Saturday was a busy day for President Donald Trump’s Truth Social lies. He stuck to his pattern and quickly fell into a familiar feedback loop: Flood the zone with chaos, and then pretend it never happened. First, he posted that he had authorized federal troops to protect what he dubbed “War ravaged Portland” with “Full Force, if necessary.” Then, later that night, the president shared an AI-generated video promising fake alien health care technology from a conspiracy theory popular in QAnon forums. In both instances, Trump seemed to rely on Fox News footage — or at least what he seemingly believed to be Fox News footage.
“Every American will soon receive their own med bed card,” an AI-generated image of Trump said on a fake Fox News segment claiming he had announced “a historic new healthcare system” that will restore sick Americans to full health. “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.”
In reality, the video, first flagged by Media Matters’ Alex Kaplan, did not air on “My View with Lara Trump,” as it claimed, or any other Fox News show. These so-called med beds do not exist. Yet many QAnon devotees insist the non-existent technology secretly keeps John F. Kennedy Jr. alive. As investigative journalist Jacqueline Sweet has discovered, the earliest mention of the video’s claim comes from a now-deleted Instagram page that “uses a common fake name for fake doctors in romance scams.” By sharing the AI footage of himself, Trump is giving his MAGA followers false hope that he will soon grant them access to the elites’ magic product. The video was eventually deleted from Trump’s account on Sunday morning — but not before it gained traction online.
Trump defenders, as they are often wont to do, rushed to laugh off the incident as a harmless joke. But a quick social media search reveals that a lot of people who are dying or watching a loved one fade away with cancer and other illnesses really believed it. QAnon-type spaces were excited at the possibility that Trump would finally release all the hidden cures. Many MAGA believers have refused medical treatment because they believe med bed tech will restore their health in minutes. This is both depraved and heartbreaking.
The tease comes as the president prepares to let the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced health insurance subsidies expire — even at the cost of a government shutdown. Trump is set to meet on Monday afternoon with both Democratic and Republican congressional leadership. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both of New York, have indicated they will not agree to keep the government open unless Republicans consent to extending the premium tax credit that subsidizes health care insurance for millions of Americans.
Meanwhile, the Republican-passed tax cuts are putting rural hospitals at high risk of closures across the country. Med beds for every citizen, as the deep fake video promises, would mean none of those bad outcomes from GOP policy decisions would matter. Elsewhere on his Truth Social account, the president began hawking “hemp-derived CBD” to ease the pain of age-related illness. Turns out, the “health care plan” Trump promised to release “in two weeks” six years ago is actually itself a fantasy.
As the med bed example demonstrates, Trump is growing more vulnerable to being influenced by selective or sensational media coverage — and less likely to vet whether what he is seeing or hearing on those segments is grounded in current facts. In another instance from Saturday, he took Fox News visuals and narrative frames — this time real, although outdated — to order consequential real world action in Portland.
“I’ve been so deeply disappointed to see the footage from a half decade ago recycled,” Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said over the weekend, suggesting that the president has been viewing out-of-context video clips from 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests to justify military action.
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On Sunday, Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, called 200 members of the Oregon National Guard into federal service in the city for 60 days. Oregon’s Democratic G. Tina Kotek said she objected to Trump during a seven-minute phone call on Saturday. Trump, she told reporters, informed her during that call that he thought Portland’s federal courthouse was “under attack,” which she assured him was absolutely not true.
“I told him in very plain language there is no insurrection or threat to public safety that necessitates military intervention in Portland or any other city in our state,” Kotek said. “Putting our own military on our streets is an abuse of power…Here’s the deal. “We cannot be looking at footage from 2020 and assume that that is the case today in Portland.”
On Sunday, Oregon and Portland filed a 41-page lawsuit in federal court against Trump’s actions. The suit referenced a recent Fox News report cited by the president that misled viewers by wrongly presenting “outdated protest footage from 2020.” As Oregon’s Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden told reporters on Friday, “If [Trump] watches a TV show in the morning and he see Portland mentioned, he says it’s a terrible place.”
But even after Trump’s announcement, Fox continued to use old footage to paint Portland as a lawless state.
“Well, it’s not being received very well by Oregon’s governor and leaders there, who, despite the scenes we have seen playing out night after night of the protesters camped out. Here you see it right now. That is not a peaceful protest,” Fox News host Griff Jenkins said on “Fox & Friends Weekend.” Even though its on-air source credit said as much, the footage Fox played was from Sept. 2 — more than 25 days ago. On X that day, Fox reported, “War-like scenes unfold in Portland.”
But as the Oregonian’s Zane Sparling noted, “protesters have camped on the sidewalks outside the [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] office for more than 115 days and nights.” In that time, the number of arrests has dwindled as the size of the demonstration has shrunk. In more recent work, protests outside the ICE building have been small, typically drawing less than 30 people. Of the 29 related arrests, 22 happened on or before July 4.
Perhaps most bizarrely, Trump seems to understand the perils of his media diet. Evan Watson of Portland’s KGW8 reported that the president told NBC News’ Yamiche Alcindor during a Sunday interview that pushback from Oregon’s governor on his troop deployment caused him to briefly question things. “I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.”
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