‘Campaigns must be willing to make their case without resorting to video manipulation….’
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) The Washington Post‘s fact-checkers awarded Joe Biden‘s campaign “Four Pinocchios” for manipulating videos of President Donald Trump talking about the coronavirus and the American Dream.
Biden tweeted the video on March 3, before the Super Tuesday primary elections, The Post reported.
We can’t sit by and lose this country to Donald Trump. Today, we take it back — together.
Go vote: https://t.co/Hy8C4n0lUk pic.twitter.com/0YgyJFr9YR
— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) March 3, 2020
The Post examined only two portions of the advertisement, despite multiple parts of the video being manipulated.
In the video, Trump says, “Coronavirus—this is their new hoax.”
The newspaper admits that Trump “never said, ‘coronavirus—this is their new hoax.’ Rather, Biden’s ad clipped a large part of Trump’s speech to make it seem as though he had.”
Trump was referring to the Democratic Party and the news media’s coverage of the coronavirus, not the virus itself.
At a press briefing on Feb. 29, Trump further clarified his remarks.
“Hoax’ referring to the action that [Democrats] take to try and pin this on somebody, because we’ve done such a good job,” Trump said. “The hoax is on them, not—I’m not talking about what’s happening here [the virus]; I’m talking what they’re doing. That’s the hoax.”
Right after the distorted comments about the coronavirus, the ad shows Trump hugging an American flag and then a close-up shot of his face as he says, “The American Dream is dead.”
As Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, he said “the American Dream is dead,” but he always followed up that sad remark with a hopeful message.
“If I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and we will make America great again,” Trump said while declaring his intention to seek the Republican nomination for president.
By failing to include all of his message, The Washington Post said, the ad is “Missing Context.”
“Ultimately, the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak, the fact that Trump had clarified his comments on the matter before the ad was released, and the blatant way the Biden camp isolated his remarks about the American Dream pushed us to Four Pinocchios,” The Washington Post reported. “Campaigns must be willing to make their case without resorting to video manipulation.”
Trump campaign officials had expressed outrage at the double-standard earlier in the week when Twitter labeled a video as “manipulated media” for cutting off the end of a Biden clip to make it appear that he was saying “we can only re-elect Donald Trump.”
I agree with Joe! https://t.co/h84mD7jVPW
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2020