CNN anchor Jake Tapper has expressed his bewilderment after Donald Trump shared an AI-generated video promoting a conspiracy theory about the existence of futuristic all-healing technology.
The 79-year-old president sparked widespread concern and criticism after he shared, and then deleted, a video of himself in a fake Fox News broadcast promising all Americans would have access to “medbeds.”
For the uninitiated, medbeds are a nonexistent type of medical pod that QAnon followers and other fringe conspiracy theorists believe can cure everything from cancer to regrow missing limbs.
Tapper played a section of the AI clip, in which Fox News host Laura Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, announces some “breaking” news that Trump is launching America’s “first medbed hospitals and a national medbed card for every citizen.”
Tapper said in the video posted Sunday on X. “I know we’ve gotten all kind of numb to the odd and misinforming and strange stuff that politicians these days post on social media, including our president, but last night, at 10:19 p.m. Eastern, President Trump posted this.”
The bizarre video cuts to an AI-generated version of Trump claiming that Americans will soon receive their own “medbed card.” The president posted the video of himself making the medbed claim despite literally none of what appears in the footage being true.
“None of this is real. Medbeds are not real,” Tapper emphasized before playing the rest of the “bogus” video Trump shared with his 10.8 million Truth Social followers.
“Medbeds are a conspiracy theory popular with QAnon people, in which there exist these magic beds that restore limbs, reverse aging, and cure anything that befalls the human body, but they’re only available to the rich and elite. And this, of course, is President Trump offering medbeds to everyone,” Tapper added.
“But it’s a conspiracy theory, and the whole thing’s not true. What?”
In November 2021, a desperate QAnon follower wrote an open letter urging Trump to make medbeds available to all Americans so his wife, who has an autoimmune disease, could get treatment.
“They think I am nuts for believing in all this. And how many millions more across the country need a medbed? My family is struggling and so is our country,” Donny Warren posted on Telegram.
Beyond acting as miracle cures, QAnon supporters—who believe Trump is secretly battling and will soon expose an evil cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles—also claim assassinated president John F. Kennedy is still alive and well, all because of medbeds.
Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory expert and author of The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything, warned about how dangerous it is for Trump to fuel the medbeds conspiracy theory.
“The medbeds theory is idiotic, but it’s also heartbreaking. Many MAGA believers have refused medical treatment because they believe one day Trump or Q or NESARA will release medbed tech that will restore their health in minutes,” Rothschild wrote. “These delusions will only be encouraged now.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
