Joe Biden handed President Donald Trump and the Republicans a perfect opportunity to mock him when he walked out at an event to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in Florida on Monday and said: “I have just one thing to say,” before awkwardly playing the 2017 hit “Despacito” on his cell phone.
The video spurred jokes and memes on social media, but rather than just sharing the video, Trump on Tuesday night retweeted a manipulated version of the video that replaced “Despacito” with N.W.A’s notorious 1988 single “Fuck tha Police.”
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Trump captioned the retweet: “What is this all about?”
The video appeared to show Biden moving in rhythm to the N.W.A protest song, which includes the uncensored use of the n-word and Ice Cube’s line “Police think they have the authority to kill a minority.”
Twitter labeled the video as “manipulated media” on Wednesday morning, but rather than deleting the video from his timeline, Trump doubled down by retweeting the video again, this time with the caption “China is drooling. They can’t believe this.”
The video had been viewed over 3.1 million times as of Wednesday morning.
The video was originally posted by an account called The United Spot, whose Twitter biography says: “Shadow Banned On Twitter.”
Twitter hasn’t removed the video but has put a “manipulated media” label on it, which leads viewers to a list of other tweets highlighting that the video has been altered. Twitter said the tweet was “labeled based on our Synthetic and Manipulated Media policy.”
The fake video feeds into Trump’s repeated claims that Biden is weak on “law and order” and his false claims that Biden supports defunding the police.
This is far from the first time Trump has shared manipulated videos on his Twitter feed. In July, Twitter even went as far as deleting a Trump tweet that contained a video showing Texas doctor Stella Immanuel claiming without evidence that masks aren’t effective against COVID-19.
Cover: Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a Hispanic Heritage Month event, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020, at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee, Fla. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
