In the midst of all the coronavirus news, it’s getting easier to forget that there’s still an election going on. Of course, those two stories have blended together at this point because the Democrats appear to have largely abandoned their old strategy (assuming you believe they had one) and are now planning on turning the election into a referendum on how Trump handles the pandemic. This past week, Joe Biden attempted to take advantage of the situation by releasing a campaign ad implying that the President called the virus “a hoax.”
So how did that work out for Uncle Joe? Not very well, as it turns out. The Free Beacon reminds us that even the Washington Post tagged Biden with four Pinocchios for that deceptive and maliciously edited clip. And when you’re a Democrat and you’ve lost the WaPo… well, let’s just say it wasn’t a good day for Team Biden.
A Joe Biden ad received the worst possible rating from the Washington Post fact-checker for attacking President Donald Trump with manipulated video.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee received “Four Pinocchios” for an ad that deceptively edited video of a Trump campaign rally to make it appear that the president called the coronavirus a hoax. In the ad, Trump can be seen saying “coronavirus,” followed immediately by “This is their new hoax.”
You can view the ad in this tweet from Biden’s own account, meaning that he clearly approved of this message.
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 (@JoeBiden) March 3, 2020
The only thing true about the ad was the fact that Trump did say the word “coronavirus” along with the phrase, “this is their new hoax.” Left out from that display were the more than 120 other words the President said in between. He never claimed that the virus didn’t exist or that it was “a hoax.” He was talking at length about the Democrats’ efforts to use this crisis as leverage for political gain. That’s the part that’s a hoax.
And while we’re on that topic, how is it that more people in the media weren’t calling out Biden for politicizing something that is clearly a crisis of global proportions? People are dying out there and our society (and economy) are being shut down by this pandemic. Oh, wait… I think I answered my own question. Most of these news outlets are openly rooting for Biden. Why dwell on such unpleasantness?
As for the ad itself, one might suspect that it would qualify for Twitter’s new “manipulated media” tag, no? But as of this morning, the ad is still up and it doesn’t have that tag.
Twitter’s only answer thus far is that the ad was tweeted a few days before the new policy went into effect. What in the world does that have to do with anything? Are they saying that previously posted content is immune from any new policies put in place? You may recall the debacle that ensued last January when Twitter determined that the phrase “learn to code” was prohibited speech. They then turned around and retroactively banned any number of accounts that were reported for having tweeted the phrase before the policy went into effect.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign sent a letter to Twitter about the deceptive video last Monday. As of this date they have still not received an answer.
Gee… it’s almost as if there’s one set of rules for Democrats and another for Republicans. But they’d never really do that, would they? Naw. Must be my imagination.
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