CNN says Trump retweet mocking the network exploits 'innocent children'

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 19 June 2020

Twitter labeled a video retweeted by President Trump on Thursday night "manipulated media," after determining it violated company policy.

The video uses footage that went viral last year of a black toddler and a white toddler enthusiastically greeting one another on a sidewalk. A fake CNN chyron has been added that reads, "Terrified todler [sic] runs from racist baby." The original clip is then shown, followed by the words: "America is not the problem. Fake News is."

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Twitter spokeswoman Katie Rosborough told The Washington Post the tweet "has been labeled per our synthetic and manipulated media policy to give people more context." In May, Twitter for the first time labeled two of Trump's tweets, about mail-in ballots, as being misleading. A few days later, the company put his tweet about looters being shot under a warning that says it "violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence." Critics have been calling on Twitter and other social media platforms to do something about the rampant disinformation being spread about everything from politics to the coronavirus.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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