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White House Uses Footage Allegedly Doctored By Infowars To Justify Jim Acosta Suspension

By Lea van der Merwe
Published on: 02:52 PST, Nov 8, 2018

Following a dispute between U.S. President Donald Trump and Jim Acosta of CNN at a White House press conference, the journalist was booted out of the grounds and had his press credentials revoked.

Since the incident, the White House has released footage of Acosta supposedly getting physical with a White House intern who tried to take the microphone away from him as he attempted to ask the president questions. Unfortunately for White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who shared the footage to Twitter, it appears that the clip in question was doctored by conspiracy-theory loving outlet Infowars, according to Business Insider.

During the exchange, Acosta held tight to the microphone as the intern tried to take it away, and continued to ask questions of the president. NBC broadcast the conference live, and it shows Acosta gently blocking the intern as she reached over him to try and take the microphone while he continued to talk.

Meanwhile, the footage shared by Sanders seems to show him roughly pushing her away in a repeated slow-motion clip.

Sanders captioned the footage, “We stand by our decision to revoke this individual’s hard pass. We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video.”

The video footage shared by Sanders was first shared by Paul Joseph Watson a couple of hours earlier. Watson happens to be the editor-at-large at Infowars. Content from the site has been banned from a number of different social media sites in the past few months, including Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple, usually as a result of spewing hate speech.

Others on Twitter quickly picked up on Sanders’ source and immediately began to question the fact that she was trusting Infowars with a source of that nature.

“Question for @PressSec: Where’d you obtain the distorted @Acosta video you posted? Infowars personality @PrisonPlanet posted the same video two hours before you did. Surely you don’t trust Infowars…?” wrote Brian Stelter.

Some posted the two clips side by side to show the obvious difference between the live broadcast and the footage Sanders had shared.

Allie Maloy also responded to Watson’s original tweet with, “This is a complete lie. The woman grabbed Jim’s arm repeatedly. He never once touched her. In fact at one point @Acosta tells her politely “pardon me, mam” as she’s yanking on his arm.”

While Sanders tried to defend the decision to revoke Acosta’s press pass, the live footage from NBC shows Trump laying into the journalist, telling him that CNN should be ashamed of employing him, calling Acosta a “rude, terrible person, the way you treat Sarah Huckabee is horrible.”

When another journalist tried to come to Acosta’s defense, Trump’s response was “Well I’m not a big fan of yours either, to be honest.”

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