The Deepfake Presidency: When the Office Becomes the Meme
I have written about grift before. The grift is the con at scale, the confidence game run from the highest office in the land, open and defended as virtue. This essay is about the machinery that makes the grift possible: a presidency that no longer argues with reality but generates its own. PolitiFact counted 36 posts on Donald Trump’s Truth Social account since his inauguration that used AI-generated imagery. Twenty-one of them promoted or sensationalized Trump and his administration. Twelve degraded his opponents. Three reinforced his policy messaging (PolitiFact, 2025). NBC News, reviewing the same feed, found “dozens” of pieces of synthetic media, roughly half of them posted in August and September 2025 alone (NBC News, 2025). The White House’s own X account has posted at least 14 more since January. Add the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, and other agency accounts, and the count grows further. ...