Over 20,000 Likes, and counting, for this totally bogus quote from the NYT’s Kurt Andersen:
@NYTimes: “Officials presented the president with options. The Pentagon tacked on the choice of targeting Suleimani mainly to make other options seem reasonable. They didn’t think he would take it. When Mr. Trump chose the option, military officials, flabbergasted, were alarmed.”
— Kurt Andersen (@KBAndersen) January 5, 2020
“Literally fake news”:
This is a fake quote and this is literally fake news.
Of course it has 20,000 likes. https://t.co/kJTViIxBXu
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) January 5, 2020
Basically, he took a bunch of quotes from a NYT article and strung them together. Here’s what the quotes really say:
This has gone viral and has been shared by the Obama bros, among others, but it's not a real quote from the NYT article. It combines various sentences and presents them as a single quote. Regardless of your opinion on the strike, context matters. Here's an accurate version: 1/ https://t.co/UpdVcvTu1P
— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) January 5, 2020
(And, FWIW, based on the the NYT authors' track record on the topic, it's fair to view their presentation of the issue with a little skepticism) 2/https://t.co/V4gGAppb2v
— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) January 5, 2020
The "quote" above conflates two different decisions. According to the article, after Iran's militias killed an American, the Pentagon presented Trump with several options. Soleimani was the most extreme. *At that point,* Trump chose the middle option—hitting the militias. 3/
— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) January 5, 2020
Then—after Iran's militias stormed our embassy—Trump chose the Soleimani option. There wasn't a single briefing and an "oh shit" moment, as the "quote" above implies. 4/
— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) January 5, 2020
The article does say that officials were alarmed about retaliation—and based on the authors' history referenced above, I'd be curious to hear more context about those statements—but those concerns were not expressed in the context in which @KBAndersen presented them. 5/
— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) January 5, 2020
In short, the "quote" that @KBAndersen shared was not an actual quote from the article (which he curiously did not share). And regardless of how you view the strike/the content of that NYT article, there's way more context than his random compilation of sentences implies. /fin
— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) January 5, 2020
And, poof: It went mega viral:
Read this thread by @JamesHasson20 & ask yourself whether the Obama Bros & their media allies enthusiastically quote-tweeting this fake quote are grossly incompetent & didn’t even bother to see if it was accurate or if they just don’t care as long as it advances their narrative. https://t.co/Uy1ZA9tkVa pic.twitter.com/W84TxPGcFX
— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) January 5, 2020
Of course, when called out on it, he blamed “pathetic fake-outraged Trumpists”:
For pathetic fake-outraged Trumpists still pretending my original tweeted distillation somewhow distorted or rendered untrue this great @nytimes story because I omitted elipses & a link, here’s the link: https://t.co/Hs53QQo0hE And here’s my distillation with elipses added…1/2
— Kurt Andersen (@KBAndersen) January 6, 2020
Here’s a corrected version:
“Officials presented the president with options….The Pentagon tacked on the choice of targeting Suleimani mainly to make other options seem reasonable. …They didn’t think he would take it….When Mr. Trump chose the option, military officials, flabbergasted…were alarmed.”
— Kurt Andersen (@KBAndersen) January 6, 2020
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