Opinion | News outlets are reluctant to label Trump's AI video for what it is: The president shitting on America
Instead, they used euphemisms like "brown liquid", "brown sludge", "brown substances", "bursts of brown matter", or "raw sewage".
Over the weekend, United States President Donald Trump reposted an AI-generated video showing him flying a fighter jet and dropping "brown liquid" over protestors, a clip that has since sparked widespread debate across the internet.
The video, originally created by a meme account on X, depicts President Donald Trump wearing a crown and soaring to Top Gun's "Danger Zone" soundtrack, while releasing what is clearly meant to be feces over American cities.
For those unfamiliar with the context behind, the post coincided with nationwide "No Kings" protests, where thousands demonstrated against Trump's increasingly authoritarian rhetoric (who, in the past, has called himself a king on Truth Social).
Most of the attention initially went to the video itself. Yet now, some are focusing less on the clip and more on how major media outlets have covered it, reluctant to label Trump's AI video for what it is: the president shitting on America.
Some examples (via 404 Media) include The New York Times, The Guardian, ABC, CNN, and NBC, among others. Instead, they used euphemisms like "brown liquid", "brown sludge", "brown substances", "bursts of brown matter", or "raw sewage".
It raises the question: why is it so hard for media to call a spade a spade? Independent outlet 404media sums it up neatly:
"I can understand some of these venerated news establishments might be skittish about using a word like 'poop' in their headlines, and I can also concede that I haven't had an editor tell me I can't use a bad word in a headline in a long, long time."
"I had to look it up to see if he really said it, and what I found was this: trusted sources of news too scared to call fake poop... fake poop. It's not really about the word 'poop,' it's about being able to accurately describe what we see."
"An essential skill when almost everything online is designed to enrage, trick, or mislead us. AI continues to be the aesthetic of fascism: fast, easy, ugly. When we lose the ability to call things what they are, we lose far more than just the chance to make a joke about poop."
What do you think about the whole situation?
- The protests.
- Trump's response to the protests.
- The way media outlets have covered it.