President Donald Trump is facing blowback for a Truth Social post earlier this week promoting an AI-generated video promoting a conspiracy theory linked to the QAnon movement — but when asked about it, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt spun it as a good thing.
In her view, according to The Daily Beast, it just shows that Trump speaks his mind, a strong leadership quality.
“I think the president saw the video, posted it, and took it down, and he has the right to do that. It’s his social media," said Leavitt. "He’s incredibly transparent, as you all know ... and I think it’s quite refreshing that we have a president who is so open and honest.”
The video, posted by Trump over the weekend, is an AI-generated spot made to look like a Fox News segment, with a fake Lara Trump stating the administration is unveiling "a historic new health care system, the launch of America's first medbed hospitals, and a national medbed card for every citizen."
"Medbeds" are a conspiracy theory that posits elites have created magical beds, possibly using alien technology, that can heal any medical ailment or imperfection, even regrowing lost limbs and potentially allowing for eternal life — all of which has been kept from the public. Some even theorize that the long-deceased John F. Kennedy Jr. has been restored to full fitness with these fictional machines.
The idea is part of the expanded universe of the QAnon movement, a years-long pro-Trump conspiracy theory group that posits America is being controlled by a secret organization of child-trafficking Satanists, and has been described by some observers as a "Nazi cult."
The Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal has long been central to many QAnon believers' worldview, and the Trump administration's sudden about-face and backtrack from releasing additional files on the case has forced many to re-evaluate their narrative.