President Trump said that a video of objects being thrown out of a White House window was AI-generated, hours after a spokesperson said that the video showed “regular maintenance.”
During a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Peter Doocy of Fox News asked the president about an unverified video that was posted to a Washington D.C.-focused Instagram account on Monday. The video seemed to show a person throwing a black bag out of a top-floor White House window.
“No, that’s probably AI generated,” Trump said. “Actually, you can’t open the windows, you know why? They’re all heavily armored and bullet-proofed.”
“So that’s a fake video?” Doocy asked.
“Well it’s gotta be because I know every window up there. The last place I’d been doing it is that because there’s cameras all over the place, right?” he added.
“In fact, my wife was complaining about it the other day. She said, ‘I’d love to have a little fresh air come in,‘ but you can’t because they’re bulletproof,” he continued.
“Number one they’re sealed, and number two each window weighs about six hundred pounds.”
President Trump’s immediate rejection of the video marked a stark contrast to the statement that a White House spokesperson provided to Time earlier on Tuesday.
“It was a contractor who was doing regular maintenance while the President was gone,” the spokesperson said.
After Trump dismissed the video as AI-generated, he asked Doocy to show him the video, and Doocy obliged. While he watched, someone in the background of the press conference asked if the video could be related to ongoing renovations at the White House.
“Those windows are sealed. They’re all sealed, you can’t open them,” Trump reiterated after finishing the video.
Trump then went on an extended attack on artificial intelligence, which he used on Saturday to post over a dozen images of himself, including illustrations depicting him as a police officer and cosmic overlord.
“One of the problems we have with AI is that it’s good and bad,” Trump said. “If something bad really happens just blame AI.”
“I see so many phony things. I saw something from when I was growing up, from the time when I was a baby until now. I said, ‘Who did that?‘ It was AI-generated. It’s a little bit scary, to be honest with you.”
Trump, 79, took questions from reporters on live TV for the first time in a week, an uncharacteristically long lapse between public appearances. A picture of him returning from his golf club on Monday, with his mouth wide open, was widely dissected on social media.
The press conference on Tuesday started over 40 minutes late, and the president’s voice sounded faint and nasally as he initially allowed other officials to spearhead an announcement about U.S. Space Command relocating to Alabama.
The president then took the podium for questions, however, and spoke about deploying the National Guard to Chicago before answering Doocy’s question about the window video.
Savvy online onlookers identified the window from the video as being attached to a private family room on the top of the South Portico, which is part of the White House’s East Wing.
It is typically inhabited by the president’s family, and is not far from the rooftop where President Trump bizarrely meandered on last month.
The East Wing is typically the domain of the First Lady. President Trump, however, is using the wing as the site of his new White House ballroom. Melania Trump has rarely been seen at the White House so far during her husband’s second term.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
