Twitter Adds Warning To Trump's Tweets As He Spreads Misinformation

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2020

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Twitter has placed a fact-checking warning on a pair of tweets issued by President Trump in which he claims without evidence that mail-in ballots are fraudulent. The label comes in the middle of a series of tweets from the president touting a conspiracy theory.

This episode: Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and political reporter Miles Parks.

Connect:
Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.
Email the show at [email protected].
Join the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.
Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.
Find and support your local public radio station

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, it's Michael for Pennsylvania. I'm a high school senior. I've been out of school for two
0:04.0	months now, but my school recently made the local news. My school's administrators still have
0:08.2	a graduation yard signs to each of the 330 seniors homes this year to recognize them, including
0:13.4	myself. And this podcast has recorded that. 206 p.m. on Wednesday, May 27th.
0:19.8	Remember, things might have changed by the time you hear this. Enjoy the show!
0:23.1	Oh, congratulations! Congratulations to Michael and all the seniors out there who aren't getting
0:31.2	to do their whole cap and gown thing. I'm bummed for you, but that's exciting. That is super sweet!
0:35.9	Hey there, it's the MPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Tamer Keith.
0:40.4	I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks, and I cover voting. And yesterday, for the first time ever,
0:46.2	Twitter fact-checked President Trump. A little blue exclamation point appeared on two of his tweets
0:52.8	that criticized mail-in voting. Miles, you're a resident voting expert. What did the President say
0:59.7	to provoke Twitter to finally draw a line on one of his tweets? Yeah, so this was a tweet yesterday
1:06.8	about just generally, started out just generally about mail-voting, basically saying that it's impossible
1:11.7	to do without substantial levels of fraud, which in of itself is false if you talk to any election
1:17.4	official or anyone who studies this stuff. But then it went on to be even more specific and President
1:22.4	Trump said, basically, that the state of California would be mailing every person, no matter who they
1:28.9	were, a ballot in November, which is just not true. California is going to be mailing every registered
1:34.4	voter a ballot in November, which is obviously a pretty key distinction. Now, what's interesting
1:39.2	here is that this isn't really new ground for President Trump, though. I mean, last week,
1:44.5	he called out the Secretary of State of Michigan for illegally sending absentee ballot registration
1:50.6	forms to people that was not illegal. So this isn't the first time he's put false information about
1:56.3	voting on his Twitter. It just seems like Twitter has made some sort of internal decision to start
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.