"Anadolu//Getty Images The news side of The Washington Post is still clouding a mirror held under its nose despite the best efforts of Jeff Bezos and his cadre of Fleet Street refugees to kill it not merely dead but merely most sincerely dead. On Wednesday, for example, they went very deep into the current administration's predilection for self-aggrandizing fake videosor, in the Post's delightful phrase, swaggering montage[s]."
"The Department of Homeland Security posted a swaggering montage to social media in August declaring it had triumphed in its takeover of Washington, D.C. It showed footage of federal agents fighting what a DHS official called a battle for the soul of our nation and working day and night to arrest, detain and deport vicious criminals from our nation's capital."
"There was one problem. Several of the clips had been recorded during unrelated operations months earlier, in Los Angeles and West Palm Beach, Florida. The official's sound bite about deportations in D.C. played over a clip from May showing detainees on a Coast Guard boat off the coast of Nantucket, the Massachusetts island 400 miles away. I have been to Nantucket. I also have been to Washington, D.C. The two are not interchangeable."
The Department of Homeland Security posted a social-media montage asserting a takeover of Washington, D.C., showing federal agents arresting, detaining and deporting criminals. Several clips in that montage originated from unrelated operations months earlier in Los Angeles and West Palm Beach, and a sound bite about D.C. deportations was paired with footage of detainees on a Coast Guard boat off Nantucket. Officials in the administration used similarly misleading footage in at least six videos promoting immigration policy, and those viral clips have been viewed millions of times. Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin responded with a transparent smoke screen.
Read at www.esquire.com
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