White House Stands Behind Apparently Doctored Video Of CNN’s Jim Acosta

Jim Acosta of CNN waits to do a live shot following the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Jim Acosta of CNN waits to do a live shot following the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stood by her tweet of an apparently doctored video of CNN’s Jim Acosta, manipulated to make it appear that he got physical with a White House press intern.

“The question is: did the reporter make contact or not?,” Sanders said in a statement Thursday. “The video is clear, he did. We stand by our statement.”

The video appears to be taken from fringe far-right website InfoWars to make it look like Acosta chopped down on the intern’s arm. In reality, she reached into his personal space repeatedly to grab his microphone, which he held onto as he tried to get President Donald Trump to answer his question.

The White House has used the fabricated physical altercation as grounds to revoke Acosta’s press pass, a move that reporters of all stripes and ideologies have condemned.

 

Latest News

Notable Replies

  1. Will Sanders resign before or after the Dems take control of the House, and have the power to call her to testify? I’m betting on the former.

  2. Avatar for mrf mrf says:

    What’s even more bizarre is that Sanders
    took it from the loony Alex Jones.
    This is akin to a press secretary in a prior administration mouthing the inanities of the John Birch Society.
    “Fluoridation!”

  3. That poor woman

  4. Avatar for ghost ghost says:

    Sarah, a whole lot of people saw what happened live. A whole lot of people saw the recording of what happened within minutes of its occurrence. Sadly, the Infowars crowd and credulous devotees might believe the imagined version, but the real world saw the real version.

    Trumpers don’t seem to understand the concept of video recording.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

86 more replies

Participants

Avatar for fgs Avatar for ghost Avatar for cervantes Avatar for krusher Avatar for steviedee111 Avatar for becca656 Avatar for callmeeric Avatar for pabodie Avatar for schmed Avatar for dddinah Avatar for darrtown Avatar for tena Avatar for clauscph Avatar for jim195 Avatar for dgsantafe Avatar for dannydorko Avatar for aiddon Avatar for eisenst Avatar for the_loan_arranger Avatar for dominic Avatar for godwit Avatar for pwmesq Avatar for rascal_crone Avatar for fredbelanger

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: