MAGA Geniuses Know Why Trump Posted AI Video Of Imaginary 'Medbed' Healthcare Plan
Most likely, he just can't tell the difference between himself and a bad AI version of himself.
On Sunday, Donald Trump posted (and then, much later, deleted) a video of a Fox News segment of his daughter-in-law Lara Trump covering his announcement of the nation’s new “Medbed” program, in which every American will be granted a “Medbed card” that will allow them access to Medbed hospitals, whereupon they will be healed of all that ails them. Alas, not only do Medbeds not exist, but neither did that segment. It was AI, as was Trump’s announcement — and not very good AI, either.
Had this been some other president posting AI videos of things he never said about technology that is not real, you can be pretty sure that the Right would have something to say about how this reflects on his mental acuity. Since it’s not, they’re either going to ignore it, excuse it, or insist it never happened.
In case you are unfamiliar with the term, “Medbeds” are part of a conspiracy largely associated with QAnon nonsense. They are meant to be magical beds that miraculously heal any disease or injury and even regrow amputated limbs, and they either currently exist and are being used only by “elites” (people like us, not people like the billionaire President of the United States), or the technology exists to make them and something nefarious is preventing them from existing.
Medbeds are probably my favorite right-wing conspiracy theory, largely on the grounds that they really highlight the fact that a not-insignificant portion of Trump voters do not actually grasp what it is that he and other Republicans believe about access to healthcare. In many of their minds, things are very much reversed — where Republicans believe in free healthcare for all (except undocumented immigrants) and want to take down “Big Pharma” and in which Democrats love Big Pharma and private health insurance companies and only want subsidized health care for undocumented immigrants and not American citizens.
But since the rule is that Trump is a Very Stable Genius who is definitely not suffering from dementia or senility or any other kind of mental deterioration, the few on the Right who even acknowledged the post were pretty sure that one of the following things was going on instead:
He never actually posted it and the video of the video is the real AI.
He did it to trigger the libs and make us cry.
He wanted to teach people not to trust everything they see, because it could be very obviously terrible AI.
It’s not AI and we have no proof it isn’t.
He wanted to signal to his most loyal followers that the medbeds are coming, even if he cannot announce it for real just yet.
They’re absolutely real, get yours now!
Why do you hate jokes, communists?
One thing I’ll say — something I’ve said over and over again — is that part of the reason we have this problem with healthcare-related conspiracy theories and so many fake (at best) and dangerous (at worst) alternative cures is our insistence on a for-profit healthcare system. People can’t afford care, they get screwed by their insurance companies, overcharged for medications and procedures, and they freak out!
In order to be trusted, healthcare needs to be inherently altruistic. There is no reason to trust that a system in which people are charged hundreds of dollars for Epi-Pens, in which they pay hundreds a month for health insurance only to be told they can’t use it when they need it, has their best interest at heart. Because it doesn’t. With for-profit healthcare, profit will always come first and health will always come second, and if people know that the healthcare industry stands to make more money off of them being sick, they are going to have a hell of a time believing there is any reason to make them well. How do you trust a system that takes advantage of you at your most vulnerable? Where you have to worry that if you are hit by a car and unconscious, you could end up paying a thousand dollars for an ambulance to take you to a hospital? Where victims of mass shootings end up going broke because they have to pay for their own healthcare?
I’m not saying that socialized medicine would eliminate all health woo and misinformation, but it would certainly eliminate some of it, and its existence would be slightly less depressing.
So far, Trump has not yet acknowledged the post beyond deleting it — unless of course a staffer did that — and he probably won’t ever acknowledge it or be asked about it by anyone whose job it is to ask him questions. From what I can tell, not a single major right-wing news source has even mentioned it, so the only people who will even know about it on the Right are those who are extremely online enough to have seen it on Truth Social and who probably think the medbeds are real.
America!
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
If MedBed's really existed for the rich and powerful to use, then why does Mad Lord Yam look like he is decomposing before our very eyes?
Six months later at a Trump resort: Medbedbugs.