'Insane': Makers of 'Trump Gaza' video say it was 'satire' and not meant for 'propaganda'

28 February

The viral video featuring AI-generated images of President Donald Trump dancing at a gaudy resort in a fictional version of the Gaza Strip are now speaking out against Trump unironically posting the video to his primary social media channel.

In a Friday article, NBC News reported that Solo Avital and Ariel Vromen — who created the "Trump Gaza" video that the 47th president of the United States posted to his Truth Social account earlier this week — said that the video was intended to be "satire" and created to have "an internal laugh." They added that they weren't sure how the video made its way to Trump, as they only shared it with a select few people. Actor Mel Gibson (who Trump appointed as a "special ambassador" to Hollywood) saw an "earlier version" of the video, but didn't answer NBC's inquiries about whether he shared it with Trump.

"Trump has stolen our content because this was made by artists," Vromen said. "The Gaza Strip movie is perfect, unique original content that was taken out of context and published by the president of the United States.”

Both Avital and Vromen, who run the Los Angeles, California-based firm EyeMix Visuals, wanted to see if they could create a video with an eight-hour turnaround with the help of an AI software called Arcana. They didn't know what the topic should be until they heard about Trump's proposal to force Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and turn it into the "Riviera of the Middle East," which Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called a "really dumb idea" earlier this month. The video shows Trump dancing with a woman who was not his wife, dollar bills raining on Palestinian children and a shirtless Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing on the beach.

"It was exactly the same minute that Trump was announcing this thing on TV, like, almost like in the background, you know, it was, ‘Hey, why don’t we do that? Let’s do a little satire,’" Avital said. Vromen opined that even though the intent was to make a joke, the idea of a peaceful Gaza festooned with luxury hotels wasn't entirely bad.

“You look at Trump Gaza, and you’re like, ‘Hey, gazillion times better than what it is right now, whether it’s good or bad,’” he said. “With humor, there is truth, you know, but it was not our intention to be a propaganda machine.”

"The video is not breaking any laws, as far as I’m concerned. And artists are going to express themselves What people decide to do with that, you know, is up to them,” Arcana CEO Jonathan Yunger told NBC. “The fact that the president took it and posted it as his own, I think, is the one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Click here to read NBC's report in its entirety.

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