In a republican primary that’s this close, misinformation or outright lies are bound to be passed around. We all fall prey to being fooled by a story now and then.
Unlike you and I, presidential campaigns have fact checkers and opposition researchers whose sole job is to dig through who did or said what. Unfortunately, even the best hired staff doesn’t keep Donald Trump from tweeting.
This afternoon, the businessman tweeted the following (now deleted):
The only problem, however, was that Senator Tom Coburn never said any such thing and called the tweet an “absolute fabrication.” Dan Scavino, the writer of the tweet Trump retweeted, is Trump’s social media director.
Considering the fact that Trump often boasts about his ability to hire the right people for the right job, Scavino’s error seems like quite a rookie mistake in the social media world.
Sen. Coburn told the Washington Examiner:
“It’s an absolute fabrication. I’ve never said that, period,” Coburn told the Examiner. “It’s unfortunate he would use my name to say something dishonest. It’s a total fabrication.”
“To me, it’s more of loose play with the truth and loose play with the words,” Coburn said.
The mistake is such a rookie error that tracing back to the false quote’s origins brings you to a progressive website known as Forward Progressives. The words falsely attributed to Sen. Coburn appear in the very first paragraph and were clearly the opinion of the blogger, not words of Coburn.
How Trump’s social media director could have made such a major miss step. One can only hope that he wouldn’t work in a potential Trump administration.
Donald Trump can’t vet a quote. What makes anyone think he can vet anything else?
— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) February 16, 2016
