Delta ‘boot’ the latest hate hoax
The tale of a notorious YouTube hoaxster who claimed to be kicked off a Delta flight for speaking Arabic turned out to be the latest in a growing series of false accusations of bias made in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory.
Serial prank artist Adam Saleh set the Internet aflame Wednesday when he posted the clip of himself being asked to leave the flight because he “spoke a different language” — but his story quickly fell apart.
“You guys are racist. I cannot believe my eyes. I cannot believe it,” Saleh pleads in the video.
“I spoke a word in a different language and you say you feel uncomfortable?”
The hoaxster asked his Internet followers to share the video, but as the story spread it was revealed that Saleh had hatched a similar prank in the past.
In 2014, Saleh was forced to admit that a video that purported to show racial profiling by the NYPD was faked. The fraudster apologized to the Muslim community and claimed the video was a “dramatization.”
The prankster’s story continued to unravel when Delta released a statement, backed up by fellow passengers, that Saleh and his partner were removed “after a disturbance in the cabin.”
After collecting more information, Delta followed up with another statement saying the duo engaged in “provocative behavior, including shouting.” The overwhelming evidence did not stop the determined con artist from spreading the hoax. The video was retweeted 827,000 times on Twitter as of Thursday night.
Saleh’s video was just one postelection incident of racial-bias allegations that went up in smoke.
In Mississippi, a black church parishioner was arrested for allegedly burning his own church and spray-painting the words “Vote Trump” on the building. Andrew McClinton, 45, was charged with arson Thursday for torching the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church of Greenville last month.
In the days after the fire, Green- ville Mayor Errick D. Simmons urged officials to investigate the incident as a possible hate crime.
Chris Orr, a Greenville resident, said at the time that the mayor was “basically profiling the suspect as a white person” before the investigation had even begun.
Earlier this month in Manhattan, a Muslim teen who claimed she was attacked by three drunks who called her a “terrorist” on the subway admitted she had fabricated the incident, according to police.
Yasmin Seweid, 18, is charged with obstructing governmental administration and filing a false report, for claiming that the men yelled “Trump! Trump!” and “Go back to your country!” as they grabbed her headscarf during the supposed attack on Dec. 1.
Seweid apparently made up the attack story because she had been out late and had been having problems with her strict Muslim Egyptian dad, who learned she was dating a Catholic.