Trump posts, then pulls bizarre AI video promoting MedBed conspiracy

[highplainsdem]

Source: The Verge

Donald Trump is no stranger to outlandish conspiracies or strange social media posts. But, by any measure, his post on Saturday night was particularly bizarre. The president posted (and later removed) a clip on Truth Social of a Fox News segment with Lara Trump detailing the White House’s announcement of the world’s first MedBed hospital and a national MedBed card system (two things that very much do not exist). There was no additional context, no text to explain things. Confusing matters more, the video appears to be completely AI generated, including Trump himself discussing the program in the Oval Office. (Perhaps one of the biggest giveaways being the president’s ability to stay on script.)

MedBeds, for those that tend to avoid the more QANON-y corners of the internet, are an imaginary medical device that can do everything from treat asthma, to regrow missing limbs, to cure cancer. The fantasy of an all-in-one device that can cure all your ills has obvious appeal, but belief that these are real products being kept from the American public by Big Pharma has grown among conspiracy theorists in recent years.

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Read more: https://www.theverge.com/news/787042/trump-posts-then-pulls-bizarre-ai-video-promoting-medbed-conspiracy

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Bluesky post showing what Trump posted. I'm guessing the demented wannabe dictator thought this was real.

Trump tonight appears to have pushed the false "medbed" conspiracy theory, which has spread in the far-right internet over the years. www.yahoo.com/news/qanon-c...

— Alex Kaplan (@alkapdc.bsky.social) 2025-09-28T03:14:11.696Z

[SheltieLover]

1. Imaginary alt to health coverage?

[Chasstev365]

2. They're coming to take me away...

?si=ji-k05JfR5H2CKtx

[kimbutgar]

4. Ha ha I loved that song as a kid

I used to play the 45 all the time and then it mysteriously disappeared. Years later my older sister admitted she hid the 45 because she hated it. I found it years later when I was looking for something in my childhood home and still have it !

That said p, that song aptly describes the orange turd’s mental state now !

[markodochartaigh]

3. I remember seeing these miraculous

Medbeds at a worldwide meeting for the Gay Agenda. They use a sPeCiAL technology developed in George Soros SpaceLaser Labs. They were originally developed to treat veterans of The War on Christmas.

[dweller]

5. Medical Bedical Pedofile Boo !

(insert pin in liver on doll )



✌🏻

[Bayard]

6. AI generated trump.....

Just think about how that can be used.

Way more scandalous than an auto-pen.

[The Madcap]

10. But much more natural-looking

Than the genuine article.

[C_U_L8R]

7. Better keep Vance away from that contraption

Lord knows what he’s already done to the upholstery.

[RockRaven]

8. For the uninitiated, the medbed thing isn't just a conspiracy theory.

It is also a collection of scams! Of course it is.

Medbeds hit the MSM in 2022, and many of those articles also covered the scam angle. There was a cottage industry of fraudsters making money off the gullible and desperate with empty promises resting on this premise they had heard from RWNJ CT circles. Trump featured heavily into those CTs, as the hero, naturally.

But the medbed thing predated the MSM awareness of them. One can still find posts yammering about medbeds on Elon's hellsite from the summer of 2020; unsurprisingly many of those posts bear the signals of a troll farm (poor syntax, Cyrillic letters, images stolen from known films/TV).

[maxrandb]

9. Even Dr. McCoy thinks that's nuts

"Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not an escalator"

There really is a Star Trek clip for EVERYTHING.

?feature=shared

[joanbarnes]

11. I have a demented MAGA Q-Anon family member who believes this.....

.....thinks it will grow back radiation deactivated thyroid gland.

[Grokenstein]

12. Are "medbeds" based on "Med-Bays" from this 2013 sci-fi flick?

Elysium

In 2154, Earth is overpopulated, diseased, and heavily polluted from ecocide. The planet's citizens live in extreme poverty. In contrast, the rich and powerful live on Elysium, an orbiting space station just outside Earth's atmosphere, with luxuries including Med-Bays, medical devices that can heal any disease or condition.

Medbay Dispatch scene (WARNING: ENDING SPOILER):

[eppur_se_muova]

13. "Autodocs" of one sort or another are an old staple in SF.

"Medpods", "cyberdocs", etc. etc. show up in lots of stories dating back decades.

OK, sure, a recent movie may have inspired some CT-crazy Qanoner, but the idea has a long history behind iit.

[Buddyzbuddy]

14. Please don't let him watch any nuclear war movies while going to sleep.

SERIOUSLY

[LetMyPeopleVote]

15. MaddowBlog-Why it was so deeply weird to see Trump amplify 'medbed' pseudoscience

Someone used AI to create a fake Fox News segment that showed the president touting magical beds to the public. So why did he promote it?

Someone used AI to create a fake Fox News segment featuring Trump touting magical “MedBed” technology. He then used to his platform to amplify the nonsensical pseudoscience.

Maybe now’s a good time to renew the whole “cognitive decline” conversation? www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-09-29T18:39:10.323Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-medbed-pseudoscience-rcna234487

When it comes to science and medicine, Donald Trump’s track record is an embarrassment. We are, after all, talking about a president who endorsed injections of disinfectant as a possible Covid treatment five years ago.......

One day later, he helped introduce the public to the “MedBed” idea. Politico reported:

Yesterday on Truth Social, the president of the United States shared a video purporting to be a segment on Fox News (it wasn’t) in which an A.I.-generated, deep-faked version of himself sat in the White House and promised that ‘every American will soon receive their own MedBed card’ that will grant them access to new ‘MedBed hospitals.’

In all candor, I’ll confess that I’d never heard anything about this before the weekend, but evidently, there are fringe conspiracy theorists who believe there are magical, futuristic beds that can cure every disease, regrow missing limbs and even reverse the human aging process.

This is, of course, quite bonkers, though as the Politico report went on to note, “An offshoot of MedBed believers are QAnon devotees who insist the non-existent technology is being used to secretly keep John F. Kennedy Jr. alive.”.....

Incidents like these are not uncommon. Indeed, Democrats tried to make them a campaign issue ahead of Election Day 2024. In the race’s closing weeks, for example, Trump told a 12-minute story about Arnold Palmer’s genitalia, which came just days after the Republican decided to stop taking questions at a town hall event and instead swayed to music for 39 minutes.

A year later, Trump has promoted a “medbed” video for reasons that have not yet been explained.

As USA Today’s Rex Huppke summarized, after Trump twice suggested he was headed to Russia when he was actually going to Alaska, “That’s the sort of thing you hear before having to make a difficult decision about grandpa’s future.” Huppke similarly recently described the president as being “in obvious mental decline.”

[LetMyPeopleVote]

16. MaddowBlog-White House tries to defend Trump amplifying bizarre 'medbed' pseudoscience

Last edited Sat Oct 4, 2025, 09:41 AM - Edit history (1)

Karoline Leavitt had several days to come up with a reason why the president promoted a video about magic beds. She apparently couldn’t think of much.

White House officials had several days to come up with a reason why Trump promoted a bonkers "medbed" video.

Evidently, they couldn't think of much. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-10-02T21:29:24.933Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/white-house-tries-defend-trump-amplifying-bizarre-medbed-pseudoscience-rcna235212

To be sure, Trump has a habit of pushing weird stuff, but even by contemporary Republican standards, this was one of those moments when it seemed sensible to wonder if the sitting American president was OK. Indeed, if Joe Biden had done the same thing during his term, the political world’s conversation about the 25th Amendment would likely have been quite robust.

With this in mind, at a briefing on Wednesday, a reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt what, exactly, Trump was trying to communicate to the public.

Reporter: The president posted an AI deepfake of himself talking about medbeds. What was he trying to communicate?

Leavitt: He is transparent. He likes to share memes and videos. I think it is refreshing to have a president who is so open and honest.

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2025-10-01T19:17:41.725Z

.....So, a few things.

First, no one has said Trump lacked the “right” to promote preposterous pseudoscience via social media. Rather, the question was why he did it and what his decision tells us about his state of mind.

Second, pushing bonkers videos via social media does not make an official “incredibly transparent.” If the White House wants to talk about Trump’s affinity for transparency, it can get back to us after the public gets access to his tax returns, the Epstein files and the video of border czar Tom Homan allegedly accepting a bag full of cash from undercover FBI agents.

Third, Leavitt’s suggestion that Trump promoting a “medbed” video is a reflection of his honesty is almost as weird as the fake Fox News segment itself.....

But Leavitt had several days to come up with something to say about this, and the fact that this was the line she settled on speaks volumes about just how bananas Trump’s move was.