NATIONWIDE — House Minority Whip Steve Scalise came under fire after sharing a tweet containing a doctored video of an interview between presidential candidate Joe Biden and progressive activist Ady Barkan.
After Twitter flagged the video as “manipulated media,” Scalise deleted it from his Twitter account.
The original video showed a conversation between Biden and Ady Barkan, an activist with ALS who uses voice assistant technology to speak. In the interview, which touched on potential changes to police funding in light of recent Black Lives Matter protests across the country, Barkan asked Biden if he agreed that “we can redirect some of the funding?” to which Biden answered “yes.”
But the version tweeted out by Scalise added the words “for police” at the end of the question, something Barkan decidedly did not say during that specific portion of the interview. The addition was seemingly pulled from a separate part of the interview and edited in.
Biden has repeatedly denied wanting to “defund” the police, instead proposing a shift in resources to local police departments and an increase in psychologists and social workers in police work.
In a since-deleted tweet containing the doctored video, Scalise originally included the message "No police. Mob rule. Total chaos. That's the result of the Democrat agenda.”
Twitter confirmed in a statement obtained by multiple outlets that they had labeled the video “synthetic and manipulated media.”
Soon after Scalise shared the video, Barkan took notice – and slammed the politician for manipulating his words for what he called "political gain."
“These are not my words. I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts,” Barkan tweeted. “You and your team have doctored my words for your own political gain. Please remove this video immediately. You owe the entire disability community an apology.”
Joe Biden also weighed in, saying the video was “a flagrant attempt to spread misinformation.”
“This video is doctored — and a flagrant attempt to spread misinformation at the expense of a man who uses assistive technology,” Biden tweeted. “It should be removed. Now.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Scalise to delete the tweet immediately.
“@SteveScalise tried to steal @AdyBarkan’s health care with more than 60 votes to repeal or undermine Americans’ health care,” she wrote on Twitter. “Now, he’s trying to steal Ady’s words by lying. Congressman Scalise must take his doctored video down and apologize immediately.”
While Scalise did eventually remove the video, he doubled down on his claims that Biden wants to redirect funding from police departments.
“While Joe Biden clearly said “yes,” twice, to the question of his support to redirect money away from police, we will honor the request of @AdyBarkan and remove the portion of his interview from our video,” Scalise tweeted
Hours before, Scalise shared the full video of the interview and told viewers that his “editing” of the video wasn’t a problem.
“Twice in one interview Biden says “yes” & “yes absolutely” to questions about “redirecting” police funding,” Scalise wrote. “Dems & their partners in the media want to blame “editing” to pretend this isn’t exactly what he believes.”
“This is from the same people who want to tell you that these protests are peaceful as entire cities burn in the background,” he continued. “They’re not fooling anyone.”
The next morning Scalise appeared to walk back some of his statements, telling Fox News that the video “shouldn’t have been edited.”
“Look, it shouldn’t have been edited,” Scalise said on “Fox and Friends” on Monday morning. “But at the same time, the comments were always about – in fact, twice in that interview, he asked Joe Biden if he was for redirecting money away from police. And in both times, Joe Biden said yes.”
While Scalise also maintained that Biden “won’t stand up” against violent protesters, that is also untrue – on Sunday, the former Vice President released a statement condemning violence at protests in Portland.
"The deadly violence we saw overnight in Portland is unacceptable,” Biden said in a statement. "I condemn this violence unequivocally. I condemn violence of every kind by anyone, whether on the left or the right. And I challenge Donald Trump to do the same."