Biden campaign blasts Twitter for refusing to sanction retaliatory ‘hoax’ Trump ad

Joe Biden’s campaign blasted Twitter on Friday for refusing to sanction a video released by President Trump’s campaign that was deliberately manipulated to make it sound like the former vice president called the coronavirus a “hoax.”

Biden never called the coronavirus a “hoax” and the audio clips that have been spliced together are from different days.

The Trump campaign released the video in an effort to draw attention to what it views as Twitter’s double standard in enforcing its manipulated media policy. Team Trump has been pressuring Twitter to penalize Democratic ads that show Trump calling the coronavirus a “hoax,” a depiction that fact-checkers call misleading.

Twitter has refused to sanction the Democrats’ ads.

On Friday, a Twitter spokesperson told The Hill that they would also not do anything about the deliberately misleading Trump campaign video.

Biden spokesman Bill Russo told The Hill the decision is “inexcusable.”

“Twitter was dared to act on a piece of disinformation that clearly violates their rules, and they blinked,” Russo said. “Twitter has taken admirable steps in recent days to take action on tweets from the President of Brazil, Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and Rudy Giuliani that have spread disinformation that endangers public health in the midst of this crisis — which makes it all the more inexplicable and inexcusable that they are failing to act on this.”

The new Trump campaign video is styled after an ad released by the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, which featured audio of Trump describing the coronavirus as a “hoax.”

Trump’s full quote was, “Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs, you say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ ‘Oh, nothing, nothing.’ They have no clue, they don’t have any clue. … And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that’s been pretty amazing.”

Fact-checkers at The Washington Post, Snopes, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org have determined that it is false to claim that Trump called the virus a hoax. Rather, they say Trump used the term while talking about Democratic efforts to politicize the virus.

The Trump campaign says it released the new Biden “hoax” audio to see if Twitter would enforce its manipulated media standards evenly on both sides.

“Twitter has so far effectively instituted a ‘Biden protection rule,’ refusing to apply their manipulated media label to video and audio of President Trump that every independent fact checker says is false,” a Trump campaign official said. “This tweet forces the issue and makes Twitter decide. It can enforce its arbitrary rules fairly and equally, or it can have its policy exposed as totally ineffective or a partisan sham. It’s their move.”

The Trump campaign says it will remove the misleading Biden “hoax” audio as soon as the Democrats remove the misleading Trump “hoax” one.

The Washington Post gave the Biden campaign’s video 4 Pinocchios for deceptively manipulated media, but you still defend it.

If you really believe what you’re saying, take your video down. https://t.co/QbNmyUGsq9 https://t.co/mVKFVTb44Z

— Matt Wolking (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@MattWolking) April 2, 2020

The Biden campaign is fuming at Twitter because it is refusing to sanction media that the Trump campaign itself has described as deliberately false.

“The Trump campaign is proudly boasting that their video is deceptive and fraudulent, which is shameful,” Russo said. “But the real damage here will come from their supporters, who will no doubt share the media as if it was true. We have seen this play before. Twitter has a responsibility to explain they will prevent the spread of this intentionally seeded disinformation on their platform.”