During Donald Trump’s absolutely bonkers press conference Wednesday that he held ostensibly to gloat about the GOP’s “victory” in Tuesday’s midterm elections, there was a moment that has left an indelible mark on the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press.
During an exchange with CNN reporter Jim Acosta — who has been one of only a handful of reporters to have actually stood up verbally to a White House that continuously belittles, obstructs, and incites violence against the press — Trump motioned for an aide to come take away the microphone Acosta was speaking into so that he could not finish his line of questioning.
Now, if you’re a regular reader of DC Tribune, you know that our coverage leans to the left, as we are not the biggest fans of this administration. But that’s as plain vanilla a description as one can possibly apply to what happened: Acosta was speaking, a woman came over to take the microphone away from him, he said “Pardon me, ma’am,” and she stopped her attempt to take away the microphone, kneeling down out of the eye line of the cameras.
But this White House hates Jim Acosta, and you can find the reason why in the second paragraph of this story. They have long been looking for a reason to assert authority over the press and Jim in particular and used the interaction as an excuse to take away the veteran reporter’s “hard pass” (ID badge used to get into the White House) by claiming that he assaulted the aide who came over and accosted him:
President Trump believes in a free press and expects and welcomes tough questions of him and his Administration. We will, however, never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern…
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 8, 2018
As a result of today’s incident, the White House is suspending the hard pass of the reporter involved until further notice.
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 8, 2018
Then Sanders took it a step further. She tweeted a video — not retweeted, but uploaded it on her own — that purported to “prove” that Acosta had acted inappropriately. She even used footage from C-SPAN, or so it appeared:
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
Now, setting aside the fact that even the video Sanders uploaded does not appear to depict anything other than Acosta being surprised by the aide’s action — if he was Tom Brady, she would have been called for roughing the passer — the most disturbing thing about Sanders’ tweet is that the video she uploaded has been doctored:
1) Took @PressSec Sarah Sanders’ video of briefing
2) Tinted red and made transparent over CSPAN video
3) Red motion is when they doctored video speed
4) Sped up to make Jim Acosta’s motion look like a chop
5) I’ve edited video for 15+ years
6) The White House doctored it pic.twitter.com/q6arkYSx0V— Rafael Shimunov 🔥 (@rafaelshimunov) November 8, 2018
Shimunov later corrected himself to note that the White House did not alter the video, they used another source, and that has been backed up by multiple analysts today, including in a report from NBC this morning:
Where did she get the video? Infowars: https://t.co/0xuQFT7lm5
— Aymann Ismail (@aymanndotcom) November 8, 2018
Infowars, of course, is the white supremacist, conspiracy theorist site founded by Alex Jones, with its sister site Prison Planet currently being manned by noted alt-Right activist Paul Joseph Watson. Just to get you in the right frame of reference, these are the people who advanced the conspiracy theories that the mass killing of first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary was a hoax perpetrated by the government in order to take away your guns, and that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were running a child sex ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor (that had no basement).
And just to give you an idea of what lending credibility to these conspiracies can result in — the “Pizzagate” theory ended with a man taking an assault rifle to the actual real-world pizza shop in Washington DC and firing multiple rounds so he could “free the children” trapped in the nonexistent basement.
This White House is shepherding us into fascism. That’s not a leftward slant on the news — that’s a factual statement. They are using literal propaganda to justify suppressing the actual Constitution of the United States.
The year 1984 was when Sarah Sanders turned two. The book “1984” is happening now.
Featured image via screen capture
