The Never-Trump group Lincoln Project retweeted a video the social media platform labeled in "manipulated media" for falsely making it appear President Donald Trump said Operation Desert Storm took place in Vietnam.
During Trump's July 4 speech outside the White House, he said:
"In a few moments, we will bear witness to awesome aircraft representing every major military conflict over the last 75 years. These planes once launched off massive aircraft carriers in the fiercest battles of World War II. They raced through the skies of Korea’s MiG Alley. They carried American warriors into the dense fields and jungles of Vietnam. They delivered a swift and swip- — and you know that sweeping — it was swift and it was sweeping like nobody has ever seen anything happen — a victory in Operation Desert Storm."
A Twitter user who goes by the handle @Acyn was tweeting criticisms of Trump's speech and clipped the speech in a way that made it sound as if the president said Operation Desert Storm happened in Vietnam. It took place in 1991 during the George H.W. Bush administration against Iraq.
The Lincoln Project retweeted the video with the statement "What's wrong with the president?"
But the original video by @Acyn was later listed as "manipulated media" by Twitter after Trump campaign rapid response team member Giancarlo Sopo pointed out:
"This video is grossly misleading. President Trump did not say Operation Desert Storm is in the jungles of Vietnam. All this person had to do was back-up the video some 15 seconds," Sopo noted, posting a longer version of the video.
The tweet by @Acyn has since been removed, though screengrabs exist online, but the Lincoln Project's retweet remained Monday evening.
In a subsequent tweet, @Acyn noted he was working quickly to edit and post Trump's quotes and "there wasn't time to edit it. I have a short window from when the statement is made on TV to recording it and posting it. The sweeping part was what caught my attention and that's what I was focusing on."
The fact-checking site Snopes.com, which itself as been criticized for alleged anti-conservative bias in the past, said the video was misleading against Trump.
"During a portion of his speech in which Trump was lauding the prowess of U.S. military aircraft, he stumbled over the word 'sweeping' (either because the teleprompter displayed the wrong word, or he simply misread it), and thus the historical progression he was invoking at the time (from World War II to Korea to Vietnam to Desert Storm) got a bit lost in the shuffle," Snopes wrote.
"But a transcript of his words clearly shows his references to Vietnam and Desert Storm were two separate thoughts, not a declaration that the latter took place in the former."
CNN reporter Daniel Dale, too, noted on Twitter that Trump did not claim Desert Storm took place in Vietnam.
"He stumbled when trying to say the word 'sweeping' while talking about Desert Storm, but he was just listing wars - he mentioned Vietnam, then, stumbling, mentioned the sweeping victory in Desert Storm," Dale said. "Didn't make a substantive error."
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