Trump slammed for manipulated 'racist baby' tweet
Twitter has flagged one of Donald Trump’s posts as “manipulated media” after the US president shared a news report from a year ago with a doctored headline.
Trump uploaded a clip on Thursday (local time) of a white toddler chasing a black toddler down a footpath, with the false headline, “Terrified toddler runs from racist baby”.
It was framed to appear like a breaking news report from CNN, when in reality it was a story aired by the broadcaster in September last year of a viral video about a friendship between two toddlers.
The original clip was shown after the hoax, followed by a series of scandalous accusations about the media stirring up “fake news” .
“America is not the problem,” flashed across the screen, followed by “fake news is”, then “if you see something, say something”.
“Only you can prevent fake news dumpster fires,” the clip concluded.
The video earned a “manipulated media” warning, which applies to material uploaded to “deceptively promote synthetic or manipulated media likely to cause harm”.
Twitter also uses the warning to flag “deceptively altered media that misleads or deceives people about the media's authenticity where threats to physical safety or other serious harm may result”.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020
It was not Trump’s first run-in with the social media site, having also recently been subject to Twitter’s blue exclamation mark on a tweet about mail-in ballots.
The social media site hid one of the US president’s recent tweets, accusing it of violating “the Twitter rules about glorifying violence”.
Trump wrote he would send in the US National Guard to aid police with Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd, and said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
In a subsequent tweet, Twitter wrote “this tweet violates our policies regarding the glorification of violence based on the historical context of the last line, its connection to violence, and the risk it could inspire similar actions today”.
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