2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign released a video in March deceptively depicting President Donald Trump calling the coronavirus a “hoax.” Twitter refused to label or take the video down, in accordance with its manipulated media policies.
In retaliation, Trump’s campaign released a four-second clip on April 2 of Joe Biden speaking, with the audio manipulated to make it appear as if Biden had called the virus a hoax. Biden’s campaign fought back, lobbying Twitter to take this down. TJ Ducklo, Biden’s National Press Secretary, tweeted, “Disinformation and deceptively manipulated media have no place in our public discourse, and must not be tolerated in this campaign. The Trump campaign should take this video down, and if they won't, Twitter should remove it immediately.”
Twitter informed the Trump campaign that it would not remove the video, according to Fox News.
However, previously, Twitter appeared to be protecting Biden. Liberal media outlets condemned the video of Biden as deceptively edited to show his stammering through a campaign rally. White House social media director Dan Scavino had his tweet slapped with a “manipulated media” label and a link to “more info” by the platform.
When Biden’s campaign released the video on March 13 that was edited to show Trump calling the virus a hoax, even the liberal media found it false. The Washington Post’s fact-checker gave the video Four Pinocchios. Team Trump tweeted, “The media is giving a pass to a pro-Biden TV ad that doctors and deceptively edits audio of President Trump, even though every independent fact-checker said President Trump DID NOT call the coronavirus a hoax.”
Twitter did not label the Biden campaign video as manipulated media.
Trump spokesperson Matt Wolking told Fox News that the Trump campaign would be taking the video down anyway, but only if the Biden campaign and its supporting groups took down their respective videos in return.
