The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Trump shared an edited Pelosi video on social media, highlighting a gray area in the debate over disinformation

The video is not a sophisticated fake. It shows events that actually happened, just not in the order in which they happened. Is that misleading?

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February 7, 2020 at 5:34 p.m. EST
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tears up her copy of President Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

The viral video shows President Trump delivering his State of the Union address, with a very notable alteration. As he commemorates “Young Women Receiving Scholarships” and “Child Healthcare Successes,” the video repeatedly cuts away to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripping up her copy of the speech.

It didn’t actually happen that way: Pelosi (D-Calif.) tore the pages only after Trump finished what she later called his “manifesto of mistruths.” But Trump on Thursday shared it anyway, sending it to millions of users on Facebook and Twitter — and sparking sharp criticism from Pelosi and her fellow Democrats, who labeled the video “doctored” and “fake,” and demanded that the sites remove it. The companies refused.