President Donald Trump on Saturday shared an apparently artificially created video of himself promoting a cure-all bed with origins in conspiratorial corners of the internet. The video, which has since been deleted, was designed to look like a Fox News segment on the show hosted by the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. The segment, which never aired on the network, featured a deepfake version of Trump promising access to new medical technology. In the video, the false rendering of Trump said, “Every American will soon receive their own medbed card,” which would grant them “guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctors in the nation.”
The “medbed” conspiracy theory, which claims that secret healing technology has been kept from the public, has spread in recent years within QAnon circles. The theory is a modern manifestation of an older tradition of belief in quack doctors and miracle cures and is rooted in a deep distrust of government and medical institutions.
The Origins of the ‘Medbed’ Conspiracy Theory
The medbed conspiracy theory has origins in the early post-World War Two era, when a UFO-spotting craze led to theories that the U.S. government had reverse-engineered technology from alien craft to create advanced healing technologies. This conspiracy theory, which claimed that the government was withholding this technology from the public and only providing cures to select elites, played into a more widely held belief that the government was withholding information about UFOs.
The QAnon conspiracy theory movement emerged in 2017, and some in those circles have long believed that Trump would make this supposed secret miracle-curing technology available to the public. In the now-deleted artificial video, the false Trump touts the benefits of the supposed therapy, saying, “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.” More rudimentary versions of medbed technology are promoted and sold in New Age and holistic circles online. These vendors often make dubious and unproven promises about items they sell, such as healing mats, and some have been seen setting up at events attended by QAnon followers.
Author’s Opinion
This incident marks a dangerous new precedent in the spread of disinformation. By sharing an AI-generated video of himself promoting a conspiracy theory, President Trump is blurring the lines between a political message and outright fabrication. This move, which leverages the powerful tools of artificial intelligence, validates a fringe conspiracy theory for a large audience. This highlights a growing challenge for the public in distinguishing between genuine information and sophisticated, AI-generated disinformation, which can have real-world consequences for public trust in institutions. The fact that a video promoting a debunked theory was presented as a genuine news segment shows how easily misinformation can be packaged to look legitimate, and it is a sobering reminder of the new reality of political communication.
Featured image credit: Heute
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