Tag: Trump has to lie to win
Trump campaign twists Fauci comment to suggest praise of the president
“I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more.”
— Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, misleadingly quoted in a Trump campaign ad released Oct. 10
Throughout 2020, the Trump campaign has offered a master class in how to snip and cut video in misleading ways. This new Trump ad is no exception.
The ad highlights the president’s bout with covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. The deaths of more than 200,000 Americans from the disease have been a huge setback to the president’s election campaign. This ad tries to argue that he took forceful action against the coronavirus, despite his constant efforts to play down the pandemic in public.
After the ad asserts, “President Trump tackled the virus head on as leaders should,” it follows with a clip of Fauci appearing to endorse that claim: “I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more.” Continue reading.
Trump’s False Attacks on Voting by Mail Stir Broad Concern
The president’s assertions about widespread fraud have little or no basis in fact but are resonating with his supporters and give him the option of raising doubts about the legitimacy of the outcome.
President Trump is stepping up his attacks on the integrity of the election system, sowing doubts about the November vote at a time when the pandemic has upended normal balloting and as polls show former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ahead by large margins.
Having yet to find an effective formula for undercutting Mr. Biden or to lure him into the kinds of culture war fights that the president prefers, Mr. Trump is training more of his fire on the political process in a way that appears intended to give him the option of raising doubts about the legitimacy of the outcome.
Promoting baseless questions about election fraud is nothing new for Mr. Trump. He has hopscotched from saying that President Barack Obama was elected with the help of dead voters to suggesting that undocumented immigrants were voting en masse to claiming that out-of-state voters were bused into New Hampshire in 2016. Continue reading.
Trump goes ballistic over Twitter’s fact-check — but he has no idea what he’s talking about
That didn’t take long.
Around 5:30 PM Twitter slapped a label on two of President Donald Trump’s tweets, inviting social media users to “get the facts about mail-in ballot.” It’s the first time Twitter has placed what some are calling a “warning label” on any individual tweet.
And while others say it’s not sufficient – Trump lies remain and the label isn’t especially strong – Trump went ballistic just two hours later. Continue reading.
Twitter flags video retweeted by President Trump as ‘manipulated media’
It’s the first time the social network has enforced a new policy to fight doctored videos and photos
Twitter applied its new “manipulated media” label for the first time on Sunday to a deceptively edited video of former vice president Joe Biden. The video was shared by White House social media director Dan Scavino and retweeted by President Trump.
The video was the first test of a new policy the social media company implemented March 5 to label tweets that contain manipulated or synthetic media, ranging from edited videos to more sophisticated examples known as “deepfakes” that can fabricate events that never happened.
In this case, the altered video of Biden — who has surged to the front of the Democratic presidential race to face Trump in November — is based on a speech he gave Saturday in Kansas City, Mo. It was then shared on Twitter by Scavino, only edited to make it appear as if Biden inadvertently endorsed Trump for reelection.