A recent White House Situation Room photo that was purportedly taken during Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s death is being slammed on Twitter as having been “staged.” The photo features president Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and four other military and government officials. Essentially what is being claimed, is that the timestamp on the photo does not match up with the timeline on when the military carried out there mission which resulted in Al-Baghdadi’s death. This has led to much discussion among Twitter users.
Initial tweet implying that the Baghdadi situation room photo was staged: 16,400 retweets and 42,500 likes.
Follow-up tweets backtracking that it was staged: under 1,000 retweets *combined.*
Yet the initial tweet continues to spread like wildfire.
Every. Single. Time. pic.twitter.com/643Higoeb0
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) October 27, 2019
“Thats because the photo looks staged and unreal. The retraction was weak and Trump no longer has any credibility…its not out of the realm that we would stage it…and since he lies about everything,its more believable that he did. Fitting for the king of Fake News,” one person said.
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“The time stamp confusion doesn’t discount that this *still* looks like an obviously staged photo (as opposed to Souza’s fly-on-the-wall pic). Maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s not. But it still looks like it’s in keeping with everything else this heinous administration has done,” another user offered.
Not unlike this pic of Trump writing his state of the union address (LOL) at what was eventually identified as a Mar-a-Lago secretary’s desk (used as an obvious prop). /2 pic.twitter.com/Z65y3TSSjN
— wine-stained lens (@winestainedlens) October 27, 2019
“I’d say this is the problem with Trump being a lying sociopath. Nobody knows (really ever) whether they can take him at his word. Even now I think it’s entirely possible that the photo isn’t a candid photo. In terms of timelines, who knows. But the photo itself is weird as hell,” someone else commented.
“The photo looks like it has been staged. There is nothing candid about this shot, the position of the photographer is very unusual given the severity of the situation. Also, the engagement of the participants is, well, actually isn’t. The photo is as fake as Trump himself,” one other user added.
I would delete it if I had retweeted it, and I have retweeted corrections about others I disagree with politically. But Trump is so disrespectful to everyone that I can’t be bothered to help out here. #sorrynotsorry
— Caroline Weatherwax (@CarriWeatherwax) October 28, 2019
“It’s an obvious photo shoot. Nothing happened there but sitting down for a photo,” one final user posted.
