Trump shares fake ISIS video – “All I know is what’s on the internet.”
During a rally in Dayton, Ohio, a man named Thomas DiMassimo jumped a security barricade and attempted to run onto the stage where Trump was giving a speech. However, thankfully, he was impeded by secret service agents.
Shortly after the incident Trump tweeted a video asserting that DiMassimo was tied to terror organisation ISIS. At the time of writing, that tweet still exists.
However, the video he tweeted was an online hoax. It turns out that DiMassimo, a prolific activist, has a sizable amount of online content centered around him that falsely associates him with various terror organisations including ISIS. Trump tweeted one of those videos, this one depicting DiMassimo’s face in front of the black and white flag with Arabic writing inscribed that is associated with ISIS, as well as video clips of DiMassimo at a demonstration with Arabic-sounding music playing.
“He was dragging a flag along the ground, and he was playing a certain type of music, and supposedly there was chatter about ISIS” Trump said.
Despite these videos, there has been no indication that DiMassimo – who hails from Atlanta, Georgia – has any legitimate ties to ISIS. It also seems rather far-fetched to believe that if he really did have such ties, he would have been released from custody after only a few hours of being arrested after running the stage in Ohio, with no indication of connections to ISIS on his arrest report.
While Trump was correct in the assertion that videos exist of DiMassimo dragging and standing on the US flag during non-violent protests, Trump’s more serious allegation that DiMassimo has ties to ISIS was completely unfounded.
If one of the leading presidential candidates blindly sharing potentially damaging and false “trial-by-social media” type content wasn’t bad enough, his response when asked about it by Meet the Press’s Chuck Todd was – for us – fingernails on a very lengthy trip down a chalkboard.
“I don’t know. What do I know about it? All I know is what’s on the internet.”
That was his response. And yes, that pretty much equates to “I saw it on the Internet and assumed it was true.” Which incidentally is a type of misguided thinking process that we’ve spend the last 7 years trying to distil.
Sure, to quote Trump, he didn’t know much about it. But that didn’t stop him publicly associating another person with a terror organisation based on online hearsay.
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In fact Trump’s entire response was essentially identical to how most people react when confronted with the fact that they’ve been sharing lies online. Get defensive, and refuse to admit any kind of fault. And also refuse to remove the offending social media post.
In fact the only thing missing from Trump was “I shared it just in case it’s true.”
We don’t get involved in political side taking. We don’t endorse any candidate or party. But if a particular candidate is going to show such blatant disregard to a subject matter that falls so firmly within our purview, then we have no problem calling then out on that.
After all, if our [potential] leaders refuse to do something as fundamentally basic as online fact checking, what sort of example is that to everybody else?
Let us know your thoughts.
Further reading/watching
Trump responds on Meet the Press
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