Some things are so unbelievable that your brain refuses to process them. Yet there they are, happening in real life.
Case in point: a video of U.S. President Donald Trump doing something only Donald Trump could do — imitating a transgender athlete while making exasperated facial expressions.
Chinese social media collectively shook their heads and declared the video was surely AI; no president would do this.
Highlights
- Chinese social media users believed a video of Trump mimicking a transgender athlete was AI, doubting a U.S. president would act that way.
- Trump’s exaggerated imitation during a speech sparked disbelief and embarrassment among both Chinese and American netizens.
- Trump claimed his wife, Melania, disapproved of his imitation but said the crowd loved his antics during a Republican House speech.
Chinese netizens thought a video of Trump was AI
“Chinese people on Weibo thought this is AI because they couldn’t believe that a U.S. President would actually do this in public,” claimed an X user, responding to the video of Trump.
However, even among Americans, the disbelief was palpable. “Even I thought it was AI,” replied an X user on the post. Another said, “Because it is extremely embarrassing.” A third said, “This is for sure more AI than real AI.”
Image credits: CarlZha/X
One user thought the video was “an SNL skit for a moment,” while another said the Chinese are “right to doubt it; it's not every day we see the president of the world's greatest power doing... who knows what that was.”
This reaction to Trump’s antics fits neatly into a much bigger pattern of Chinese internet culture. Social media users on Weibo and Douyin have long treated American politics as a source of comedy gold.
During Trump’s trade war with China, memes depicting tariffs went viral, sometimes even involving AI‑generated effects for humor. Users created deepfake videos of Trump singing in Mandarin or behaving in ways only the internet could imagine.
Many of these posts were sarcastic towards the president. One popular parody video shared on Douyin showed Marvel and DC characters re-imagined as factory workers, doing hard labor. “Bring manufacturing back to the US!” wrote the account owner.
But this time, it wasn’t a meme or deepfake.
Trump imitated a transgender athlete while making exaggerated facial expressions
During his Tuesday speech to House Republicans at the Kennedy Center, Trump mimicked lifting an imaginary weight, pretending to struggle, and made exaggerated facial expressions
In the speech, Trump talks about how the First Lady thinks it is “not presidential” for Trump to be acting this way. “My wife hates when I do this,” he said. “They don’t like it. They’re just being nice to you,” she tells him. But Trump told her she was wrong. “The place goes crazy. They’re screaming,” he said.
The White House account Rapid Response 47 shared a clip from that video, framing it as Trump’s “imitation of ‘trans athletes’ in women’s sports.” The internet responded quickly. “I wish he’d listen to Melania,” said one user on X. Another begged, “Please please please tell me this is a real clip.”
One X post summed it up perfectly: “When a clown moves into a palace, he does not become a king, the palace becomes a circus.”
Jimmy Kimmel also took the time to mock Trump’s behavior in a video uploaded to his YouTube on Wednesday. “Trump was at his newly self-named Kennedy Center, where he delivered a pep talk to Republicans in the House.
“It was a closed-door meeting, which he put on TV. So, I don't know why they closed the doors,” Kimmel said, before playing a montage of Trump saying the most unconventional things with over-the-top expressions.
Image credits: Alex Wong/Getty Images
“I truly can’t comprehend that this is real life,” one person said, responding to Kimmel’s video on YouTube. Another called it “Tantrum of the Opera,” adding it “should be on a plaque in the white house, under a picture of Trump.”
Unphased and true to his form, Trump capped off the event with a little extra showmanship and did a brief dance on stage.