Video experts keep coming forward to explain how conspiracy theorists doctored the video of CNN’s Jim Acosta at Donald Trump’s Monday press conference, a video the White House then pushed out to claim it was justified in yanking Acosta’s press pass. The White House wants us to believe that Acosta karate chopped an intern as she tried to get him to give up the microphone because Trump didn’t want to answer tough questions.
There are two big problems with this position. First, those video experts, like the one consulted by the Associated Press who said that the frames were sped up to make it look like Acosta’s arm moved faster than it did and then other frames were frozen so that the doctored video and the original were the same length. Donald Trump is insisting that “It was not doctored. They gave a close up. That’s not doctored,” but Trump is 1) not an expert on video alterations and 2) a giant liar.
The distribution of a video doctored by right-wing conspiracy theorists followed by the attempt to deny that the video was doctored is not the only issue here. There’s also Donald Trump’s flunkies getting all self-righteous about what it claims Acosta did, which he did not do.
According to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Team Trump “will never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.” About that. Just last month, Trump himself got all enthusiastic about Montana Rep. Greg Gianforte body slamming a reporter, saying “Any guy that can do a body slam he's my kind of guy.” So, per the White House, an intentional violent attack on a reporter makes you “my kind of guy,” but an accidental brush of the arm caused by the White House intern reaching across Acosta to try to snatch a microphone out of his hands is “a reporter placing his hands on a young woman” which will not be tolerated.
One lie supported by another lie resting on a bed of outrage about fictional violence that is still less than what Trump would support a Republican doing in reality to a reporter. You can’t say these people don’t have layers, I guess, it’s just that the layers are always made of dishonesty.