a republican ad used ai to put a real drag queen at a barn dance with a democrat. she has never met him, or been to a barn dance. iconic.

Downtown Asheville, for illustration. Photo: Harrison Keely, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

via WLOS and The News & Observer

"I'm going to be honest with you: I've never been to a barn dance in my life."

That is Nova, an Asheville drag queen, explaining to WLOS why she is surprised to be the star of a Republican attack ad in which she is doing exactly that. The 30-second spot, from the campaign of Jennifer Balkcom in North Carolina's 11th congressional district, shows Democrat Jamie Ager at a barn dance surrounded by drag performers while children look on. Its narrator delivers the line: "Jamie Ager talks like you and me on TV, but he's dancing with they/them."

"None of it was real," Nova said. "I've never met the man in my life."

how the fake was made

The News & Observer, which fact-checked the ad, reports it was paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee and appears to be built from footage of one of Ager's own campaign ads. Where his ad shows a plain wall of wooden slats, Balkcom's shows the same wall with a Pride flag on it. Where his ad shows a barn of ordinary people dancing, hers fills the same barn with drag queens. There is no disclaimer saying any of it was generated by AI, and the paper notes North Carolina is one of the minority of states with no rules on AI in campaign ads. Elections analyst Jacob Rubashkin described it on X as "an almost entirely AI-generated ad."

The ad's case rests on a 2019 "Fantasy Festival" at Hickory Nut Gap, Ager's family farm. The N&O found the event was advertised with puppeteers, fire dancers, stilt walkers and costume contests, not as a "drag queen barn dance," though an archived listing does name the Beer City Sisters, an Asheville drag and advocacy group, among many performers. The two performer names the ad drops came from a Breitbart article that pulled them off a Beer City Sisters Instagram post of new name tags, posted nearly three weeks after the festival. The NRCC did not give the paper proof either was there.

One claim does check out: FEC records show Ager's campaign gave $5,000 to Blue Ridge Pride in July. That is the scandal. A farmer donated to Pride.

what everyone said

Ager's campaign called it "100% fake, AI-generated ads" and said Balkcom "can't win on the truth, so she is using AI to lie." Balkcom's team declined an on-camera interview with WLOS and sent a statement accusing Ager of "hosting events exposing young children to inappropriate performances," and NRCC spokesman Reilly Richardson told the N&O that "Ager owes North Carolina voters answers for why he's trying to push sexualized performers onto kids."

Nova says she has sent the Balkcom campaign a cease-and-desist letter and, as of her interview, had heard nothing back. The N&O reports another Asheville drag performer named in the ad, Divine Holeburn, posted on Facebook that she has issued one too.

Nova wondered aloud "when are y'all going to start creating other preposterous storylines about gay people to fit into your narrative." Based on this ad, the answer is whenever the render finishes. Texas Democrat James Talarico got the deepfake treatment in September; western North Carolina is just the newest set.