Former President Donald Trump appears to be curating his own version of “fake news” for social media followers by sharing news articles that have been carefully edited to remove any unfavorable passages.
Trump, who frequently rails against the press as “the enemy of the people” and often claims to be the victim of unfair reporting, has this year shared to his Truth Social account dozens of screenshots from articles altered to appear more favorable towards him.
In the latest example, Trump shared on Tuesday an edited version of an article titled “No, Cohen’s Guilty Plea Does Not Prove Trump Committed Campaign-Finance Crimes,” which was published by the conservative outlet National Review earlier this month.
The article argued that Trump was not implicated by his former lawyer Michael Cohen having previously pleaded guilty to charges involving Trump’s 2016 campaign hush-money payments given to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump is currently on trial for related felony charges of falsifying business records, pleading not guilty.
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However, the version of the article shared by Trump on Tuesday removed a line referring to a second Trump administration as “inconceivable” and several passages suggesting that the former president had originally hired Cohen as his “fixer” because of his “genuine expertise” in “extortion.”
A claim that Trump was attracted to his former lawyer’s “loathsomeness” was removed as well, along with a line about the former president being “perfectly content to have Cohen as his sidekick, confidant, and attack dog for over a decade.”
Also removed was a claim that Trump’s alleged affairs with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal—both of which the ex-president denies ever took place—could “have torpedoed Trump’s presidential bid in the wake of the infamous Access Hollywood tape” in 2016.
The changes to the article were first reported on by liberal anti-Trump group MeidasTouch, which said that the altered National Review article was the sixth example of Trump-edited article being shared to his Truth Social account this month and the 25th edited article overall.
Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump’s office via email on Wednesday night.
The former president’s recent streak of delivering fake news to his supporters by manipulating articles before sharing them on Truth Social began earlier this year. A pair of edited Newsweek articles were shared to his account in mid-February.
Trump shared screenshots of one article edited to remove references to the fact that he lost the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election and an expert calling his hope of winning the popular vote in 2024 “a pipe dream. A line about Newsweek reaching out to his representatives for comment was also removed.
In the second article, references to a polling company accurately predicting that President Joe Biden would win the 2020 election were removed in the version shared by Trump, as were references to Trump’s low approval rating that year and Biden’s record-breaking popular vote win.
A mention of Special Counsel Robert Hur saying that no criminal charges were warranted against Biden over his handling of classified documents was also removed from the article.
Trump went on to share another manipulated version of a Newsweek article later in February, when he took out a reference to being contacted for comment and poll results showing that only 50 percent of Texas voters said they would “trust” him to “secure the southern border.”
Earlier this month, Trump shared edited screenshots of an additional Newsweek article on immigration that omitted a poll result showing that only about half of all voters support a border wall, among other edits.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.