Donald Trump White House caught tweeting fake news about Hurricane Irma
Donald Trump loves accusing the media of being “fake news” any time it accurately reports something he doesn’t like. But most of the time it’s Trump and his own team pushing fake news, phony conspiracies, and other nonsense. This time around the Trump White House posted a tweet about Hurricane Irma damage that contained fake information, before deleting it. The incident calls into serious question whether Trump is even receiving accurate information about what’s going on with the storm.
Dan Scavino, who describes himself as the “Director of Social Media” for the Donald Trump White House, posted a tweet in which he announced that he’s “Sharing Hurricane Irma on social media with President Donald Trump & VP Pence hourly.” Okay, so we know this is the guy who’s in charge of getting information about Irma to Trump and Pence. Then he added “Here is Miami International Airport” along with a video of a flooded airport.
The trouble: the video wasn’t of Miami International Airport. We know this because the official Twitter account for Miami International Airport responded with “This video is not from Miami International Airport” (link). At that point Scavino deleted his original phony tweet and replaced it with “Thank you. It was among 100s of videos/pics I am receiving re: Irma from public. In trying to notify all, I shared – have deleted. Be safe!” (link). But Scavino posted it as a reply, meaning that while many people saw his original phony tweet, very few people likely saw his acknowledgement of the error.
Again, in the same tweet in which Dan Scavino posted a video of Miami International Airport that wasn’t actually of Miami International Airport, he also proudly bragged that he was the one giving hourly social media updates to Donald Trump about Hurricane Irma. In other words, Trump is being fed fake news about the hurricane – and that’s phenomenally dangerous.
