President Donald Trump received plenty of fuel for his ‘Fake News’ fire following 48 hours of corrections from major media outlets and their employees, regarding reports and photos that later turned out to be inaccurate.
The latest ‘Fake News’ embarrassment began on Friday morning, with a seemingly explosive CNN report indicating that the media outlet had obtained confirmation that an e-mail was sent to the Trump campaign, as well as to prominent Trump family members, offering a decryption key and link to a large quantity of hacked Democratic National Committee e-mails.
According to CNN’s sources, the e-mail was sent on September 4, 2016, nine days prior to when the hacked documents were made public by WikiLeaks.
The date of the e-mail appeared to indicate that the Trumps had been offered special, advance access to the hacked DNC e-mails, which suggested that the e-mail was a noteworthy piece of evidence in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.
President Trump (pictured Friday) called out ‘Fake News’ media following a 48 hour period that included a disproved report over an e-mail that appeared to show Trump-Russia collusion and sharing of a photo that misrepresented the size of a rally crowd
Shortly after CNN’s report, other major outlets, including MSNBC and CBS, were quick to seek out and obtain confirmation from their own sources about the e-mail’s send date before posting and airing their own news updates.
The e-mail date story went viral, being shared and retweeted thousands of times and drawing the attention of prominent political figures and other media outlets, which were quick to pick up the apparent bombshell news.
The problem, it turned out, was that the e-mail date being reported was wrong.
Hours after the CNN report surfaced, The Washington Post, which had obtained a copy of the actual e-mail, revealed that the date stamp on the e-mail was actually September 14, 2016 — the day after WikiLeaks had made the hacked e-mails public via a Twitter link, meaning that the sender of the e-mail was merely pointing the Trump campaign to widely available information.
Following CNN’s correction of the disproved e-mail date story, Trump called CNN ‘Fake News’ in a pair of tweets, wondering if the report was due to ‘gross incompetence’
In other words, the email — one of thousands Donald Trump Jr. had turned over to a House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference into the 2016 Election — revealed nothing.
By 12.46pm on Friday, CNN had started to issue corrections about the story, both online, via social media and on air. The network cited the fact that multiple sources had confirmed the incorrect September 4 date, but that the CNN reporter had not actually seen the e-mail itself.
Trump, who had been in Pensacola, Florida, for a rally on Friday, triumphantly took to Twitter on Saturday to post a pair of tweets crowing about how ‘Fake News CNN’ had been ‘caught red handed.’
‘Fake News CNN made a vicious and purposeful mistake yesterday,’ Trump tweeted at 5.02am Saturday, while wondering if the e-mail date report was due to ‘gross incompetence’ at the network.
Twenty minutes later, Trump tweeted, ‘CNN’S slogan is CNN, THE MOST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS. Everyone knows this is not true, that this could, in fact, be a fraud on the American Public. There are many outlets that are far more trusted than Fake News CNN. Their slogan should be CNN, THE LEAST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS!’
Trump got another chance to malign ‘Fake News’ just a few hours later on Saturday.
Responding to Trump’s tweet about how the Pensacola rally had been ‘packed to the rafters’ with supporters, Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel, using his personal Twitter handle, posted a photo of a barely populated arena in a seeming effort to disprove Trump’s words.
On Saturday morning, Trump tweeted about how his Florida rally was ‘packed to the rafters’
Shortly after, Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel tweeted out a picture of the arena that made it appear as though the rally was sparsely attended
A photo taken during the rally showing that the arena was, indeed, ‘packed to the rafters’
That tweet, naturally, went viral as it called to mind other instances in which Trump had seemingly overstated crowd attendance at events, such as his inauguration, which photographic evidence apparently provided otherwise.
At 2.01pm, Trump lashed out with a set of his own photos, showing that the venue was, in fact, truly ‘packed to the rafters.’
Weigel, Trump tweeted, ‘put out a phony photo of an empty arena hours before I arrived @ the venue, w/ thousands of people outside, on their way in. Real photos now shown as I spoke. Packed house, many people unable to get in. Demand apology & retraction from FAKE NEWS WaPo!’
Weigel quickly apologized on Twitter, writing at 2.04pm, ‘Sure thing: I apologize.’ He went on to say that he deleted the empty-looking crowd photo and had been ‘confused’ into thinking it represented rally attendance during the speech due to the fact that Trump could be seen in the bottom right corner.
In a later tweet, Weigel again took personal responsibility for his original tweet, writing in response to a Twitter user who questioned how much time he spent fact-checking the time the photo was taken.
He wrote: ‘It was a bad tweet on my personal account, not a story for Washington Post. I deleted it after like 20 minutes. Very fair to call me out.’
Trump quickly tweeted out pictures showing the full crowd at the rally and demanded an apology from Weigel, as well as his employer, the Washington Post
Weigel tweeted an apology minutes later, writing that he thought the photo was taken during the rally, not before it started while audience members were still loading in
In response, Trump tweeted that Weigel should be fired for having posted the ‘FAKE’ picture
Trump responded to the apology effort by demanding that Weigel be fired from his job at the Washington Post, a news outlet that Trump has frequently taken aim at.
‘@DaveWeigel of the Washington Post just admitted that his picture was a FAKE (fraud?) showing an almost empty arena last night for my speech in Pensacola when, in fact, he knew the arena was packed (as shown also on T.V.). FAKE NEWS, he should be fired,’ Trump tweeted at 3.14pm.
The disproved e-mail and crowd size story came just one week after ABC News suffered embarrassment over a report regarding former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross said in a report that aired the morning of December 1, that a source claimed that a close associate of Flynn’s was prepared to testify that Trump ‘directed him to make contact with the Russians’ during the course of the 2016 presidential race.
At around 6.30pm that day, however, Ross was on-air issuing a ‘clarification’ that the source had explained it wasn’t until after the election that ‘President-elect Trump asked [Flynn] to contact Russia on issues including working together to fight ISIS.’
ABC News suspended Ross for four weeks without pay following the incident.