Donald Trump and Elon Musk's AI Dance Video

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Part of a series on 2024 United States Presidential Election. [View Related Entries]

About

Donald Trump and Elon Musk's AI Dance Video refers to a deepfaked video of entrepreneur Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump in which they are made to appear like they are dancing to the song "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. The original unedited video was posted in 2021, featuring professional dancers Vik White and Aubrey Fisher. The AI-altered video was then shared online on August 13th, 2024, and shared by Musk and Trump the following day. As it went viral and garnered reactions, many internet users drew comparisons between the meme and an infamous video posted by Madonna in support of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign in which animated versions of the two women danced to the song "Girls Gone Wild." The clip also popularized the "Reverse 2016 Election" theory, which posits Trump's 2024 campaign is running parallel to Clinton's 2016 campaign.

Origin

On August 3rd, 2021, Instagram^[1] user and professional dancer Vik White posted a video of him and Aubrey Fisher dancing to the song "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. The video gathered over 600,000 likes in three years.

On August 13th, 2024, X^[2] / Twitter user @Cyncratic posted a deepfaked version of the aforementioned video, editing Donald Trump's face onto Vik White and Elon Musk's face onto Aubrey Fisher. The post gathered over 1.9 million views and 16,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Spread

On August 14th, 2024, Elon Musk^[3] reposted the aforementioned video with the caption, "Haters will say this is AI 🕺🕺," gathering over 900,000 likes in a day (seen below, left). Various conservative figures reposted the video shortly after, including U.S. Senator Ted Cruz,^[4] who captioned the clip, "This…is…awesome!" gathering over 5,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

Various X users saw the video as a sign of the Trump campaign mimicking the way Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign floundered in 2016. Many internet users drew comparisons to a particular moment in Clinton's campaign when pop star Madonna posted a cartoon video showing animated versions of her and Clinton dancing to her song "Girls Gone Wild" on Twitter^[5] / X on October 12th, 2016 (seen below).

On August 14th, 2024, X^[6] user @Sturgeons_Law quoted the Musk-Trump dance deepfake, writing, "Kamala is running a strangely Trumpy campaign while Trump is running a strangely Hillary-ish campaign. It's not just surface-level stuff like this," and gathering over 17,000 likes in a day (seen below, left).

Also on August 14th, X^[7] user @MilkmanMeme wrote, "Reverse 2016 is a theory like gravity is a theory," gathering over 10,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).