The Democratic Party reportedly asked Twitter to do something about an edited video the Trump reelection campaign produced of former Vice President Joe Biden.
The Democratic National Committee flagged the video on behalf of the former vice president, whose campaign is using members of the press to act as fact-checkers, the report noted, citing a Biden adviser. The party’s move was part of its program to stop the spread of disinformation in 2020.
“This is an example of our ongoing disinformation work, and the same thing that we do for every campaign,” a DNC official said, according to The Daily Beast.
Officials “flag activity to each of the campaigns, and have set them up with tools to receive regular activity alerts themselves,” the official added.
The Daily Beast did not explain why the official was made anonymous , and neither the DNC nor Biden’s campaign have responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. Twitter declined comment.
The DNC was responding after White House social media director Dan Scavino shared version of the video on Twitter that showed Biden bumbling while articulating a point, telling an audience at a rally in Kansas City, Missouri Saturday: “Excuse me. We can only reelect Donald Trump.”
The full, 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.”
President Donald Trump retweeted Scavino’s version. (RELATED: Trump Calls On Twitter To Apply ‘Manipulated Media’ Label To An Edited Video Biden Sent)
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Biden’s campaign said it is crowdsourcing and working with reporters on factchecking.
“We and others took action on a fact-checking front in the press and in terms of directly appealing to Twitter,” a Biden campaign adviser said, according to The Daily Beast.
The adviser added: “We lifted content online that showed it was false, from the media and generated by ourselves, in order to help achieve a drumbeat.”
The effort is a long-time in the making, some reports show. CNN reported in June, for instance, that the DNC is monitoring disinformation daily and is alerting big tech platforms about false information.
Biden, for his part, has prodded the media into defending him in the past. His campaign tried to pressure Fox News and others in October 2019 to stop running a Trump ad addressing the former vice president’s role allegedly pressuring Ukraine to oust a prosecutor who at one time investigated a company tied to his son, Hunter Biden. He’s asked other outlets to do the same.
Trump’s campaign railed against Biden and Twitter after the social media giant labeled the edited video of the former vice president manipulated.
“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 on 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.”
The campaign has since asked Twitter to apply the same label to a tweet Biden shared March 3 before the policy against manipulated content went into place.
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