Donald Trump at a recent rally (Associated Press)
Yesterday Donald Trump tweeted a now-debunked video showing that the protester who jumped a barrier at a recent rally was an ISIS supporter. This morning Chuck Todd asked Trump on Meet the Press about the fake video, to which Trump replied, “I don’t know, all I know is what’s on the internet.”
Trump had stated earlier that he believed the protester to be involved in a terrorist organisation. His tweet attempted to further that narrative. “This was a guy that was looking to do harm,” Mr. Trump said in Kansas City, Missouri yesterday. “It was probably ISIS or ISIS-related, can you believe it?”
But when confronted this morning by Chuck Todd with the fact that he had tweeted a fake video, Trump basically admitted that as long as it’s on the internet, he feels absolutely no obligation to fact-check what he tweets to his 6.87 million followers.
As of this writing Trump’s tweet is still up and has received 10,242 retweets and 17,476 likes. The Trump appears to have been removed from YouTube but is still viewable on Trump’s Twitter.
Mashable has a Vine of his statement:
Protests at Trump rallies have really hit a tipping point, with large numbers of people in Chicago and Kansas City turning out to denounce what they see as a very real fascist threat to America should Trump become president.
This past week a Trump supporter sucker-punched a protester in North Carolina. The attacker would later say that perhaps the protester should have been killed. Trump has flatly said that he doesn’t accept responsibility for the violence at his rallies, but has suggested that he’ll look into paying the legal fees of the attacker in North Carolina.
Yesterday Trump said that at a rally in St. Louis, Missouri that he would ruin the lives of protestors by pressing charges and deluging them with his legal team. “Their lives are going to be ruined, and they will know their lives are going to be ruined,” Trump said.
This kind of rhetoric, of course, doesn’t help the case that Trump isn’t a crypto-fascist who would quickly quash any kind of dissent should he take office.
Trump’s rallies are now filled with the kind of security you’d find at the airport, as you can see from this photo taken this morning in Bloomington, Illinois.
TSA and police inspect people entering a Trump rally in Bloomington, Illinois this morning Associated Press)
Despite Trump’s claims that all he knows is “what’s on the internet,” we still have no documentary evidence that he has ever used a personal computer. If you have documentary evidence please send it to us: novak@gizmodo.com.
[Mashable]