By this time, you’ll have already seen the video. In it, Donald Trump and Barack Obama cozy up together at Jimmy Carter’s funeral, sharing a private joke or two before proceedings get underway. They lean in toward each other as soon as Obama takes his seat; Trump says something that makes Obama laugh. From a distance, they look like friends.
That 30-second clip generated multiple cycles of political gossip. Professional lip-readers were even deployed to try and work out what the two were saying (the results are… inconclusive.) Former CNN host Don Lemon posted a YouTube video over the weekend excoriating Obama for the chitchat, saying: “You have to indicate to the American people that this is not normal … grinning with someone that you have called a fascist over the last couple of years and the last months. That’s not normal.” And Trump himself re-shared a doctored version of the clip on Truth Social on Sunday, overlaid with parody subtitles.
