Trump tweets doctored video featuring toddlers warning of ‘fake news’
A Twitter post by Donald Trump that featured a video about “racist” toddlers and “fake news” has been flagged by the social media site with a warning that it contains “manipulated media”.
Mr Trump tweeted the doctored CNN video on Thursday night, which showed two children with a misspelt headline banner that said: “Terrified todler runs from racist baby”.
The president’s video also claimed that “America is not the problem. Fake news is”, in an apparent reference to those protesting against systemic racism since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis police custody last month.
The original video, which showed a black toddler and a white toddler running towards each other and hugging, went viral on social media in 2019. CNN published the video on its website with the headline: “These two toddlers are showing us what real-life besties look like”.
Mr Trump, who has criticised both news media and anti-racism demonstrators, tweeted the doctored video which labelled one child as a “racist” Trump supporter.
The video, which had been reversed to show the black child running from the white child, was then followed with anti-news media messages. More than 10.7 million people have now viewed Mr Trump’s video, and 307,000 people have retweeted the post.
Twitter’s own policies state that “We may label tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context”.
The social media site has increasingly moved to impose its own policies against the US president, who has been fact-checked or censured by Twitter several times in recent weeks. The site said last month that Mr Trump had made unsubstantiated claims about mail-in voting fraud, and that he was “glorifying violence” with comments on protests in Minneapolis.
The president, who has accused Twitter and other tech companies of censoring conservative voices on social media platforms, said in late May he would propose legislation to potentially scrap or weaken the law shielding internet companies, in an extraordinary attempt to regulate outlets where he has been criticised.
In a statement, CNN told the US president that: “CNN did cover this story – exactly as it happened. Just as we reported your positions on race (and poll numbers). We’ll continue working with facts rather than tweeting fake videos that exploit innocent children. We invite you to do the same. Be better.”
The accusations of manipulated media come after the former national security adviser John Bolton alleged that Mr Trump called journalists “scumbags” who should be “executed”, in excerpts from Mr Bolton’s new tell-all book.