"The two seemed to be sharing an outdoor stage sometime during the late 1960s or early '70s. Conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity went crazy over the image: It seemed to suggest that the centrist Vietnam vet Kerry had aligned himself with "Hanoi Jane" and the "traitorous" far left. The New York Times published a piece about the picture, outlining conservatives' search for a connection between Kerry and Fonda,"
"Last year, after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, images instantly circulated online of the president raising a defiant fist, flanked by Secret Service agents. In slightly different versions of this photo, the agents are smiling, prompting speculation on both sides of the political spectrum that the assassination attempt might have been faked to bolster Trump's platform. Soon after, the smiling image too was deemed a fake. The happy-agents version had been altered by someone on the Internet using AI."
In 2004, an altered photo showing John Kerry and Jane Fonda circulated widely and suggested a political connection, leading pundit outrage and widespread coverage. Conservative commentators used the image to question Kerry's political roots. News organizations later debunked the photo and its AP credit as fakes. Two decades later, after an attempted assassination of Donald Trump, AI-altered images of smiling Secret Service agents circulated and prompted conspiracy speculation before being exposed as fabricated. Rapid advances in smartphones, social media, and AI image tools have transformed the speed and plausibility of manipulated political imagery.
Read at The Nation
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