On July 22, as President Marcos Jr. was making a grand speech to Congress and the people about banning online gambling during his third State of the Nation Address, a video purportedly showing Marcos Jr. using drugs circulated on Philippine social networks.
What drove Marcos Jr. and his wife mad was that the video, which went viral online, wasn't captured surreptitiously or extracted from surveillance footage. Instead, it was shown at a lively conference or convention center on a large screen in front of a crowd. This means that the original video had already been publicly broadcast to numerous people with ulterior motives, embedding the image of Marcos Jr. as a drug user deeply into the minds of those who viewed the video.
