Sharing fake videos should be beneath the office of the presidency | Opinion

I’m looking at an AI-generated video that explains the insanity of the moment.

In it, there’s an image of an AI-generated Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dressed in a gray suit and gray tie, topped with an AI-generated sombrero and mustache. Standing next to him is an AI-generated Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Look guys. There’s no way to sugarcoat it,” the fake Schumer says. “Nobody likes Democrats anymore. We have no voters left because of all of our woke trans bulls---. Not even Black people want to vote for us anymore. Even Latinos hate us.

“So we need new voters,” the fake Schumer continues. “And if we give all these illegal aliens free health care, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us. They can’t even speak English, so they won’t realize we’re just a bunch of woke pieces of s---, you know, at least for a while until they learn English and they realize they hate us, too.”

The leader of the free world shared this fake video with his tens of millions of followers on social media Sunday evening, hours before he stood in front of high-ranking U.S. military leaders to deliver a rambling partisan message. The president of the most powerful nation on Earth thought it a good idea to spread this fake video. The man who has the authority to launch nuclear weapons found time to revel in a fake video that’s too cartoonish for simple-minded 12-year-old boys.

Online defenders of President Donald Trump were quick to do what they do, explain it away as though it were just a joke, just Trump being Trump.

No. It’s embarrassing. It should be beneath the office he’s been granted the privilege to occupy.

It’s maddening that we’ve allowed this to become the new norm.

That wasn’t the only idiotic video the commander-in-chief has decided to circulate recently.

In July, he used his enormous social media platform to spread a fake video about former President Barack Obama being arrested and placed in handcuffs in the Oval Office. Last month, he shared then deleted another fake video, of a fake Fox News broadcast touting fake-magical medical beds that can regrow people’s limbs and cure cancer.

“Every American will soon receive their own medbed card,” the fake Trump said in the video. “With it, you’ll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctors in the nation, equipped with the most advanced technology in the world.

“These facilities are safe, modern and designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength. This is the beginning of a new era in American healthcare.”

The irony should not be lost on anyone that Trump is doing this as he puts healthcare access for millions of Americans at risk by cutting Medicaid funding to make way for tax cuts primarily for the wealthy, and as the government entered a shutdown Wednesday. The real Jeffries and the real Schumer have been trying to force Republicans to restore Medicaid funding and healthcare subsidies. Trump has said no while threatening more mass firings of U.S. government workers.

The government shut down as the Gaza conflict rages despite Trump’s new plan to bring “eternal peace in the Middle East,” as YouTube becomes the latest media outlet to cave to Trump’s demands with a $24.5 million settlement, and as the president celebrates the Department of Justice indicting a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on bogus charges.

Close to home, South Carolina lawmakers are considering a new bill to ban nearly all abortions and North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein is being pressured to sign a wide-ranging crime bill that may make it harder for wrongly-charged defendants to prove their innocence and may not prevent the killings like the train stabbing of Iryna Zarutska that sparked it.

There are so many serious things going on, it is hard to keep up. But none of that should distract us from Trump’s daily indignities.

It’s as though we are living in Bizarro World with an AI-generated president who, unfortunately, is all too real.

Issac J. Bailey is a McClatchy opinion writer in North Carolina and South Carolina.