Wednesday, Kamala Harris’ campaign page shared Donald Trump’s “Truth Society” post. During a live interview with Elon Musk But while the Harris campaign shared what appeared to be a screenshot of the post, they cut off the last line, with Trump explaining that he had released “a true and perfect recording of the conversation.”
Why the initial broadcast sounded so strange isn’t entirely clear — the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday about what caused the sound quality issue and what technology they used to fix it. But the Harris campaign’s post ignored key context that Trump had released a clearer version of the recording, making the post appear to be purely an excuse. “Trump blames the ‘complexities of modern devices’ for the chaotic, slur-filled disaster of his Elon Musk interview,” the Kamala HQ account wrote alongside the redacted post on Threads.
This isn’t the only example of a campaign making subtle narrative adjustments to put itself in a better position or put Donald Trump at a disadvantage. Tuesday, Axios The campaign has reportedly purchased several ads linked to news stories, such as Associated Press, CNNand USA Today Appears at the top of Google search results pages. While these sponsored links send users to real news articles, the ad’s headline and text are written by the campaign, although it’s presented by Google in a way that looks like it was written by the outlet itself. Google allows this, and the Harris campaign is certainly not the first to use this tactic. But Facebook actually removed a similar feature in 2017 wall street journal Marked an example of an advertiser changing the title of a news website in promotional content. Google’s ad library shows that the Trump campaign has not placed ads on Google search.
These headlines are much more enthusiastic than those on most news sites. “Vice President Harris protects democracy – Trump defends Jan. 6 comments,” linked to a headline sponsored by Harris independent. It’s unclear which specific article it links to, but independent Not happy. A spokesman said it would seek to remove the ads and “anyone placing false headlines under their ads is completely wrong” independent brand. We strongly disagree and believe this is undermining the very nature of politics and journalism.
Of course, Trump made bigger, more deceptive statements during the campaign. Just recently, he falsely called Harris “artificial intelligence” over a crowd of thousands who came to see her at a rally in Michigan. He also created a false narrative that Harris “happened to become black” when she aspired to higher office. Harris attended Howard University, a historically black college, and her father is Jamaican-American.
Harris’ campaign has generally favored the informal language and style of modern social media—for example, it was quick to adopt a “brat” aesthetic in homage to Charli XCX’s pop album. It raises a new set of questions about how information is presented fairly and how audiences process online content. What’s the difference between an incomplete quote in a social media screenshot and a carefully edited soundbite in an attack ad? For Harris’ campaign, the answer appears to be No.
The Harris campaign declined to comment.
