The Lie Kicks Truth’s Butt in the Fake News Saga of Donald Trump’s Photoshopped Hands

The criticism of Trump is becoming so ridiculous and dishonest that it’s enough to make you want to support the guy because the people criticizing him are mostly batsh** crazy.

Throughout the election a lot of people, including yours truly, made a lot of fun over the size of Donald Trump’s hands. But most of us did not, at least I know I didn’t, carry out actual experimentation on the subject. The insult didn’t need a double-blind-placebo study because it was a) a homage to Spy Magazine’s Graydon Carter referring to Trump as a “short fingered vulgarian” and b) a counter to the cartoonish hyper-masculinity Trump had affected in his various television and radio show performances before he was nominated. But the science-loving and reality-based community is nothing if not thorough.

Yesterday, Dana Schwartz, an “arts and entertainment writer” for The Observer sent out this tweet which has since been deleted:

And the follow up

Then the brain trust weighed in in the person of an assclown named Joaquin “I’m really important because I have an official blue Twitter checkmark” Baldwin. This guy is allegedly an animator for Disney so he knows his stuff, right? Naturally, he animates it:

I lined up the Getty Images source file to the White House print. It’s a warp deformer, look at the helicopter behind it. pic.twitter.com/kJB2T8U5yh

— Joaquin Baldwin (@joabaldwin) January 27, 2017

Eventually, the Washington Post got dragged into the story and debunked it.

Now the author of this fraud is scrambling for the moral high ground in the septic tank of her social circle:

Hello, Twitter. I tweeted out a photo I saw without externally verifying it. I did not realize this would become a major news issue.

— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) January 27, 2017

Let me be clear: I DO NOT KNOW FOR SURE WHETHER OR NOT THE HANDS WERE SHOPPED. Please don’t take my tweets for verified news.

— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) January 27, 2017

Guys. Ease up. I tweeted pics I found without checking if they were accurate. My bad. This is insane. https://t.co/s1DY6Juohy

— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) January 27, 2017

I’m honestly, genuinely, really sorry. I saw an image, tweeted it because I thought it was funny and seemed true.

— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) January 27, 2017

I’m sorry for inadvertently contributing to a culture of not knowing which facts are legitimate. But please don’t compare a tweet about…

— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) January 27, 2017

…photoshopped hands to real political journalism. This was just a mistake in something I hastily tweeted, not malicious fake news.

— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) January 27, 2017

Note that her website and Twitter bio both identify her as someone most of us would call a “journalist” and she falls back on the dodge that she can’t be held accountable for #FakeNews because, well, she has the correct politics and everyone knows it is only the right that does #FakeNews.

As I noted earlier in the week, this has become a familiar refrain from the media. The throw out stories of any kind with no sourcing and when caught out they plead “honest mistake.” You can compare Scharwtz’s self-serving blame averting to her triumphal original tweet and see that she clearly thought it was true. Also, look at the number of RTs on the original tweet and compare that to the RTs on any of her explanations.

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