Members of President Trump’s reelection campaign and White House officials rebuked Twitter after the platform decided a video of Joe Biden was manipulated.
Twitter ruled over the weekend that a clip of Biden speaking at a campaign event tweeted by Dan Scavino Jr., an assistant to the president and the director of social media at the White House, was manipulated because it cut off a portion of the vice president’s comments. The shortened clip appears to show the former vice president endorsing President Trump, but it failed to include the second clause to his statement.
Scavino and others ridiculed the platform’s ruling and the subsequent “manipulated media” label that’s featured on his tweet. He posted on Twitter, “The video was NOT manipulated.”
Sleepy Joe?in St. Louis, Missouri today:
“We can only re-elect @realDonaldTrump.”#KAG2020LandslideVictory?? pic.twitter.com/FT4q2MWfcD
— Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) March 8, 2020
President Trump retweeted the Biden clip and then retweeted his social media director’s response to the platform’s ruling.
Gary Coby, the digital director for the campaign, argued Biden is “such a mess” to the point that Twitter “thinks this video was manipulated.” He added, “Sorry! He actually said this. Not manipulated. They are trying to drag Joe across the finish line.”
Mike Hahn, another member of the campaign’s digital team, said he was “looking forward to an explanation from” Twitter because the video “was a REAL CLIP!“
In the 13-second clip at the center of the debacle, the former vice president stumbled on a sentence at a Saturday campaign event in Kansas City, Missouri. “Excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump,” he said. The clip, however, failed to include the second half of Biden’s sentence, in which he said, “Excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It’s gotta be a positive campaign.”
The manipulated media policy, which only went into effect last week, is meant to limit the spread of fake or misleading information on the platform.
