WaPo Editorial Board: Why it's so alarming that Trump shared an edited video of Pelosi

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

Why it’s so alarming that Trump shared an edited video of Pelosi

By Editorial Board May 24 at 3:13 PM

DID PRESIDENT TRUMP share a fake clip of Nancy Pelosi? The seemingly simple question is a vexing one to answer. Passing judgment on his behavior is less challenging.

Conservative accounts on social media circulated a clip this week deliberately distorted to make it seem as if the speaker of the House was slurring her speech: “Drunk as a skunk,” commentators declared. The video, which some declared a “deepfake,” employed much too simple technology to merit that term. Deepfakes use artificial intelligence to synthesize human images into a reality that is entirely fabricated; the smear of Ms. Pelosi merely slowed down parts of an existing interview and modified her pitch.

The clip Mr. Trump tweeted alongside the words “PELOSI STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE” was part of the same narrative, but it was not distorted, or even doctored, so much as it was edited. The clip splices together short segments of Ms. Pelosi (D-Calif.) stuttering in a lowlight reel that offered a misleading impression of a perfectly coherent 21-minute news conference. Mr. Trump did not make this video, or pull it from the right-wing fever swamps of social media. He took it instead from the fever swamp of Fox Business Network.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/social-platforms-cant-fix-a-president-intent-on-deceiving-the-public/2019/05/24/e55fb5d0-7e43-11e9-8bb7-0fc796cf2ec0_story.html

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. Speaker Pelosi on her worst day...

...is head and shoulders above the Orange Maggot.

I love the way she reels out the rope that will eventually hang Trump.

[C_U_L8R]

2. Pushing doctored videos seems so Stalinesque

Or rather Putinesque

[riversedge]

3. "He (trump) took it instead from the fever swamp of Fox Business Network."

I feel that each day, our nation is sinking further into Trumps stinking swamp.

The clip Mr. Trump tweeted alongside the words “PELOSI STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE” was part of the same narrative, but it was not distorted, or even doctored, so much as it was edited. The clip splices together short segments of Ms. Pelosi (D-Calif.) stuttering in a lowlight reel that offered a misleading impression of a perfectly coherent 21-minute news conference. Mr. Trump did not make this video, or pull it from the right-wing fever swamps of social media. He took it instead from the fever swamp of Fox Business Network.