Twitter on Thursday flagged a video tweeted by President Donald Trump as “manipulated media,” once again appending a fact-check label to the president’s tweets.
The caption-less tweet — that at the time of writing was viewed by over 5 million times and liked by more than 200,000 users — features viral internet footage of a Black and a white toddler hugging. However, the clip shared by the president has been doctored to accuse the media of spreading racial, provocative misinformation and is overlayed with a false CNN chyron that reads, “Terrified toddler runs from racist baby.” The video concludes with the message: “America is not the problem. Fake news is. Only you can prevent fake news dumpster fires.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020
A Twitter spokesperson told Digital Trends that the tweet is in violation of the company’s “Synthetic and manipulated media” policy and therefore, has been flagged “to give people more context.” It’s worth noting that this time, Twitter hasn’t disabled the video, nor has it blocked people from retweeting or liking it and instead, has simply slapped a label on it that redirects the reader to its manipulated media policy.
In response, CNN’s communications handle said the network covered the story a year ago “exactly as it happened.” “We’ll continue working with facts rather than tweeting fake videos that exploit innocent children,” it wrote in the tweet.
Earlier today, Facebook, which has taken a firm stand against fact-checking political ads, removed Trump campaign ads for using a symbol linked to Nazis. The social media giant said the ads “were violating our policy against organized hate.” “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol,” added a Facebook spokesperson.
On June 5th, Twitter had also taken down videos posted by two of the Trump administration’s reelection campaign profiles, Team Trump and Trump War Room, for copyright infringement on Thursday. A few weeks before that, the social media company censored Trump and the White House’s tweets on Minnesota for “glorifying violence.”
President Trump hasn’t issued a statement on Twitter’s latest takedown yet. We’ve reached out to the Trump administration for a comment and we’ll update the story when we hear back.
