Trump camp splices words into disabled man's interview with Joe Biden

[davidgillon]

Well, I guess we know just how far into the gutter the Trump Camp is willing to sink.

Ady Barkan, who speaks with a speech synthesizer, interviewed Joe Biden, and someone on 2nd ranking House Republican Steve Scalize's team reworded the clip using the same synthesized voice so Barkan appears to ask Biden to defund the police, and Biden then agrees, which Scalize then tweeted out.

Twitter labelled the tweet a fake and Barkan called on Scalize to delete it, which Scalize has now done, but in such a way that it appears there was nothing wrong with it. Meanwhile a spokesman for Scalize has defended it to the Washington Post as just normal cutting to the essence of the clip, which - whoops - confirms it was done in his office.

It takes real talent to outdo Trump on being openly ableist, but Scalize seems to not just have managed it, but to take pleasure in it.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/31/ady-barkan-steve-scalise-doctored-video-disability-biden

 

Comments

[sovay]

Well, I guess we know just how far into the gutter the Trump Camp is willing to sink.

I thought the answer was all the way.

Blood in their throats.

[davidgillon]

Unsounded depths etc!

ETA: Well, we can always hope they exceed their safe depth limits and suffer a catastrophic implosion.

[sovay]

Well, we can always hope they exceed their safe depth limits and suffer a catastrophic implosion.

From your mouth to the laws of physics' ears!

[vass]

Welp. This isn't only an ableism problem, either. The technology for doing that with non-synthesised voices is pretty fucking near ready to roll out.

[hilarita]

Given they'd already done a deeply misleading cut of Biden, and their utter disregard for everyone who doesn't believe the Prosperity Gospel, this doesn't surprise.

It *might* manage to stay in the top 10 shitty campaign things they've done, but given they're *also* managing "let's have live events indoors right now with no masks" (which will likely kill people), there's going to be some pretty hefty competition.

It definitely doesn't make it into the top 10 shitty things Trump has done (ICE, his general handling of Covid...), because there's such a fucking long list of deeply shitty things.