Obama White House photographer Pete Souza created a fake news narrative all by his lonesome on Sunday following the announcement that U.S. forces had taken out Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.
It is not just some minor fake news narrative involving a quibble over the specifics of something President Trump said. Souza suggested, without evidence, that the White House staged a photo reportedly taken inside the Situation Room during the U.S. special forces raid that killed Baghdadi. This baseless assertion is now set in stone, despite the fact Souza appears to have made it up from thin air.
“The raid, as reported, took place at 3:30PM Washington time. The photo, as shown in the camera IPTC data, was taken at ‘17:05:24,’” Souza tweeted in a note that has been shared by more than 20,000 people.
The raid, as reported, took place at 3:30PM Washington time. The photo, as shown in the camera IPTC data, was taken at “17:05:24”. https://t.co/XV0MFfFiTt
— Pete Souza (@PeteSouza) October 27, 2019
What Souza very clearly implied went viral, garnering thousands of shares and retweets. It made its way into mainstream newsrooms, as commentators and journalists alike soon repeated the unfounded claim that the Situation Room photo was staged.
“Obama White House photographer suggests Trump Situation Room photo of unfolding Al-Baghdadi raid was staged,” reads a Newsweek headline.
HuffPost asked elsewhere in an article also based entirely on Souza’s groundless tweet, “Was Trump’s Al-Baghdadi Raid Situation Room Picture Staged?”
Some in the press took it a step further than even that, alleging that Trump was out golfing during the Baghdadi raid:
MSNBC spread this news to their millions (or dozens?) of dedicated weekend viewers.
Will there be an on-air correction? An apology for the president? pic.twitter.com/7NT1T7GgPy
— Brett MacDonald (@TweetBrettMac) October 27, 2019
Here comes the fun part.
Souza tweeted Sunday in a follow-up note, “Just to be clear, I didn’t say it was staged. Trump himself said he didn’t arrive to the Situation Room until ‘around 5pm’. So it’s definitely possible the photo was taken during the raid.”
He added in yet another follow-up, “The latest reporting from the NYT: the helicopters left Iraq at 5PM (Washington time), and they reported it was about a 70-minute flight to Syria. So actual raid had to happen some time after 6:10PM.”
The honorable thing would be for Souza, who has yet to explain where he got his initial timeline of events, to delete his original tweet and get it over with. But he has not. That viral tweet is still live, racking up those sweet, sweet Resistance retweets.
In case you were holding out hope that Souza did not intend to ignite a fake news narrative, consider his most recent Twitter activity. On Sunday, after going viral with a totally fabricated claim, Souza retweeted Obama White House alumnus David Axelrod, who compared photos taken inside the Situation Room during the Baghdadi and the 2011 Osama bin Laden raid, asking, “Which of these pictures looks real and which looks posed?”
Which of these pictures looks real and which looks posed? pic.twitter.com/2xnYUAq3Dj
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) October 28, 2019
It never occurred to me until it happened just how annoying it would be if a White House photographer were to reinvent himself as a partisan activist. That is exactly what Pete Souza has done, and it is every bit as annoying as it sounds.
(h/t Brett MacDonald)
