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10 Mar, 2020 03:33

‘Double standards!’ Trump team rips Twitter after it flags Biden ‘endorsement’ clip but OKs THREE doctored Trump vids

‘Double standards!’ Trump team rips Twitter after it flags Biden ‘endorsement’ clip but OKs THREE doctored Trump vids

The Trump campaign fired off a withering reply to Twitter after the company said the president had shared a “manipulated” video clip, accusing the platform of unfairly enforcing its rules to help Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden.

Twitter appended its first ever “manipulated media” disclaimer to a video on Sunday, warning users that a clip re-tweeted by Trump – showing a stammering Biden as he apparently endorses the president’s re-election – was “edited in a misleading way.” But the Trump campaign insists Twitter has simply invented a new rule to “protect” the former VP.

“The Biden campaign has a strategic interest in intimidating social media companies into suppressing true and embarrassing video evidence of Joe Biden’s continued inability to communicate coherently,” the Trump team wrote in the letter, sent to top company officials on Monday.

“Still, it appears that many people employed by Big Tech corporations in Silicon Valley are assisting the Biden campaign” by enforcing a rule that effectively censors any speech which “Biden’s campaign and its supporters do not like,” the letter continues.

In order for American elections to remain free and fair, it is critical that the Biden campaign be held to the same standard it is demanding apply to others.

Also on rt.com By tagging Trump's Biden video as 'manipulated' Twitter actually manipulates US electorate

The brand new ‘manipulation’ disclaimer had the backing of today’s supreme arbiters of all things truthful – that is, “journalists from The New York Times, CNN and Politico” – who pointed out what was already obvious to everyone else: Biden did not, in fact, endorse his rival’s campaign.

Though the clip does take Biden’s words out of context for comedic effect, the Democratic frontrunner has struggled with his speech this election season, with footage of his rambling and often incoherent anecdotes shared far and wide across social media, his non-endorsement of Trump being only the latest instance.

The Trump team also countered with its own examples of deceptive or manipulated videos put out by the Biden campaign, singling out three clips it said used selective editing to “mislead Americans and give a false impression” of President Trump – including one video edited to make it appear that Trump had described neo-Nazis as very fine people.” Though at the time the president immediately clarified “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists,” who he said should be “condemned totally,” that did not stop the Biden campaign from circulating the edited footage without consequence.

Another clip from a recent campaign rally was modified to suggest Trump had dismissed the coronavirus as a “hoax.” While the president did use the two words in the same sentence, he had actually accused his Democratic opponents of committing the ‘hoax’ by exploiting the lethal illness to score political points. That video also failed to earn a disclaimer from the social media giant or its allies in the corporate press.

Having taken no action against those videos and others, the campaign demanded the company prove that it is “not seeking to protect Joe Biden” and finally start applying its standards “equally across the board.”

Also on rt.com Amid concerns over his cognitive capacities, Dem frontrunner calls himself an ‘Obidenbama Democrat’

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