You might recall that back in October of last year, president of the United States Donald Trump shared an AI-generated video of himself flying a fighter jet and dropping loads of feces all over protesting Americans.
While this was a completely deranged piece of content for — once again — the *president of the United States *to post, and it’s probably safe to say that most people probably didn’t take this AI-generated clip as a literal threat. Did it communicate the commander-in-chief’s hostility to Americans exercising their right to protest, in this case during 2025’s “No Kings” demonstrations? Well, yes. But did we think that the president would actually unleash explosive diarrhea on Americans? We didn’t, at least — and we’re sorry to say that we were sorely mistaken. In July, the US was hit with a wave of explosive diarrhea caused by an outbreak of cyclospora, a parasite that spreads through food and water tainted with human feces. As of this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the outbreak has impacted people in at least 47 states, and that suspected cases had climbed to more than 24,000. At least two people in Michigan with existing medical conditions even tragically died after contracting the parasite.
The outbreak has been linked to contaminated lettuce. (For the past month, many Americans have understandably been avoiding salads.) Taylor Farms, the company closely tied to the outbreak, issued a recall.
Of course, this horrid wave of diarrhea-inflicting illness wasn’t dumped from the sky by a crown-sporting octogenarian president zooming around in a fighter jet. But the cyclospora outbreak has prompted revelations over the consequences of the second Trump Administration’s aggressive cuts to the federal workforce. Last year, the lab tasked with identifying parasitic outbreaks was slashed from 11 people to just three, and the swift destruction of the agency USAID, pushed by billionaire Elon Musk’s chaotic Department of Government Efficiency effort, prevented millions of dollars from reaching American public health agencies. That parasite lab, as CNN reported last month, is part of a CDC division that lost out on an earmarked $30 million due to the DOGE-led USAID crusade.
“The response is being hampered by the loss of specialized staff and the loss of hands-on-deck needed to identify the source of the outbreaks,” Dr. Joel Barratt, the head of the lab responsible for tracking parasitic outbreaks, told CNN. (At the time, the White House told *CNN *that the “referenced USAID funds that were administered by the CDC supported overseas programs, not domestic disease response, and that “the Trump administration’s top priority is ensuring the health and safety of the American people.”)
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, who has overseen a chaotic and destructive transformation of federal health agencies, said a month ago that the outbreak was “under control” — despite case numbers continuing to rise.
America’s cyclospora summer might not have come from a fighter jet. But disruptive policy choices played a hand in creating perfect storm for a parasitic outbreak to occur, and have likely made outbreak containment that much harder.
As for Trump’s AI diarrhea slop? We regret to say that it was — to the detriment unlucky lettuce-eaters — prophetic.
**More on cyclospora: **Americans Are Tossing Salad in Unprecedented Numbers