Not long before midnight on Thursday, with the government shutdown underway, President Donald Trump posted a video to Truth Social of himself in the Oval Office appearing to throw one of his red hats onto someone’s head as the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” plays. Trump points and laughs. The scene was fiction: It was a clearly manipulated video meant to play off a recent meeting between Trump and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Just a few days earlier, Trump had posted an altered video of Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that included fake audio and showed Jeffries in a cartoon sombrero.

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