On Tuesday Donald Trump went full George Orwell and created the memory hole in the real world. You may recall one of the most famous lines in “1984” “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Trump decided to do just that. He gutted two Newsweek articles and presented them on Truth Social in such a manner as to present the reality he wanted MAGA to see under the Newsweek logo. Meidas Touch:
For the second time Tuesday, Trump has reposted a manipulated Newsweek article, this one titled, “Joe Biden’s Chances vs. Donald Trump ‘Slim at Best’: Major Pollster.”
Trump shared screenshots of the article which shows the Newsweek logo, title, and byline, but with unfavorable portions removed from the body of the article.
In 1984 fashion, Trump MAGA-sanitized the article by removing the following unfavorable information:
1. A reference to a polling company that predicted Joe Biden would win the 2020 election
2. In 2020, Joe Biden won the popular vote “by 4.5 percent in what was a record-breaking turnout”
3. Trump had a 43.1% approval rating at this same point in his presidency
4. Robert Hur “said criminal charges were not warranted against Biden”
Trump scrubbed anything positive about Biden and anything negative about himself in the Newsweek article and reposted it as screenshots to pass it off as authentic.
This wasn’t the first time today this happened. Trump also manipulated another Newsweek article earlier today.
That leads to the next logical thought, is Newsweek or any mainstream periodical or outlet that Trump chooses to do this with going to challenge it legally? Or, are they going to let it slide?
Paul Mellon sits on the board of the company that controls Newsweek. He and other members of his family and other wealthy Republican scions are throwing large amounts of cash at both RFK, Jr. and Dean Phillips, because they are spoiler campaigns meant to undermine Joe Biden’s reelection.
So is the phony revision of Newsweek articles on Truth Social going to go unaddressed? I don’t know, but I would say that there’s a good chance. I think it behooves us to keep an eye out for other news outlets of some credibility being manipulated in this manner.
The year may be 2024 but we may have finally hit the era of Ingsoc and Oceania and all of it. Stunning to think about but look at what just happened here in the past 48 hours.
Goebbels would be proud! Make Germany…er…America great again! Now when can we start building those special ‘Work Will Set You Free’ camps? Time to wake up America…the house is on fire!!!!
You ask whether Newsweek will kick up a fuss or “let it slide.” I think that’s obvious – they’ll let it slide.
I would like to know if those media companies can sue the shite out of the Orange Face Brown Pants pathological liar. Since all of RNC monies will go for legal defence we can see them cease to exist also.
since the owner is a MAGA, he probably okayed it ahead of time.
They’ll think of it as good publicity for their publications. “Hey guys, look, MAGAs are finally reading our magazine. We knew they never knew it existed. We thought they couldn’t read anything longer than 240 characters. Who knew?”
Hmm. I thought you were only allowed to post three paragraphs from an article. If he did that, he could be sued for copyright infringement.
What you’re referring to is what’s called Fair Use. And that amount of paragraphs is not carved in stone. This is something different. This is citing to a source and altering that source’s story. Now if he had done it with ellipses to indicate that material was being omitted, that might work. But the real point here is that by omitting what he did, he changed the story entirely. That’s deception and fraud, any way that you cut it.