President Donald Trump posted an edited video of Nancy Pelosi on social media to show that Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, tears up his State of the Union speech repeatedly.
Nancy Pelosi appears to make tiny tears in Trump’s State of the Union speech only to rip it in half later. Trump posted a video of Speaker of the House, where she was clearly seen ripping up a copy of President Trump’s speech again and again, whereas in reality, it was just once. The video posted by Trump gives the impression that Pelosi is ripping Trump’s speech as the later saluted a Tuskegee airman in the audience. Moreover, Pelosi is ripping it every time when Trump addresses about improvements for minorities, military family reunions, young people receiving scholarships and other stories of progress made under his term. The video is titled as “Powerful American Stories Ripped to Shreds by Nanci Pelosi”.
The speakerās office demanded Facebook and Twitter to remove the video as the content was misleading.
Facebook decided against removing the Trump’s posted video, citing the video does not violate any company policies, including deepfakes. Twitter, which launched a similar safety policy on Feb 5, said its new policy does not affect till March 5, and it will not remove the Trump video under its current rules
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It further led Pelosi’s Deputy Chief of Staff Drew Hammill and a Facebook representative, Andy Stone, into a heated discussion on Twitter for not removing the video on their platform. Hammill said, “the fake video is deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people … these platforms [facebook, twitter] refuse to take it down … because they care about their shareholders.”
Hammill Took Twitter to Remind Social Media’s Interest
On Hammill’s request to take the fake video down, the Facebook representative refused to do so. Hammill tweeted to criticize the social media platform saying:
Facebook response to Hammill tweet
After Hammill’s thought, Facebook representative Andy Stone responded to his tweet as:
“Sorry, are you suggesting the President didn’t make those remarks and the Speaker didn’t rip the speech?
Andy Stone told CNBC that the companyās policies against altered video specifically refer to footage that has been edited to make it appear a person said something they didnāt say or did something they didnāt do.
Nancy Pelosi said she did the Courteous thing
As seen in the video Pelosi ripping up the speech content just after Trump had finished speaking, Pelosi said that she did theĀ courteous thing to do considering the alternatives. Before that, Trump appeared to snub Nancy when she attempted to shake his hand before his speech.Ā
Another popular social platform, YouTube said that the re-posts of the video did not violate its community policies as well. Though YouTube has removed the video from the official channel of President Donald Trump.
