Donald Trump mocks Hakeem Jeffries again
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday shared another AI-generated video targeting House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, just hours before a federal government shutdown, further underscoring the political divide in Washington.The latest clip, posted on Trump’s Truth Social account, showed footage from Jeffries’ MSNBC interview condemning an earlier fake video. In the altered version, Trump once again added a digitally imposed mustache and sombrero to Jeffries, with mariachi music playing in the background. The video features four depictions of the president playing mariachi music as Jeffries speaks. It came a day after Trump had first circulated an AI-altered video of Jeffries and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer outside the White House. That clip depicted Jeffries in a sombrero and exaggerated moustache while mariachi music played, while Schumer was digitally altered with fabricated audio falsely portraying him as attacking Democrats as unpopular, saying ‘Not even Black people want to vote for us anymore,’ and mocking them over ‘woke, trans bulls**t’. Jeffries denounced the video as “bigotry” and a “disgusting” attack, saying in an MSNBC interview that it was a distraction from governing. At a House Democratic press conference Tuesday, Jeffries challenged Trump directly, “Mr President, the next time you have something to say about me, don’t cop out through a racist and fake AI video. Say it to my face”. Later, speaking again on MSNBC, he added, “We need from the president of the United States an individual who actually is focused on doing his job, as opposed to engaging in racist or bigoted stereotypes designed to try to distract or throw us off as Democrats from what we need to do on behalf of the American people”.The deepfake controversy comes amid stalled negotiations over a government-funding bill, which failed the midnight deadline and led to a government shutdown, first time since 2019.Despite a White House meeting between Trump, Jeffries, Schumer, Senate majority leader John Thune, and house speaker Mike Johnson, both sides remain deeply divided, particularly over health care policies tied to migrant benefits.
