Over the weekend, you may have heard about an inflammatory quote by President Donald Trump which unfavorably compared a former American Vice President to a North Korean leader:
“Kim Jong Un is smarter and would make a better President than Sleepy Joe Biden,” the President said.
Wow. That’s pretty bad. I mean, it would be, if he had actually said this. The source of the quote was Timemagazine columnist and editor-at-large Ian Bremmer. When Bremmer tweeted this “quote,” it went super viral. Suddenly members of the media and anti-Trumpers had even more ammunition to use against the President.
Media Matters’ Andrew Lawrence, Democratic Representative Ted Lieu, and CNN’s Ana Navarro all lamented Trump’s quote, not realizing Bremmer had made the quote up.
At first, Bremmer said it was some sort of satirical post, but finally he admitted that this was an “objectively ludicrous quote” and deleted it… after several hours.
I think he missed a class on satire. If you’re a columnist for Time, you really shouldn’t be making up fake quotes just too get retweets. But it seems that what Bremmer did.
That doesn’t do much to dissuade us of the reality of this Fake News phenomenon we hear so much about.
President Trump, of course, responded on Twitter. “.@ianbremmer now admits that he MADE UP ‘a completely ludicrous quote,’ attributing it to me. This is what’s going on in the age of Fake News. People think they can say anything and get away with it. Really, the libel laws should be changed to hold Fake News Media accountable!”
I love to see President Trump holding these guys accountable. I just regret that he has to do it so frequently.
Image Credit: Gage Skidmore on Flicker
Hat Tip: The Daily Wire