That time Mike Leach tweeted a totally fake video of Barack Obama, and then things got even weirder

Like all of us, Washington State head coach Mike Leach spends too much time on the internet in general and on social media in particular.

The culmination of all that, so far, is this since-deleted tweet, which features an obviously edited video of Barack Obama speaking in Belgium in 2014 (and not, as the video’s title suggest, to the conspiracy-theory magnet Bilderberg Group):

Pretty scary stuff! Except, as is immediately apparent, those words were deceptively stitched together from what the president actually said.

Here’s the actual video. From the transcript, here’s the real intro, with the fake video’s clipped quote in bold:

Your Majesties, Mr. Prime Minister, and the people of Belgium -- on behalf of the American people, we are grateful for your friendship. We stand together as inseparable allies, and I thank you for your wonderful hospitality. I have to admit it is easy to love a country famous for chocolate and beer.

Leaders and dignitaries of the European Union; representatives of our NATO Alliance; distinguished guests: We meet here at a moment of testing for Europe and the United States, and for the international order that we have worked for generations to build.

And the Twitter video’s second sentence, with full context:

it was here in Europe, through centuries of struggle -- through war and Enlightenment, repression and revolution -- that a particular set of ideals began to emerge: The belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose. The belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed, and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding. And those ideas eventually inspired a band of colonialists across an ocean, and they wrote them into the founding documents that still guide America today, including the simple truth that all men -- and women -- are created equal.

But those ideals have also been tested -- here in Europe and around the world. Those ideals have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power. This alternative vision argues that ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs, that order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign.

Leach then sidestepped the many people informing him that the video is fake, while pointing out he didn’t actually have anything to say about the blatantly fake video he shared.

Everything went great.

Eventually, Leach took down the tweet, admitting the doctored video was “incomplete.” He then challenged USA Today writer Dan Wolken to a debate on God-knows-what and eventually tried to explain the Twitter fiasco, never apologizing for distributing obviously fake material for no clear reason:

They said, “Well, it’s a hoax; well, it’s fake; well, it’s this,” which I didn’t know. Somebody passed that on to me. And I said, “Why? Prove it. If you know it’s a hoax, then prove it to me.”

Well, then after about nine of those, somebody sent the speech in its entirety. And it wasn’t a speech that was as on point for what I was hoping for anyway. And so then, the statements in the speech are far enough separated that I do feel like it was taken out of context. I thought the context was too broad and not accurate enough that I pulled it off (removed the video). But that doesn’t change the fact that I was asking, “Why aren’t we talking about the contrast with where we are in regard to our political philosophy?” But in the end it all ended up being a waste of time.

We’ve all shared things on social media without triple-checking their veracity, but one cool thing to do when you goof up is to say, “Whoops! My bad.” It’s easy!

So! Here we have a highly opinionated football coach who spends a lot of time on Twitter, has gotten more and more politically outspoken in recent years, and is now swerving in and out of made-up conspiracy fantasyland.

The end of the world is weird, man. We are not far from football coaches personally FWDing us chain emails about being forced into Bohemian Grove by lizard apes who fell out of the skies. I’d sort of always assumed all football coaches would just keep yelling about focusing on football assignments, even as the mushroom clouds spread overhead, but it turns out that’s not the case.

In times like these, we turn to memes.