MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell argued that President Donald Trump is experiencing a “dramatic mental decline” after he posted an AI-generated video targeting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Trump late Monday took aim at the two Democratic leaders in a deepfake video posted on his social media platforms — hours after he met with them in the Oval Office as part of an eleventh-hour attempt to reach a deal to avoid a government shutdown, which is scheduled for Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. ET.
The video depicts Jeffries and Schumer speaking to reporters after the meeting — with a fabricated voice of Schumer claiming Democrats “have no voters anymore, because of our woke, trans bulls—.” Jeffries, alongside him, is shown wearing a sombrero while mariachi music plays in the background.
“If we give all these illegal aliens health care, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us,” Schumer also says in the video, appearing to reference an argument from Republican lawmakers that Democrats are attempting allow noncitizens to receive health care.
Much of the disagreement in coming to a deal is centered on health care, as Democratic leadership is looking to reverse Medicaid cuts in the GOP’s recent budget megabill, as well as extend Affordable Care Act tax credits that are set to expire by the end of the year. Republican leaders have framed the proposal as a nonstarter.
During a Monday night handoff from MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, O’Donnell said that Trump is framing Schumer in his own “invented version,” in which “all elected Democrats in America, all of them, are pieces of crap.”
Maddow said that she had just spoke with Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, after Trump recently announced he would deploy the National Guard to the city of Portland, and the Democratic leader’s “impression” is that the president is activating troops after viewing social media posts dated five years ago that he believes are current.
“He has no idea that video that he’s looking at might not be current news, because he’s seen it recently, so therefore it must be recent,” Maddow said.
Maddow also pointed to a Truth Social post from Saturday, in which Trump shared a fake Fox News clip that shows him promoting “med beds” — a conspiracy theory in which magical beds can cure any disease. The post has since been deleted.
“If this were a junior high school student, there’d be an intervention involving the family,” Maddow said.
O’Donnell went on to tear into Trump’s health.
“This is a sharp cliff that he’s just fallen off within the last fortnight, especially over this particular weekend of social media posting. It has been a stunning weekend,” O’Donnell said.
While Maddow said “there’s something weird going on up there,” O’Donnell added that “it is absolutely worthy of a family intervention.”
“There’s no other family in America that would let a 79-year-old do things like this publicly. They would absolutely intervene. It would be the only thing every family member wanted to do. They would do it urgently,” O’Donnell said, before claiming: “And this 79-year-old just continues to collapse publicly.”
Maddow then jokingly chimed in: “I mean, literally the only good thing about him being president in these terms is that he can’t drive, which is good. So, they don’t have to worry about taking the keys away.”
Both Jeffries and Schumer had quickly fired back at Trump’s video.
“Bigotry will get you nowhere. Cancel the Cuts. Lower the Cost. Save Healthcare. We are NOT backing down,” Jeffries wrote on X, adding a photo of the president next to late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a separate post on his personal account.
Schumer said on X that “If you think your shutdown is a joke, it just proves what we all know: You can’t negotiate. You can only throw tantrums.”
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