US Politics
Mike Johnson offers advice to ‘friend’ Hakeem Jeffries about racist Trump sombrero videos: ‘Just ignore it’
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House Speaker Mike Johnson called on his “friend” Hakeem Jeffries to just shrug off the flurry of racist and vulgar AI-generated videos that President Donald Trump and other Republicans have posted featuring the House minority leader wearing a sombrero and sporting a cartoonish handlebar mustache.
“Just ignore it,” Johnson advised Jeffries on Thursday, adding that the memes are nothing more than “games” and “sideshows.”
Meanwhile, the speaker refused to offer any solution to the ongoing government shutdown, adding that it is up to Senate Democrats to pass the short-term stopgap spending bill that the House has already approved.
“I quite literally have nothing to negotiate,” Johnson declared in a press conference, blaming Democrats for “inflicting pain” on the American public and causing the shutdown in the first place.
Over the past few days, the president has repeatedly posted deepfake videos of Democratic leaders saying that they are shutting down the government in order to court undocumented immigrants because “nobody likes Democrats anymore.”
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In one video that Trump posted to Truth Social on Monday, a digitally altered Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says that they are now looking to give unauthorized migrants free healthcare in an effort to gain “new voters” since the American public has rejected Democrats because of “all of our woke trans bulls***.”
“If we give all these illegal aliens free health care, we might be able to get ‘em on our side so they can vote for us,” the fake Schumer says in the clip.
Despite the GOP’s “misleading” talking point, Democrats are only seeking to extend and restore Medicaid coverage to immigrants with government protection and legal status. Before the Republicans’ “One, Big Beautiful Bill” passed this year, U.S. law allowed for several classes of legal immigrants to apply for and obtain Medicaid.
In the same video, Jeffries – with a superimposed mustache – is standing next to Schumer, wearing an oversized sombrero. After Jeffries condemned that video’s “bigotry,” the president’s social media account posted another AI-generated meme of the Democratic leader wearing a sombrero, this time with a mariachi band full of fake Trumps in the background.
While Jeffries and other Democrats denounced the “racist” and vulgar videos, arguing that they show Trump is an “unserious individual” who is not negotiating “in good faith,” other Republicans have not only applauded the president’s posts but also emulated them.
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“It’s funny,” Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday, adding that the “president is joking and we’re having a good time.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, one of Trump’s most loyal acolytes, has tried to troll his Democratic colleagues in the Senate by posting photos of each one who didn’t vote for the House’s continuing resolution with superimposed sombreros and mustaches. The two-minute video that Cruz tweeted is set to the 1990s hit song Macarena.
Johnson, whom Democrats have confronted directly over the videos, told reporters on Thursday that the best thing for Jeffries to do is just to let it go.
“Many of you asked this morning about sombreros and memes and why Hakeem Jeffries is alarmed by that,” he declared. “Look, these are games. These are sideshows. People are getting caught up in battles over social media memes.”
Johnson continued: “This is not a game. We have to keep the government open for the people. I don’t know why this is so complicated. To my friend Hakeem, man, just ignore it.”
Meanwhile, as the speaker tells his “friend” to just shake it off, the White House’s official X account posted on Wednesday night that “every day Democrats keep the government shut down, the sombrero gets 10x bigger.” The White House’s social media team then added an image of a pair of maracas.
