AI Barron Trump and the Politics of Deception

Last week several subscribers to my channel referred me to “Trump Anthem,” which is a channel filled with AI videos, primarily of Barron Trump singing. And, yes, those videos are as creepy as you might think.

Here’s a short segment of the most popular video on the “Trump Anthem” channel, and it’s called “God Bless America”, although it’s not the song you were probably thinking of.

Clearly we can tell these videos are AI and whoever is singing the songs is using a LOT of auto-tune, which is irritating even on songs that aren’t AI. But here’s where it gets interesting.

The channel itself was created back on April 5th of 2021, but it only started producing content a month ago. Yet, in just one month it has amassed 39,000 subscribers, with the “God Bless America” video having nearly 900,000 views in just 3 weeks.

Perhaps even more unsettling are the comments on the videos, most of which seem to believe that AI Barron Trump is actually the real Barron Trump. And these comments are, of course, VERY pro Donald J. Trump.

Now, of course, YouTube channels don’t normally attain 39,000 subscribers in just 3 weeks, which obviously means that most or all of those subscribers are bought and paid for, and that most of those comments are not legit.

In fact, even looking at some of the videos, the song lyrics are also clearly AI, as we can tell from a song strangely called “Politics is Love.” I apologize in advance for having you listen to this auto-tune again, but here’s a snippet of that song.

The majority of the comments on the “Trump Anthem” videos do show telltale signs of being a bot. For example, their channel is a virtual blank slate – that is, they don’t have ANY content, whether their own videos or subscribing to other channels.

In addition, the people who leave comments on the videos are often fairly new accounts, or started shortly after the “Trump Anthem” channel itself was created back in 2021. In other words, it looks like there was a bit of planning behind the “Trump Anthem” channel.

Needless to say, bots are a problem on every channel nowadays. In fact, last year there was a study by Imperva Threat Research, which covers these kind of things, and its report reveals that almost 50% of internet traffic now comes from non-human sources.

So called Bad Bots, in particular, now comprise nearly one-third of all traffic. Bad Bots are exactly as the name implies. They are bots which are used for malicious purposes, such as hacking, fraud, spam, data harvesting, and the like.

Bad Bots have also become more advanced and now mimic human behavior to such a degree that it makes them difficult to detect and prevent. Generative AI is also making things worse, with the volume of simple bots increasing to 40% in 2023, up from 33% in 2022.

Bots are so ubiquitous nowadays that there is now actually an app that is nothing BUT bots. It’s called SocialAI, which allows users to interact solely with AI chatbots instead of other humans. It’s your own social network where you are the ONLY human.

But getting back to “Trump Anthem” channel, there are, unfortunately, some comments which appear to be from actual humans. Those comments are not only extremely complimentary of the channel, but of the whole MAGA movement.

This means that either they are misled into thinking AI Barron Trump is the real Barron Trump, or perhaps more likely, they simply don’t care because they are so wrapped up in MAGA world. To them, anything that glorifies the Trump family is a-okay, even if it’s fake content.

And that is almost certainly the purpose behind the “Trump Anthem” channel. Whoever created it uses AI videos, subscribers that were bought and paid for, and tons of comments from bots, with the goal of reeling in some actual humans. It’s all about deception.

This willingness to deceive others has been a hallmark of the MAGA universe from the beginning. From Paul Manafort to Steve Bannon. From Tina Peters to Mark Robinson. So much that surrounds the MAGA movement is built on deception.

But this deception flows downhill from Trump, who has repeatedly shown a tendency to throw truth to the ground in order to promote himself. He not only has a willingness to deceive others, but a desire to.

All of this is reminiscent of 2 Thessalonians, which says this about how things will be when the Antichrist comes on the scene, and which talks about those who don’t love the truth.

“Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” – 2 Thess 2:9-10

But there is also another Bible verse which is even more relevant to what’s going on, and that’s in Daniel 8:25. In the KJV it reads as follows:

“And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart” – Daniel 8:25 KJV

However, this verse is a little more clear in the Holman Christian Standard Bible, which is a very underrated translation. That verse reads as follows in the HCSB:

“He will cause deceit to prosper through his cunning and by his influence, and in his own mind he will make himself great.” – Daniel 8:25 HCSB

This verse could not more perfectly explain what is going with many of those in Trump’s orbit, or who promote the Trump agenda. They have allowed themselves to believe that the truth is of secondary importance. They must bring Donald Trump back to power by any means necessary.

So the next time you run across channels like “Trump Anthem”, or see Trump post AI images of things that are clearly faked, remember this: the deception is intentional. ♦