President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign called on Twitter to apply its “Manipulated Media” label to a video former Vice President Joe Biden retweeted before the rule was instituted.
The company should apply the label to a March 3 video containing two clips “spliced together to fabricate a quote and give viewers the false impression that he called the coronavirus a ‘hoax,'” Trump campaign chief operating officer Michael Glassner wrote in a letter Monday to Twitter.
Twitter previously noted that it will not flag content that was posted before March 5, when the company officially rolled out the label. (RELATED: Trump Campaign, Tech Analysts Scrutinize Twitter’s ‘Manipulated Media’ Label After Biden Video Flap)
The Biden video also repeats a claim the former vice president made at the outset of his campaign asserting that Trump called white supremacists at a Virginia rally in 2017 “very fine people,” Glassner added in the letter, which came a day after Twitter applied the label to a Trump video.
White House social media director Dan Scavino criticized Twitter on Monday for labelling the video “manipulated media.” His version of the video showed Biden bumbling while articulating a point, telling an audience in Missouri: “Excuse me. We can only reelect Donald Trump.”
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The unedited video shows the former vice president saying: “Excuse me. We can only reelect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It’s gotta be a positive campaign.” Scavino maintained that the video was edited, “NOT manipulated.”
Trump’s team is describing Twitter as another arm of the Biden campaign.
“The Biden campaign is scared as hell that voters will see the flood of unedited and embarrassing verbal stumbles that will continue go viral if ‘Status Quo Joe’ is the nominee,” Trump campaign rapid response director Andrew Clark told Fox News Monday.
He added: “Twitter shouldn’t be an enforcement arm of Joe Biden’s campaign strategy, but if they choose to police every video clip they must hold his own campaign to the same standard.”
Trump’s letter came the same day a report highlighted that Biden is giving short speeches to limit possible gaffes.
“We’ve received the letter and intend to respond,” Twitter spokesman Trenton Kennedy told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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