Why Are Trump Supporters Suddenly Freaked Out About Deepfakes?

Right-wing influencers took to social media Tuesday and Wednesday to warn about future deepfakes that could emerge of Donald Trump. And all of the chatter has caused people to become very suspicious about why this is suddenly popping up now.

“BREAKING: THE REGIME IS PRESSING THE DESPERATION BUTTON DEEPFAKES IMMINENT STAY FROSTY,” Jack Posobiec wrote on X Wednesday, referring to the Joe Biden administration, which he calls “the regime.”

Posobiec is the pro-Trump influencer with “extensive ties to white supremacists,” in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who first made his name online by promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. But it’s not just Posobiec who’s warning social media consumers about supposed deepfakes on the horizon. Charlie Kirk, the leader of the pro-Trump group Talking Points USA, also sent out a warning on social media.

“You are about to see insanely desperate stuff from Democrats. Expect fake AI generated crap about Trump coming soon. Stay focused AND VOTE!” Kirk wrote on X Tuesday.

You are about to see insanely desperate stuff from Democrats. Expect fake AI generated crap about Trump coming soon. Stay focused AND VOTE!

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 23, 2024

Trump has a history of calling very real videos and images deepfakes, or “clean-fakes” as he once dubbed them. Back in Dec. 2023 the conservative anti-Trump advocacy group The Lincoln Project released a video of several times when Trump misspoke or otherwise looked like an idiot.

The video included an infamous shot of the former president staring at an eclipse from the White House, really struggling with the word “anonymous” in 2018, and calling the town of Paradise, California, “Pleasure,” among other lowlights.

But Trump insisted the video was created with AI, despite the fact that every single clip in there was unaltered.

“The perverts and losers at the failed and once disbanded Lincoln Project, and others, are using A.l. (Artificial Intelligence) in their Fake television commercials in order to make me look as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden, not an easy thing to do,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time.

This past September Trump also claimed that a photo of him with E. Jean Carroll, the woman he sexually assaulted in the 1990s and to whom he lost a court case after lying about it, might have been made with artificial intelligence. The photo was not made with AI.

Here is Trump falsely claiming that a photo of himself alongside E Jean Carroll could “be AI.”

This was said at his “press conference” where he announced his legal team will appeal his rape conviction.

Donald Trump is a rapist. pic.twitter.com/1Hv5ndfPRQ

— DARKO POLITICS (@darkopolitics) September 6, 2024

There was plenty of talk online about the fact that Trump supporters were freaking out about deepfakes this week, with many people speculating that it’s either the video of Trump allegedly saying the n-word on the set of his TV show “The Apprentice” or that “pee tape” referenced in the Steele Dossier.

“As someone who thinks the pee tape is real and exists, I just want to put a marker down that a last minute ‘damning’ Trump video is like 100x more likely to be him saying the n-word on the set of the apprentice, something we already know for certain a tape at one point existed of,” Michael Tae Sweeney wrote on Bluesky.

Journalist Mark Halperin has suggested this week that he’s been pitched something fake, though didn’t specifically say if he believes it’s just a fake story or if there is some element of AI involved.

“I know of one story that’s been pitched to a major newspaper and to me, and for all I know to many others, that I don’t believe is true,” Halperin said in a video published on Wednesday. “But if it’s true, as I said yesterday, it would end Donald Trump’s campaign, just as if the accusations now thoroughly debunked and attributed by American intelligence to Russia about Tim Walz.”

Walz was the target of a recent disinformation campaign that accused him of sexually assaulting a student, using either an actor or an AI face to make the untrue allegations. In another video, Halperin said the last two weeks of the election cycle will be “filled with things like this.”

Journalist Mark Halperin:

“I’ve been pitched a story about Donald Trump for about a week that if true, it would end his campaign.”

Why’s the media sitting on it?pic.twitter.com/lfEttMCVAy

— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) October 23, 2024

Nobody knows for sure what might be coming, obviously. It might just be a coincidence that multiple right-wing influencers are warning about potential deepfakes to harm Trump. But it’s wild to think about what could be arriving with less than two weeks until Election Day, especially since Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly told The Atlantic and the New York Times on Monday that Trump is a fascist who repeatedly talked about his admiration for Adolf Hitler’s generals during World War II.

It’s entirely possible that a video of Trump talking about Hitler could be released soon. But even if it does, don’t get your hopes up that Trump will lose the election because of it. If we’ve learned anything about Trump supporters, it’s that no amount of evidence will dissuade them from voting for that convicted felon. It’s either “fake news” or they insist it’s completely reasonable for Trump to say he wants generals like Hitler.