Newsmax deletes false claim that Donald Trump will not be indicted in New York
This afternoon Politico published an article which claimed that the Manhattan District Attorney has told Donald Trump’s lawyers that Trump will not be indicted in the initial round of indictments that are expected to come down this week. The source for the story: Trump’s lawyers, which is suspect to begin with. Even if you want to take Trump’s lawyers at their word, Politico made a real mess of things by giving the article a false headline that claimed Trump won’t be indicted, period.
The false headline – “Trump lawyer: Manhattan DA won’t charge former president” – instantly set off shockwaves across the political landscape. But as more and more people actually read the accompanying article, they learned that it disproves its own headline.
Even the widely discredited Newsmax, which quickly posted a tweet based on the Politico story, ended up deleting the tweet – a tacit acknowledgement that the underlying narrative from Politico was false. Yet bizarrely, five hours later, Politico still hasn’t corrected, revised, retracted, or apologized for its false headline.
Meanwhile, the false headline continues to create confusion. The term “Manhattan DA” has been trending on Twitter for hours as a result of the story, though at this point many of the top tweets are pushing back against the false Politico narrative. The popular Twitter account “Spiro Agnew’s Ghost” fittingly called it a “very stupid headline.” It’s unclear why Politico is still refusing to come clean on this false narrative, after even Newsmax gave up the ghost on it.
