‘Fake news’: Politico caught putting words in Trump’s mouth, offers dumbfounding correction
A Politico transcript of President Donald Trump’s contentious news conference Tuesday — which focused on the deadly demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia — included a line that had Trump saying, “Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging at us — excuse me.”
That portion of the transcript appeared to give the impression that the Republican president was identifying with or placing himself in the ranks of the ‘alt-right’ and white supremacists who battled Antifa members over the weekend.
Except it sure doesn’t sound like Trump said “us.” At that point the audio became muffled, but it actually sounds he said “’em.” Check out this short clip:
The New York Times didn’t transcribe Trump as saying “us.” And Buzzfeed called out Politico for it.
Ian Miles Cheong, a Daily Caller writer, posted the Politico transcript as tweeted by Brian Klass. Cheong said the transcript seemed like “fake news”:
After further review, Politico offered the following correction:
An earlier version of this transcript quoted Trump as saying, “Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging at us – excuse me.” In a review of the audio, we could not definitively discern Trump’s exact words at that moment in the news conference. The transcript has been updated to now read: “Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging at [indiscernible] — excuse me.”
If Politico means they “could not definitively discern Trump’s exact words at that moment” through a review of the audio, one wonders why “us” was used in the first place. You know, seeing as they couldn’t quite hear it just right.
The correction may be too little too late, as false reports of Trump apparently aligning himself with the ‘alt-right’ quickly spread.
A few commenters on Politico’s original transcript seemed pretty charged up about it:
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