WCCO smears Trump with fake news on Minnesota Freedom Fund
It was the tweet heard-round-the-world. At 5:30 p.m. yesterday, the local CBS affiliate, WCCO TV Channel 4 posted this on Twitter (X):
Those 14 words have generated a firestorm. The post quickly attracted a community note. Actually, a series of community notes have appeared, in rotation, each debunking the debunking. Here’s one:
As of 3 p.m. on Friday, the original WCCO post had attracted nearly 8 million views. Among the more than 15,000 replies to the post were many from large, national accounts:
This account screenshots the (in)famous Kamala Harris tweet sent during the 2020 George Floyd riots. The post is still available on Harris’ X and Facebook pages.
Andy is from Portland, Oregon. Another account posted a link to an interview done by the actual WCCO reporter in question, Esme Murphy, a couple of years ago with Vice President Harris on the very subject of Harris’ support of the Minnesota Freedom Fund:
With this national attention, “WCCO” began to trend nationally, peaking as high as #8 in the United States:
On Friday morning, the man himself, Elon Musk, the owner of X, posted this:
Musk included a screenshot of the WCCO post, with a community note attached. Within 90 minutes, the Musk post had accumulated more than 10 million views. As of 3 p.m. on Friday, the Musk post had 31 million views.
The claim of the CBS eyeball news affiliate is so obviously untrue, it meets the textbook definition of “fake news.”
Let’s break it down. Here is the headline on the actual news piece WCCO reported yesterday:
The headline repeats the same CBS claim made in the WCCO tweet. Trump himself has made no such claim.
The starting point for this story is a speech former President Trump gave at a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on Wednesday. A video of the entire four-hour rally is available here.
The entire sequence takes up less than 60 seconds. At no point does Trump use the word “donation” or any derivative or synonym. He also never mentions the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) by name.
At the 3:37:03 mark, regarding Harris, Trump points out that “she helped raise” $millions for the cause. He appears to be referring to the tweet shown above, from June 1, 2020. Here’s the full tweet:
A few seconds later, at 3:37:17, Trump says that “she was giving them money.” If you go to the 2020 post, still available, and click on the MFF logo shown above, you are redirected to this landing page, still available on the ActBlue website, and under a tab that reads, “Minnesota Freedom Fund — Donate via AB [ActBlue] charities.” The page appears to still be functional:
This donation page is branded with Harris’ name and likeness. “Kamal Harris For The People” was the name of Harris’ failed Presidential bid during the 2020 cycle.
The page facilitates your donation, via her account, to the Minnesota Freedom Fund. The page uses the word “donate,” “donation,” and “contribution,” all beneath her name and beside her photo.
This landing page is not the official MPP donation page. MPP uses NGP Van to process their donations. This is Harris’ personal donation page.
WCCO appears to be attempting to construct some type of “distinction without a difference” between the act of giving cash from your own pocket, on the one hand, and lending your name and likeness to efforts to solicit, facilitate, and redirect cash donations from others to a favored charity.
Every word that Trump uttered on this subject in Charlotte is literally true, in every sense. The actual on-air report delivered by Esme Murphy on Channel 4 last night is slightly more nuanced than the headline or the anchor’s introduction to her piece.
To defend her thesis, she relies on this statement issued by the Minnesota Freedom Fund:
The statement itself is undated and does not even mention Trump. In addition, the second sentence is completely false, as documented above. The Fund’s ActBlue donation page continues to link Harris and MFF.
Buckle up! We still have 102 days to go.
A video version of this post can be seen here.