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On Wednesday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted out an apparently doctored video of a testy interchange between President Trump and CNN reporter Jim Acosta during a post-election press conference. The video she tweeted originated from an editor at InfoWars, Alex Jones' much-maligned far-right publication known for trading in outlandish conspiracy theories and outright lies.
Sanders shared the video late Wednesday night in an attempt to justify the White House's decision to revoke CNN reporter Jim Acosta's press credentials after he sparred with Trump. It purportedly shows the moment a White House intern attempted to take a microphone from Acosta during a heated exchange with the president. Sanders alleged that the video showed Acosta acting in an "unacceptable" manner toward the young woman.
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Crucially, however the video appears to have been altered. Some frames look to be sped up and others slowed down to make Acosta's physical actions seem more aggressive than they were in reality -- as can be seen in numerous videos captured by the news outlets in the room.
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Twitter users broke down the clip Sanders shared, comparing it with other clips of the incident captured by news cameras, turning it into something akin to 2018's Zapruder film.
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Paul Joseph Watson, the InfoWars editor that originally shared the video, told BuzzFeed News the footage was taken from a gif shared by The Daily Wire. Watson explained, ""Fact is, Daily Wire put up a gif, I download a gif, zoomed in saved it again as an mt2 file - then converted it to an mp4." He added, "Digitally it's gonna look a tiny bit different after processing and zooming in, but I did not in any way deliberately 'speed up' or 'distort' the video. That's just horse shit."
Meanwhile, Jim Acosta steadfastly refuted Sanders' accusation, which she made via Tweetstorm, calling it "a lie."
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In the wake of the incident, CNN also stood with Acosta as did many of Acosta's peers in the press.
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Mashable has reached out to the White House for comment on the allegations surrounding the video Sanders shared.
UPDATE: Nov. 8, 2018, 11:16 a.m. EST Updated to include Paul Joseph Watson's statement to BuzzFeed News.