Trump campaign provokes Twitter with edited Biden clip to challenge its 'manipulated media' policy

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The Trump campaign challenged Twitter on Thursday over its update policies by sharing a manipulated video of former Vice President Joe Biden calling the coronavirus a "hoax."

For weeks, the Trump campaign has blasted the Biden campaign after it released an attack ad accusing President Trump of calling the growing outbreak a "hoax" during a campaign rally when he was actually comparing the outrage fueled by his political opponents over the Russia investigation and the Ukraine scandal, which he referred to as "hoaxes."

Supporters of the president have accused Twitter of setting a double standard after the platform labeled a clip posted by White House social media director Dan Scavino "manipulated" that showed Biden saying "we can only reelect Donald Trump" out of context but left the Biden ad of Trump alone.

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That prompted the Trump campaign to share an edited audio clip of Biden saying "the coronavirus is a hoax."

"The media is giving a pass to a pro-Biden TV ad that doctors and deceptively edits audio of President Trump, even though every independent fact checker said President Trump DID NOT call the coronavirus a hoax. Joe Biden, on the other hand? This sounds authentic…" the "Trump War Room" tweeted.

The Biden campaign quickly condemned the video, calling it "wildly irresponsible."

"Disinformation and deceptively manipulated media have no place in our public discourse, and must not be tolerated in this campaign. The Trump campaign should take this video down, and if they won't, Twitter should remove it immediately," Biden national press secretary TJ Ducklo said.

Following an inquiry, Twitter informed the Trump campaign that the clip "will not be labeled under our synthetic and manipulated media policy.”

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“It’s clearer than ever that Twitter is not equipped to police political videos. If it is going to attempt to, it must begin to enforce the rules transparently, fairly, and equally. Regardless of Twitter’s arbitrary and ineffective rules, splicing video or audio together to make it appear as though someone said something that they never actually said should be out of bounds," Trump campaign spokesperson Matt Wolking told Fox News.

He said, "In that spirit, we will voluntarily take down our video of Joe Biden saying, ‘The coronavirus is a hoax’ once the Biden campaign, its super PAC Unite the Country, and supporting groups Fellow Americans and Priorities USA take down their deceptively edited and doctored videos of President Trump. Until then, turnabout is fair play.”