Hillary Clinton and Ex-Obama Adviser's Attempt To Slam Trump Backfires
It must have seemed like a bright idea at the time.
Hillary Clinton, the failed presidential candidate, and David Axelrod, a top adviser to former President Barack Obama, were among many critics of President Donald Trump who took to Twitter this week with a picture supposedly symbolic of the Trump presidency.
And the backfire was brutal.
The problem was, the picture, that showed the White House in the dark was not only doctored to make it appear darker than the original – it was taken before Trump was even elected president.
According to an Associated Press “fact check,” a picture that made its rounds in the liberal cybersphere that was supposed to serve as a metaphor for a Trump presidency under siege was a stock photo of the Executive Mansion uploaded to the Getty news service in 2015.
“The viral photo, which has been edited, can be found on Getty Image’s stock website, where it was uploaded in December 2015. In the original, the lantern hanging in the White House portico is lit, along with several lights that surround the fountain in the front lawn,” the AP reported.
“The edited version that is being widely shared online has been darkened, and manipulated to remove the lit lantern.”
For Axelrod, the picture represented “perfect symbolism.”
Perfect symbolism. If ever the country needed the occupant of the White House to shed light, and not heat, now is the time. Sadly, the lights are out. pic.twitter.com/5i8e60Ipcv
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) June 1, 2020
But as some Twitter users pointed out, it might have been a little too symbolic for Axelrod’s political sympathies.
@davidaxelrod lying for political gain. Yes, that is perfect symbolism.
— Shecky (@SheckyShabazzJr) June 2, 2020
? PERFECT SYMBOLISM indeed
Lights out no ones home
This was taken during Obama’s presidency ?— MauryO (@MauryO) June 2, 2020
Hillary Cinton, meanwhile, tried to contrast the alleged “Trump” presidency photo with those glory days of the Obama years, when the country saw such great works as the Supreme Court, by one vote, insulting American jurisprudence and overturning millennia of tradition by declaring homosexual marriage to be a constitutional right.
Obama celebrated that majority decision written by then-Justice Anthony Kennedy by bathing the White House in a rainbow of illumination — and Clinton thought that pairing the pictures would make Trump look bad.
Elections matter. https://t.co/77jquAhp1x pic.twitter.com/AM5Z42pzyk
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 1, 2020
As the eagle eyes at Twitchy.com noted, she was wrong (again).
That photo is from 2015. Who was President then?
— ⭐⭐⭐That sunshine outside chick(larafreedom)?? (@LaraFR) June 2, 2020
The photo on the right is from 2015 when Obama unfortunately was President.
— TLB Rebooted (@markinson_john) June 2, 2020
It’s an article of faith that whenever the left hurls an accusation against a political opponent, it’s something liberals are already guilty of.
The Trump years have proven it beyond a shadow of a doubt. (They accuse Trump of being intolerant, dictatorial and authoritarian, for instance, when as recent weeks have shown, that might as well be the motto of the Democratic Party.)
And when it comes to social media games – like posting pictures of “kids in cages” that were taken during the Obama years but blamed on Trump – the tendency only gets more evident.
No decent American can be happy with the trials the country is experiencing now, and the riots that have spread across the country in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis have only added to the simmering discontent.
But it’s the Democratic side, with its carping, callow, political opportunism that’s seeking to gain from the suffering of their countrymen.
The faux photo of a darkened Trump White House is exactly the kind of cheap shot liberals seek to exploit. It’s an illustration, if anyone still needs one, of how important the November election is.
In that, at least, Hillary’s tweet was right on: “Elections matter.”
The 2020 vote is a choice between surrendering the government to a Democratic Party with an anti-American bent toward totalitarianism that would be unrecognizable to the giants of the past it still pretends to follow — like FDR and JFK — and keeping the White House in the hands of a political party and a president that actually believes in the United States as the Founders intended the country to be — dedicated to the proposition that free people govern themselves, they are not ruled from above.
Trying to turn an old picture into a propaganda weapon must have seemed like such a bright idea to Democratic kingmakers, but it just ended up showing how dark their souls really are.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
