The Trump White House has moved beyond simply calling everything “fake news,” graduating to planting fake news of its own to malign its enemies.
A suspicious article published on Sunday by the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner described in detail how a Politico reporter had laughed about a Navy SEAL officer dying just days after Donald Trump took office.
But there’s a huge problem with that article, namely that it’s a complete work of fiction. Worse yet, it appears that the fake account was supplied to the Examiner by the White House itself in a shocking move to get retribution for negative coverage of the administration’s handling of leaks.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was so upset with an article published by Politico early Sunday morning, in which contributors Alex Isenstadt and Annie Karni reported on Spicer confiscating staffers’ cell phones to find possible leakers in the West Wing, that he apparently set out to get back at Isenstadt using “alternative facts” about the al Qaeda Yemen raid that resulted in the death of a U.S. Navy SEAL.
“[Isenstadt] started laughing about that SEAL,” according to White House sources that contacted the Examiner.
Brad Dayspring spokesperson for Politico denied the characterization in the Examiner’s reporting, and Politico Editor Carrie Budoff Brown suggested that the White House was acting nefariously in anonymously planting information to the Examiner.
As of this writing, neither Spicer nor any other White House staff have responded to the allegations of planting fake stories.
Chris Walker been writing about political issues for the past decade, including for sites such as Elite Daily, AMERICAblog, and Mic. You can follow him on Twitter @thatchriswalker.
