A fake post that was designed to look as if it were from President Trump’s social media feed spread widely online over the weekend, adding confusion to the ongoing debate over Mr. Trump’s social media activity this week. Posts on X circulating the forgery reached at least 3.7 million views by Saturday.
The fake post appeared to describe Mr. Trump’s rationale for deleting a racist video that he shared earlier this week, which depicted former President Barack Obama and the former first lady, Michelle Obama, as apes.
In the fake post that went up on Friday night, Mr. Trump appeared to claim that the video was offensive to animals.
Though many users seemed to understand it was fake, some believed it was real, including some right-wing users who praised the president for not apologizing. The user who first published the fake post on X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Its spread appeared to be aided in part by the confusion surrounding how Mr. Trump came to post the original racist video and why it was deleted. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, first brushed off the criticism, saying that it was a joke from a longer video depicting several Democrats as jungle animals. Mr. Trump later pushed back on that idea while talking to reporters on Air Force One. He said that he did not err in posting the video but that he had not seen the racist clip — which is spliced into another video about voter fraud conspiracy theories — before sending it to aides to post on his behalf.
“I gave it to the people, generally they’d look at the whole thing but I guess somebody didn’t,” he told reporters.
The image is part of a surge of fake content that has been circulating online in recent months. A group of right-wing influencers and meme-makers have created scores of artificial-intelligence-generated jokes, videos and satirical political content that is sometimes racist and sexist, racking up millions of views.
Mr. Trump has elevated their work before. In October, Mr. Trump posted an A.I.-generated video of himself piloting a fighter jet and dropping excrement on protesters. The user who created the fighter jet video also created the racist video of the Obamas.
Stuart A. Thompson writes for The Times about online influence, including the people, places and institutions that shape the information we all consume.
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