president’s post was based on photos previously shared on Truth Social on Tuesday night that showed the Trump meeting with Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).
The photos showed “Trump 2028” hats placed in front of Jeffries and Schumer.
Jeffries previously told CNN that Trump did not hand the hats to him and Schumer, but that they had “just randomly appeared in the middle of the meeting on the desk.”
“It was the strangest thing ever,” Jeffries told the news network. “I just looked at the hat, looked at [Vice President] JD Vance, who was seated to my left, and said, ‘Don’t you got a problem with this?’ and he said, ‘No comment.’ And that was the end of it.”
The Constitution does not allow a president to run for a third term, but Trump has repeatedly flirted with the notion.
AI-generated videos have quickly become a signature of the ongoing shutdown fight.
Before and since the start of the government shutdown, Democratic and Republican leaders have shared AI-generated videos and memes to mock one another.
Trump shared AI-generated videos that depicted Jeffries with an exaggerated handlebar mustache and wearing a sombrero. Jeffries called the the video “racist,” and the video drew condemnation from several Latino advocacy organizations Thursday.
Vance and Johnson defended Trump’s videos, which they said were posted in jest.
Johnson, at a press conference Thursday, brushed off the posts as “games” and “sideshows.”
“Oh, I think it’s funny,” Vance told reporters Wednesday. “The president’s joking, and we’re having a good time.”
In his own take on the sombrero videos, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) posted a video of the Senate’s 44 Democrats all wearing sombreros and mustachioed, with a parody of “Macarena” plays, sung by a Trump-like voice.
