Just to catch you up, after President Trump’s tantrum performance yesterday and the exchange with Jim Acosta, Sarah Sanders last night accused Acosta of inappropriately touching a young female intern, as a way of upping the ante in another of the White House’s victim gambits. This was followed by revoking Acosta’s access to the White House. Half in jest I put together a close up of the video to illustrate how preposterous the whole thing was. Sanders later shared a doctored clip of the incident which was apparently produced by Infowars, the white supremacist conspiracy site, to further the smear. At a minimum, the doctored video was shared by Infowars a couple hours before it was distributed by the White House.
Here’s my video. Again, with a bit of jest added in but I think it makes quite clear what happened.
Okay, this smear by @PressSec was so awful and I like nerding out on Final Cut so much that I had go full Zapruder here. Look at the "placing his hands on a young woman" she's referring to which is clearly the exact opposite of what she claims. cc: @Acosta pic.twitter.com/2HvJ3CgmlW
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 8, 2018
Here’s Sanders sharing the doctored video.
We stand by our decision to revoke this individual’s hard pass. We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video. pic.twitter.com/T8X1Ng912y
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 8, 2018
If you watch the doctored video it’s quite clear that part of it is accelerated to make it look like Acosta is “chopping” at the intern.
Helpfully, a guy from Slate actually did a side by side where you can see the doctoring quite closely.
Further analysis: video is absolutely doctored. You can see the edit when the clips are side by side and slowed down to quarter speed. See for yourself: pic.twitter.com/4ZZrzhislg
— Aymann Ismail (@aymanndotcom) November 8, 2018
