Trump Posted Footage of a Fatal Tiger Attack. Then He Posted an AI Tiger Video.

An original cartoon parody song about the week the White House posted a fatal tiger attack, then an AI video of the president hugging a tiger, then called off a plan to livestream an execution.

On October 13 the president posted to Truth Social a 41-second clip of a man being fatally mauled by a tiger, captioned "Don't ever mess with nature!" The man was William Chapman, 23, who had entered the tiger enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster three days earlier and was pronounced dead at the scene. The same clip went out from the White House's "Rapid Response 47" account on X. 1

He followed it with footage of apparently AI-generated people being mauled by big cats over a tinny synthesizer. Later that evening he posted a 23-second AI-generated video of himself wrestling and befriending a smiling tiger, set to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." 12

The reaction was immediate. Users on X called the post "sick"; one wrote, "I'm a big supporter but not a fan of this post." South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard said the president had used AI to mock the death and the family's pain "for little more than a cheap laugh on social media," and that it "should be greeted with the contempt it deserves." 3

Chapman's family described him as a "bright, warm and engaging young man" who had been suffering from "significant mental illness over a number of years," and asked people to stop circulating "deeply offensive media content" of his death. The park stayed closed for a fifth day, and City of Doncaster Council opened a health and safety investigation. The tiger, named Atai, was declared safe and well and will not be put down. 34

The same week ran a second version of the same instinct. The Pentagon said the scheduled firing-squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, set for December 3 at Fort Hood, "will be livestreamed" — which would have been the first public execution in the United States in nearly a century, and the first ever carried live on the internet. 5

The objections came from both parties. Vice President JD Vance said, "If it's ultimately livestreamed, I'm not going to be watching it." Senator Thom Tillis called a livestream "beyond disgusting." Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the plan a "barbaric promotion of a culture of death." 5

On October 15 the president said the Pentagon would not livestream it. He wrote that airing it "might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan," but that "many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device." 6

The song and every frame of the cartoon are original to this episode.