Other images displayed by Trump during meeting with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa were false or misleading

The evidence of supposed mass killings of white South Africans presented by Donald Trump in a tense White House meeting on Wednesday were in some cases images from the Democratic Republic of Congo, while footage shown during the meeting was falsely portrayed as depicting “burial sites”.

“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by a picture during the contentious Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The picture accompanying the article was in fact a screengrab of a video published by Reuters on 3 February and subsequently verified by the news agency’s fact check team, showing humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from Reuters footage shot after deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.

  • epicstove@lemmy.ca
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    16 hours ago

    Honestly, I don’t know if he’s knowingly lying or just genuinely fucking stupid.

    • Refurbished Refurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org
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      5 hours ago

      Fascists can never admit that they’re wrong, becauae then their vaneer of being infallible immediately falls apart.

      I still remember back in 2015-2016 when 4chan called Trump “God Emperor.” That mentality hasn’t gone away. Fascism is a cult.

      The only “truth” that fascists believe is the “truth” of the fascist leader. Trump even calls his social media platform “Truth Social” FFS. It couldn’t be more blatent.

    • Yermaw@lemm.ee
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      7 hours ago

      In his defence (feels dirty and weird typing that) he’s probably being lied to. I have very little clue about the legitimacy of information I get on world news, as everybody has an agenda and misinformation is so easy to create and disseminate. If he’s got to be on the case with basically every issue, he’ll just be getting fed information and has to trust that his advisors know what they’re doing. I wouldn’t bother fact checking everything if I were in that position, there’s simply not enough hours in the day.

      Of course he’s also a confirmed liar and a known prick so who knows.

    • Tiger@sh.itjust.works
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      16 hours ago

      Fun fact, it’s both! He knows he’s lying all the time and doesn’t care. He’s also stupid.

      • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        This is the right answer. Life has already shown him that operating on a level playing field and being honest, really doesn’t get a guy like him very far. So the genius workaround is to lie your pants off instead, and build an alternative environment around yourself where you can’t lose.

      • vortexsurfer@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        My theory is that he’s so narcissistic that he genuinely believes every thought that comes into his mind is the truth.

        • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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          2 hours ago

          hes like the system lords, they believe in thier own bs, because of thier narccistic personalities, except one.