Justin Baragona reports for Mediaite: Last night, CNN tried to catch Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in a heavily compromising position over comments he made at a rally in Colorado. There was only one catch — Trump didn’t say what they thought he said. And, when the network realized the mistake, they tried to stealthily cover it up.
In the online story of the rally, CNN used a headline that stated that the real estate mogul urged his supporters in the state to vote multiple times. Check out the screengrab below of the original post.
In the original article, they highlighted Trump saying the following:
“If you go to university center, they’ll give you a new ballot, they’ll void your old ballot, in some places they do that four or five times, so by tomorrow, almost everyone will have their new ballots in.”
Yeah, that’s pretty damning, right? It sure as hell seems like the GOP candidate is pressing his followers to try to cast multiple ballots. Yet, it takes away the context, in which Trump says that they won’t do that.
Here is what he actually said.
“If you go to university center, they’ll give you a new ballot, they’ll void your old ballot. They’ll give you a new ballot, and you can go out and make sure it get’s in. Now in some places, they do that four or five times, but we don’t do that. So by tomorrow, almost everyone will have their new ballots in.”
Somewhere along the way, someone must have noticed this at CNN and stealth edited the piece, changing the entire quote. It now reads as follows:
“They’ll give you a ballot, a new ballot. They’ll void your old ballot, they will give you a new ballot. And you can go out and make sure it gets in,” Trump said.
Registered voters in Colorado automatically receive a ballot in the mail, but can request a new ballot or vote in person if they have not yet mailed in a completed ballot.
“In some places they probably do that four or five times. We don’t do that. But that’s great,” Trump said Sunday, appearing to hint at the possibility of voter fraud in Colorado, a rare prospect Trump has continued to hammer on the stump.
And the title has now been changed:
As of publication, the piece shows it was updated at 8:27 PM ET, but makes no mention of the actual changes that were made. There exists no editor’s note or acknowledgement of the entire premise of the piece being completely changed, revealing a stealth edit.
If CNN does make mention of the significant edits made to the story, we will update. We have reached out to the network for comment.
Please see video of Trump speaking above, via CNN.
UPDATED 9:03 PM: The original title of our own article was changed to highlight CNN’s stealth edits.
UPDATED 9:42 PM: CNN updated their article at 9:36 PM ET to provide a correction at the bottom of the piece, stating that the story and headline have been changed to reflect Trump’s actual comments.
CORRECTION: This story and headline have been corrected to accurately reflect Donald Trump’s statement about mail-in balloting in Colorado
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UPDATED 9:59 PM: CNN tweeted the original article with the false title at 7:33 PM ET. As of now, the tweet is still up, and is shown below. The first stealth edit was done at 8:27 PM ET and the acknowledgement of the edits was made at 9:36 PM ET.
Donald Trump, skeptical of mail-in balloting, encourages voting more than once if necessary https://t.co/NGZnp7VcqY pic.twitter.com/Ng9RJ9SU4l
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 30, 2016
UPDATED 10:10 PM: CNN deleted the tweet (which had been retweeted 926 times) around 10:07 PM ET. The tweet was up for over two and a half hours. Below is a screenshot of it.
Read more at Mediaite.
{Matzav.com}
