Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 7, 2020
The Misinformation President
Facebook deleted the post – a clip from an interview Mr Trump gave to Fox News – saying it contained “harmful Covid misinformation”.
November 16, 2019
Twitter followed by saying it had frozen a Trump campaign account until a tweet of the same clip was removed.
US public health advice makes clear children have no immunity to Covid-19.
A Facebook spokesperson said on Wednesday evening: “This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation.”
It was the first time the social giant had taken action to remove content posted by the president based on its coronavirus-misinformation policy, but not the first time it has penalised Mr Trump over content on his page.
Speaking by telephone to morning show Fox and Friends on Wednesday, Mr Trump argued it was time for all schools nationwide to reopen.
He said: “If you look at children, children are almost – and I would almost say definitely – almost immune from this disease. (BBC)
After 1,267 days, President Trump had made 20,055 false or misleading claims according to the Washington Post on a website devoted to chronicling his misinformation. Some of the most repeated claims include the following:
January 24, 2017
“We built the greatest economy in history, not only for our country, but for the world. We were number one, by far.”
“And we’re also — on the southern border, as you know, the wall is going up. It’s going up very rapidly. We’re at 182 miles.”
“My job was made harder by phony witch hunts, by ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ nonsense.”
“The Ukraine thing was a hoax. It was a pure hoax.”
“China was ripping off this country, $530 billion a year, think of it, 530 billion a year ripping us up for years.” (Washington Post)
“Graeme MacKay makes more of an observation than a wisecrack, and, since he’s Canadian, it’s not simply based on party affiliation. Trump definitely falls under the category of “Sometimes in error, never in doubt,” and it’s an open question of how much of his misinformation is deliberate and how much is misremembered facts or wishful thinking. It starts with the simple fact that we elected a bullshit artist.”