"Fake news." It's a phrase which Republican president
Donald Trump has made famous. Yet more often than not, the term "fake news" has been used against him, flung at him like a missile by his detractors. Whether it's Kellyanne Conway's praising the virtue of "alternative facts" or Trump himself inventing an African nation (try and find "Nambia" on a map, go on; it's just south of Narnia), the Trump administration has ironically garnered something of a reputation for making misleading statements.
It's got to the point where you could probably make up just about any story about Donald Trump and people would take it as gospel... and unsurprisingly, that's exactly what has happened on a number of occasions. Yes, the press hasn't exactly been blameless when it comes to the issue of reporting on the man with the tan, and are just as guilty of printing or posting "alternative facts" as the White House. Scroll down to check out the seven times where the news was completely wrong about Donald Trump:
1. The Brian Ross report
In December 2017, Brian Ross, CNN's top political reporter, made the erroneous claim that Michael Flynn (Trump's former national security adviser) was expected to testify that Trump had been a presidential candidate when he contacted Russian officials. Flynn eventually pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian liaisons prior to Trump's inauguration in January 2017. Ross was criticised for his reporting, and ended up suspended for four weeks following the incident. Trump responded with the tweet: "Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and "papers" should do the same with their Fake News!"
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2. The MLK bust
Mere hours after his inauguration, Trump was already having to contend with fabricated stories about his tenure. On 20th January 2017, Time magazine reporter Zeke Miller noticed upon entering the Oval Office that a bust of former British prime minister Winston Churchill, which Obama had replaced with one of Martin Luther King, Jr, was back in its old spot. The bust of Dr King was nowhere to be seen. At 12.21 Miller tweeted that the bust was missing, but later on, at 13.14, he noticed that it had actually be obscured by a secret service agent and was still there. But it was too late and the damage was done, and soon many people made the wrongful assumption that Trump was snubbing the civil rights leader. Miller quickly corrected his own error, but Trump had the last word the next day, and stated: "So Zeke, from Time magazine, writes a story about, I took down — I would never do that, because I have great respect for Dr. Martin Luther King. But this is how dishonest the media is."
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3. The Wikileaks document
In December 2017, CNN also reported that that Trump and Donald Trump Jr had had access to hacked Wikileaks documents which they used to aid their presidential campaign. However, the news outlet fudged the dates, stating that Trump received them on 4 September 2016, not 16 September, when they were already public. Trump Jr tweeted in response: "I know you can’t help but spread #fakenews @cnn, but now that you know the truth you should have the decency to retract the false story, make the correction, take down the bs tweet, and apologise to the 2 or 3 people that still believe you to be credible."
4. The climate report
In August 2017, The New York Times falsely claimed that the Trump administration had hidden a climate report which would have contradicted his own environmental policy. However, the report they claimed Trump buried had already been publicly available for seven months. The Times added a correction and stated: "This report was uploaded to a nonprofit internet digital library in January but received little attention until it was published by The New York Times."
5. The golden handshake
News sources are always keen to seize on any footage that makes Trump look blundering and they thought they had their chance with this diplomatic meeting, in which some sneaky editing, courtesy of Newsweek, made it seem as though Polish first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda had snubbed Trump and refused to shake his hand. However, the rest of the video later surfaced and showed that Kornhauser-Duda had actually darted to shake
Melania Trump's hand first, and then Donald Trump's hand shortly afterwards, but stood at an angle which obscured this. Newsweek later posted the extended video.
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6. Feeding the fish
In November 2017, CNN (guilty again) edited this video of Donald Trump feeding fish in a pond alongside Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. The video appeared to show the two men throwing fish food out of small cardboard boxes into the mouths of the hungry fish below, and that Trump had overfed them by tipping the entire contents of his box into the water in one go. What CNN neglected to include was footage of Abe doing the exact same thing moments earlier. Oops.
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7. The secret meeting
In June 2017, before he was about to testify before congress, CNN wrongly reported that James Comey, the former FBI director who was dismissed by President Trump, was planning to dispute Trump's claim that he was told he was not under investigation. CNN later corrected the mistake, writing: "The article and headline have been corrected to reflect that Comey does not directly dispute that Trump was told multiple times he was not under investigation in his prepared testimony released after this story was published."
Perhaps the above stories will go some way towards rehabilitating Trump's image; especially since a recent report shows that his approval rating is currently 22 percentage points lower than the average modern president’s, and his net approval rating makes him the only president to have been in negative territory one year into his first term. Even small children seem to think that he's having a bad time in office, as
this hilarious Jimmy Kimmel skit shows.
