Trump’s AI gamble fuels deception in Kentucky and beyond

A Kentucky GOP primary became a laboratory for AI-generated political deception when Thomas Massie was targeted with a pro-Trump super PAC ad accusing him of a fabricated sexual “throuple” with Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The episode underscores a

On a day meant to decide what Kentucky voters would believe about Thomas Massie, an artificial intelligence-generated video tried to write a different story for him—one aimed at undermining him emotionally, not factually.

The ad, funded by a pro-Trump super PAC called “MAGA Kentucky,” targeted the Kentucky Republican after he angered Donald Trump. Massie had supported the release of the Epstein files. opposed tax cuts for the rich in the “Big Beautiful Bill. ” and criticized the president’s failed war of choice against Iran. In retaliation, Trump endorsed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein in the party’s May 19 primary.

The super PAC’s video carried a narrating voice that framed the claim as betrayal: “Thomas Massie. caught in a throuple in Washington.” It alleged Massie was “cheating with the Squad on the America First movement. ” calling it “worse than adultery” and “a complete and total betrayal of President Trump and Kentucky conservatives.”.

Massie rejected it immediately in a social media post, saying the message “reeks of desperation” while warning that its producers were counting on “the older generation” not realizing it was an “AI generated lie.” When Tuesday’s vote came, Massie lost.

Whatever role the video played in the outcome. the episode landed in the middle of a national shift—one that makes American politics feel less like a debate and more like a contest over reality itself. Since Trump’s return to power. the article’s central point is that people have increasingly asked. “Did that really happen?”—or decided. for a few seconds. “That has to be fake. ” before the next clip arrives to scramble certainty again.

The catalog of what that uncertainty can include is now familiar. The piece lists questions over whether Trump truly claims to be chosen by God and is on a divine mission. whether he posted an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ. whether he shared a fake video of himself as a fighter pilot dumping human waste on No Kings protesters. and whether the president of the United States posted disgusting AI-generated images of Barack and Michelle Obama portrayed as apes.

The answer the author gives is bluntly consistent: the incidents happened.

What makes those moments hard to counter, the article argues, is not that they are easy to debunk. It’s that the new material arrives faster than people can absorb and evaluate it. A false image can spread before it’s fully recognized. and the cycle keeps moving—day after day. hour after hour—creating a cumulative cognitive and emotional weight that can break trust in shared facts.

In the article’s telling. the phenomenon is captured by the concept of “malignant normality. ” described by the late psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton. It’s also framed through a term used by philosophers Mark Alfano and Michał Klincewicz—“slopaganda”—which they argue works because it bypasses reasoning and hits emotions directly through aesthetic presentation.

In other words: it may not matter that the claim about Massie’s private life is fabricated. The point is the feeling—paranoia, powerlessness, and suspicion—that political messaging tries to manufacture.

That approach has not stayed confined to one party or one state.

The article traces how Republicans have led in pushing AI-generated political messaging forward. pointing to the Republican National Committee previewing the harm in April 2023. In that case. the RNC shared a video created with AI-generated images predicting what would happen after a Joe Biden victory in 2024—scenes described in the piece include “hordes of brown people from Mexico overrunning American cities. ” China defeating the U.S. military and ruling the world, and American troops outside a San Francisco closed because of crime and drugs.

The following month, after a CNN town hall, Trump was said to have hopped on the AI bandwagon by sharing a fake video of anchor Anderson Cooper declaring that Trump had “ripped us a new a*shole” at the event.

That same year. the article says. Darrell West—described as a senior fellow at the Center for Technology Innovation of the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution—warned in an interview with Salon that new AI tools were “democratiz[ing] disinformation and giv[ing] everyone the capabilities of troll farms.” West’s concern. as presented here. was not only volume but sophistication: tools had advanced so far that even experts struggled to separate fake from real. With “no legal guardrails limiting what candidates or their supporters could distribute. ” the piece quotes West’s conclusion that conditions were set for American democracy to be decided by “false claims and inaccurate beliefs.”.

Since then, the article says, tools have become faster, cheaper, more widely available—and harder to detect. It lists additional examples across campaigns and election-related fights: In November, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., running in the state’s GOP Senate primary to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, released an AI-generated video showing Ossoff pledging allegiance to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Four months later. the National Republican Senatorial Committee shared a video made with AI of Texas lawmaker James Talarico. the Democratic candidate for one of the Lone Star State’s U.S. Senate seats, using his own voice to read his old tweets in front of an American flag.

In Virginia, an anti-redistricting group released a video ahead of the commonwealth’s April referendum on redistricting depicting Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger—who was backing the ballot initiative—setting a barn on fire. A voiceover accused her and Democrats of wanting “to burn Virginia’s democracy to the ground.”.

Public concern is wide. The piece cites a 2024 Pew Research poll showing that 82% of Americans were concerned AI would be used to create and spread false information about the candidates. It adds that other research shows a majority of Americans are not confident they could distinguish between an AI-generated video and a real one.

The article’s through-line is that democracy depends on a shared sense of what is real, and when leaders and the public can’t even agree on basic facts, solving problems becomes far more difficult.

Legislation, it says, has been proposed at both state and federal levels. But it also emphasizes the friction between the speed of technology and the slow motion of lawmaking, along with constitutional concerns about free speech.

Steven Rosenbaum. author of the new book “The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality. ” is quoted saying attempts to ban political deepfakes are “well-intentioned. but ultimately they fail. ” because technology companies are “incredibly agile.” He adds: “I don’t think we’re going to solve the problem by legislating away particular apps.”.

Still, states have moved faster. The article says Congress has not yet produced an effective response. even with congressional Democrats supporting legislation to counter political deepfakes. By contrast, it notes that California is one of thirty-one states that have passed laws restricting political deepfakes.

Those state actions include disclosure laws requiring a clear label on any ad created with AI. A smaller number of states—Maryland and Massachusetts among them—have tried to ban AI deepfakes under existing anti-fraud laws. The article points out a key limitation of many such bans: they are often limited to a specific time window. such as 30 days before an election in Texas. and in some cases AI-generated deep fakes can still be used if accompanied by disclaimers.

It also says those state bans have drawn bipartisan support and have been enacted in both blue and red states.

At the federal level. the article brings the story back to the White House. with a detail that lands like a warning shot rather than a solution. It says Trump planned to sign an executive order on Thursday to create a framework for the federal government to review national security dangers posed by advanced AI technology before it is released to the public. But only hours before the scheduled ceremony. he announced he was postponing the executive order because he did not want to take away America’s competitive advantage over China and other countries.

The political consequences of that delay, as the article frames them, run beyond campaigns. It draws a comparison to Vladimir Putin’s Russia and uses the concept of “hypernormalization”—a condition in which the gap between official and lived reality becomes so wide that people stop believing anything is true. In that environment. the piece says. civic life and society get “gutted from the inside. ” participation feels pointless. and more people seek political strongmen and authoritarian leaders who promise simple answers and action.

American democracy. the article concludes. is collapsing rapidly under the pressure of attacks on common understandings of reality and truth—pushing institutions and norms past their breaking point. It argues that “hypernormalization is a long-term political and cultural problem that one election cycle cannot fix. ” and that the longer this state lasts. the longer recovery will take.

AI deepfakes Kentucky politics Thomas Massie MAGA Kentucky Ed Gallrein Ilhan Omar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Epstein files Big Beautiful Bill war of choice against Iran political disinformation RNC political advertising disclosure laws California deepfake law Maryland anti-fraud law Massachusetts deepfake law executive order postponed national security AI review hypernormalization Vladimir Putin