Back in May, the media falsely accused Trump of sharing a “doctored” video of Nancy Pelosi in which she was slurring her speech. The media narrative was that Trump shared a video that was deceptively edited to be unflattering to Pelosi. It wasn’t true.
Has the media learned anything since then? Apparently not, because on Friday evening, The Hill published a story accusing Trump of “tweeting a doctored CNN clip showing a meteorologist saying Alabama was at risk of getting hit by Hurricane Dorian.”
To “doctor” something is to falsify or alter something with the goal of deception. The use of the word “doctored” by The Hill gives the erroneous impression that Trump shared a clip from CNN and falsified it to make it appear that the meteorologist said Alabama was at risk of getting hit by Hurricane Dorian, when he actually hadn’t.
Here’s the video that tweeted:
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2019
After the lede paragraph, The Hill explained how the video was “doctored”:
Trump tweeted a video showing a CNN meteorologist explaining that the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Alabama were at risk, editing the video so the reporter says “Alabama” 10 times back-to-back.
The video then shows a CNN logo going down a road in lieu of a car only to drive off the street and explode.
This explanation didn’t matter to many people who commented on the story on The Hill’s Facebook page:
President Trump tweeted a doctored CNN clip showing a meteorologist saying Alabama was at risk of getting hit by…
Posted by The Hill on Friday, September 6, 2019
“I am an evacuee and never was Alabama mentioned and I watched all day for 2 weeks. He is lying,” wrote a woman named Judy, who apparently didn’t watch CNN’s coverage. “I wish I could just fast forward to the movie that’s gonna be made about all this behind the scenes stuff. Who doctored the clip?” asked a man named David. A woman named Kirsten commented, “When he’s altering the evidence, he’s really taken the lies a few steps too far.” Another commenter wrote, “The cover up is so much worse than the LIE.”
These are people who read the headline, and perhaps the opening paragraph, and immediately concluded Trump shared a deceptively edited video as opposed to simply highlighting the fact a CNN meteorologist had also claimed Alabama was potentially in Dorian’s path—thus proving the whole controversy was manufactured by the media. How many more outlets will follow their lead?
It’s also clear from The Hill‘s Facebook post that the headline of the article originally used the word “doctored” but was then removed. It still appears in the lede, and gullible liberals all over believe that the video Trump tweeted was deceptive.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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