It’s been no secret for a while now that Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX who purchased social media giant Twitter and turned it into just “X,” supports Donald Trump.

He definitely hasn’t been trying to hide it. Almost immediately, the algorithm on the website changed, and people started getting more and more right-wing content in their news feeds.

He even reinstated a bunch of notoriously conservative accounts that had been suspended while the site was still Twitter for spreading false information. And it seems like that reason right there is why — because Republicans have to lie to win people over.

Now they’re doing it with videos, thanks to “deepfake” technology.

The tech has been around for a while now. You’ve even seen videos that made it seem like Obama was saying things he wasn’t saying. It’s been with us for that much time. But with the dropping out of Joe Biden from the 2024 presidential race, conservatives had to scramble to make his successor, Kamala Harris, look bad.

Naturally, they turned to what they’re best at.

The latest video is very obviously digitally manipulated. It uses actual footage from an appearance by Biden and Harris after the prisoner swap with Russia. The video was altered to make it look like Harris was stumbling over her words, struggling to finish a sentence.

That may seem like small fries, but Trump himself came across the video and posted it to Truth Social, along with commentary about how “DUMB” and “extremely low IQ” Harris is. An X account that exists purely to repost the content that Trump posts on his own social media platform reposted it there. The views on this video are near a million now.

And while you or I might know right off the bat that it’s a fake video, that doesn’t mean your weirdo neighbor with the gun collection and the “Let’s Go Brandon” sticker on his truck won’t be fooled.

Worse, the video specifically violates the rules of both Truth Social and X, with Musk’s site clearly saying that it prohibits “synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.”

Of course, that didn’t stop Elon from breaking his own rule already.

A little over a week ago, Musk found a video that he posted to his own profile that was a deepfake of Harris, manipulated to make it look like she was calling herself “the ultimate diversity hire” and trashing Joe Biden.

They will stop at nothing.

For his part, Trump’s team has doubled down. The spokesman for the former president (and current felon) doubled down when questioned about the video of Harris, insisting that it was real and telling a news outlet “Your phone or computer must be f*cked up.”

Something certainly is.

Does anyone notice that Kamala Harris doesn’t do Interviews? That’s because she’s really DUMB! She’s unable to speak properly without a Teleprompter. She has an extremely Low IQ, and our Country does not need someone who is unable to put two sentences together. She can’t, and… pic.twitter.com/AbAuNy7Ndc

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) August 3, 2024