Donald Trump reposted an AI-generated video of him flying a fighter plane emblazoned with the words “King Trump” and dumping brown sludge on to protesters, in what appears to be a retort to the widespread No Kings protests that took place on Saturday against his second presidency.
Related: No Kings protesters on their hopes for resistance movement against Trump: ‘If we lose momentum, we lose the fight’
In the video, which the president posted on Saturday night, a sharply orange Trump is seen donning a gold crown and manning a plane monikered “King Trump”. The video zooms away from Trump and shows the plane dumping bursts of brown matter on an AI-generated cityscape. A protester, taking a selfie video, captures the crowd being covered in the brown liquid. The last shot of the 19-second video is of protesters in what appears to be Times Square getting dumped on.
The video includes a snippet from Kenny Loggins’s song Danger Zone, notably used in the Tom Cruise classic Top Gun. On Monday, Loggins wrote in a statement that he didn’t authorize the use of his song for Trump’s video.
“Nobody asked for my permission, which I would have denied, and I request that my recording on the video is removed immediately,” he said. “I can’t imagine why anybody would want their music used or associated with something created with the sole purpose of dividing us.”
It’s not the first AI-generated video Trump has posted on his timeline, which is full of edited memes and videos professing praise for the president and his allies while mocking his political enemies.
Earlier in October, Trump posted a deepfake video – or an AI-generated clip that is made to look real – of Chuck Schumer, the US Senate minority leader, calling his fellow Democrats “woke pieces of shit”. The video also had a racist depiction of Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic US House leader, dressed in a fake moustache and a sombrero set to mariachi music.
When asked to comment on the video, JD Vance defended it, saying that he thought “it’s funny”.
“You can negotiate in good faith while also poking a little bit of fun at some of the absurdities of the Democrats’ positions,” the vice-president said. “I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now – I make this solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop.”
Trump was also criticized for using deepfake videos and AI-generated images shoring up support for his winning the 2024 presidential campaign.
The Republican party overall seems to have gotten comfortable using AI-generated images and videos. On Friday, the social media account for Senate Republicans posted an attack ad against Schumer that used a deepfake depiction of the senator saying “every day gets better for us” amid the federal government shutdown. The video had a small disclaimer in the corner of the video labeling it as AI-generated.
No Kings protests were seen in all 50 states on Saturday, with millions coming out against the Trump administration – with signs like “sorry for being weird, this is my first dictatorship” and “No Kings Since 1776”, referring to the year that the US declared its independence from the UK.
In an interview before the protests, Trump said that he didn’t agree with the “king” label.
“They say they’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king,” Trump said.
On Sunday, Trump took a harsher tone in comments to reporters. “I’m not a king. I work my ass off to make our country great. That’s all it is. I’m not a king at all,” Trump said, adding that he thought the protests were “a joke”.
“The demonstrations were very small, very ineffective, and the people were whacked out,” he continued. “When you look at those people, they are not representative of the people of our country.”
