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Although one of President Trump’s catchphrases is “fake news”, he’s apparently not an expert at spotting it.
On Friday the POTUS tweeted out a doctored video of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with the caption “PELOSI STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE”. In it, the video’s playback speed was altered to make Pelosi sound like she is stammering, slow, and drunk. One digital forensics expert estimates the original video’s speed was slowed down by 75%.
Some social media networks have tried to stop the spread of the video. YouTube has removed it altogether, while Facebook has responded saying nothing in their policy prohibits false information from being published on the platform. However, third-party fact checkers do ‘rate’ such fake news so that it appears less in users’ newsfeeds.
As of Friday morning, one version of the video on Facebook has over 2.5 million views.
Former New York City mayor and current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani also entered the fracas, tweeting, quote, “vesssapology for a video which is allegedly is a caricature of an otherwise halting speech pattern, she should first stop, and apologize for, saying the President needs an “intervention. Are” ([sic] many times over]
An hour later, the former NYC mayor and current Trump attorney followed up with a slightly more coherent tweet, reading “Nancy Pelosi wants an apology for a caricature exaggerating her already halting speech pattern. First she should withdraw her charge which hurts our entire nation when she says the President needs an “intervention. ‘People who live in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones.'”
When asked for a comment, Pelosi’s spokesman Drew Hamill responded, “We’re not going to comment on this sexist trash.”
