Trump Shared an AI Video Promoting the Medbed Conspiracy Theory, but What Is That?

There are so many conspiracies out there that keeping track of them all can be a major challenge. That's why it's healthy, at least for most people, to simply ignore many of them, especially if they seem particularly true or outlandish. Recently, though, one conspiracy theory got a somewhat surprising boost from the President of the United States.

The theory in question was the medbed conspiracy theory. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're not alone. Here's what you need to know.

The core claim of medbed conspiracists is that the government has developed advanced technology that can be used to cure most illnesses but is keeping that technology from the vast majority of the public, with the exception of the super wealthy. It's similar to a lot of conspiracy theories in that it assumes that there is a solution to a vast problem, but it's simply being withheld from many of the people who need it.

According to The New York Times, this theory has become particularly popular with people who suffer from chronic pain, for understandable reasons. They want to believe that there's a solution out there and that all that really needs to happen is for them to get access to it.

The theory seems to have spawned from the broader QAnon movement, which believes that a "deep state" is secretly running the government.

There are even more specific beliefs inside the medbed community, including one now-deceased QAnon influencer named Michael “Negative 48” Protzman, who believed that the technology was being used to keep former President John F. Kennedy alive, per The Daily Beast. As is usually the case, there is some strange and circumstantial evidence to support this theory, but little hard proof.

The reason this theory is receiving so much attention now is that on Sept. 27, President Trump posted and then deleted what appeared to be an AI-generated video related to medbeds on his Truth Social account. In the clip, an AI-generated version of the president is seen sitting in the Oval Office and declaring that all Americans will be receiving "medbed" cards that they can use to get into the supposed technology.

We don't know why his account posted the video, or whether the president himself was responsible for the post. According to Forbes, though, Fox News has confirmed that the report that was supposedly included in the AI video never actually aired, thereby confirming that the entire clip is false, and that if medbeds are real, the president has at the very least not announced that information to the public.

The president has always had a relatively free hand in flirting with various QAnon conspiracy theories, but this is a particularly strange example in part because one would think he would have remembered having made that announcement if he had actually done it. As is the case with so much of the president's stranger behavior, it's difficult to come to firm conclusions about what it might mean.