Mediaboss Marketing

Several websites pushed out a fresh accusation of plagiarism against First Lady Melania Trumpand once again, the alleged source for the supposedly ill-gotten words is former First Lady Michelle Obama.

On Saturday, August 12, as violence escalated in Charlottesville, Virginia, Mrs. Trump took to Twitter with this message: "Our country encourages freedom of speech, but let's communicate w/o hate in our hearts. No good comes from violence. #Charlottesville"

Sometime on Sunday, a meme appeared on Twitter, Facebook, and various other websites, that juxtaposed the words of the first lady's tweet and her picture with very similar words purportedly from Michelle Obama: "Our nation encourages freedom of speech, but let's communicate without hate in our hearts. No good comes of that." The former first lady's picture also appears in the meme (shown below), as well as the date when Mrs. Obama allegedly made the remarks, April 16, 2016.

However, there is no evidence that Michelle Obama ever uttered those words or anything remotely close to them. The Obama White House archives do not indicate any speech or remarks by Michelle Obama on the date in question, nor does a broader search turn up any such remarks by the former first lady at any point during her husband's presidency. A review of contemporaneous news reports similarly comes up empty as well.

The photo of Mrs. Obama used in the meme comes from an October 13, 2016 appearance at a Hillary for America campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire. During her remarks, Mrs. Obama excoriated then-candidate Trump for vulgar remarks in a 2005 Access Hollywood taping. But again, the transcript of the speech contains nothing close to the words in the meme.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, within days the meme and related stories were shared on Twitter and Facebook thousands of times. Rickey Smiley, a comedian and TV-radio personality, featured the false story under the headline "First Lady Forger: Did Melania Trump Just Plagiarize Michelle Obama Again!?" Smiley's Facebook fan page and blog linked to a Raw Story piece which in turn used an International Business Times story as its source. Other sites responsible for wide distribution of the fake meme include an unofficial Bill Maher fan page and AlterNet News.

The meme plays off a 2016 incident in which the speech Melania Trump delivered at the Republican National Convention drew heavily on remarks made by Michelle Obama in 2008. A Trump campaign aide who wrote the speech for Mrs. Trump took responsibility for the uncredited words, saying that she took notes while Mrs. Trump read passages from Mrs. Obama's earlier speech. Those notes were incorporated into the final draft of the speech without attribution. The aide offered to resign, but Donald Trump declined her offer.

The new accusation of plagiarism, while drawn from the 2016 incident, seems to have been largely shared with the understanding that it was likely a hoax. In Rickey Smiley's posting for example, the article ends with "Before you pull out your pitchfork though, know that none of this has been confirmed. No one has proven that Michelle actually said or tweeted those words beforefor all we know, it could just be a meme gone out of control."

Even the original International Business Times story noted that it was an "unproven claim whether Melania stole Obama's words" and "[w]hile the possibility of plagiarism has not been ruled out in the latest instance, reports said the viral meme was most likely a spoof."

Whatever doubts existed, thousands of social media users enthusiastic spread the story based on the sensational headlines. While mainstream news outlets have largely avoided the story for now, Yahoo! News picked up and reprinted the International Business Times version with the headline "Melania Trump Accused Of Copying Michelle Obama Again." But while the IBT story headline included the phrase "Maybe Wrongly This Time," that caveat was missing in the Yahoo! Headline.

While the original source of the meme remains a mystery, the spread of false stories such as this is anything but.

If you have questions about this fact check, or would like to submit a request for another fact check, email The Weekly Standard at factcheck@weeklystandard.com.

Read this article:
Fact Check: Did Melania Trump Plagiarize Michelle Obama on Twitter? - The Weekly Standard

By Darren Hauck/Getty Images.

In the days since violence erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend, President Donald Trump has delivered three different statements, each with varying levels of condemnation for neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and a seemingly mixed message about whether Nazis are, in fact, bad. The violence also brought an elegantly concise tweet from former President Barack Obama quoting Nelson Mandela, which he posted on Saturday. By Wednesday morning, Obama's tweet had received the highest number of likes ever, according to Twitter:

Nostalgia for Obama among his supporters has only grown since the day he left office; every post on social media, or public appearance by Michelle Obama, has been typically met with cries of Come back! But Obamas viral tweet, in all its calming guidance, followed by two more that completed the Mandela passage, arrived at a time when Trump appeared at his least presidential. It is the easiest thing in the world, as multiple late-night comedians have pointed out, to condemn Nazis; Trump, in three separate speeches, couldn't manage to pull it off. But Obama showed exactly how easy it could be.

It wasn't just an 140-character lesson in how to act presidential; it was also Obama besting Trump at his favorite medium, Twitter. Obama, with the most-liked tweet of all time, has beaten Trump here, a fact the numbers-obsessed president is not likely to miss. Though neither of the Obamas have actively spoken out against any of Trumps actions, their occasional public appearancesfrom Michelle continuing to promote fitness to Barack's occasional but pointed tweetsact as a counter-force to the ongoing D.C. turmoil.

We'll see how much longer the former president can keep things this subtle. With former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush releasing a joint statement Wednesday condemning white supremacy, it's possible Obama will feel compelled to take a more active role in opposing the Trump administration.

But in the meantime, theres this powerful tweet, which like so many posts of the Obama presidency comes with a stirring photo (of Obama casually greeting young children at a window) that says at least as much as his words. (Trump has photos, too, but they convey something vastly different.) Obamas record-breaking tweet is still the first thing visitors see on his Twiter page. Trumps Twitter, on the other hand, features a retweet about violence in Chicago, another tweet that celebrates being home in New York, along with a seemingly random MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN all-caps tweet.

The former president has a bit of a spring in his step as he leaves Manhattan restaurant Upland.

Obama rocks his full dad-jeans-and-shades look as he walks the grounds of the familys Bali resort with daughter Malia.

Out of the Oval Office and onto the water!

Dad jeans? More like dad trip jeans.

While the 45th president and his administration began wreaking havoc in D.C., 44 kitesurfed into the next phase of his life.

PreviousNext

The former president has a bit of a spring in his step as he leaves Manhattan restaurant Upland.

By James Devaney/GC Images.

From AP/REX/Shutterstock.

By Duncan McGlynn/Splash News.

Obama rocks his full dad-jeans-and-shades look as he walks the grounds of the familys Bali resort with daughter Malia.

From AP/REX/Shutterstock.

By Matteo Bazzi/EPA/REX/Shutterstock.

Out of the Oval Office and onto the water!

By Made Nagi/EPA/REX/Shutterstock.

Dad jeans? More like dad trip jeans.

By Made Nagi/EPA/REX/Shutterstock.

While the 45th president and his administration began wreaking havoc in D.C., 44 kitesurfed into the next phase of his life.

By Jack Brockway/Getty Images.

Read more here:
Why Barack Obama's Latest Tweet Became the Most-Liked in History - Vanity Fair

Heres some news that could potentially hold the key to Donald Trumps complete and irreversible mental meltdown: According to Twitter, Barack Obama, former President of the United States of America and subject of a bizarre and spiteful obsession for our current president, just broke the record for most-liked tweet of all time. The tweet in question was in response to the racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend, and quotes Nelson Mandela:

Obamas Twitter statement came a few hours after President Trumps half-assed criticism of both sides, almost two days before someone on his staff forced his reluctant condemnation of racist violence, and three days before Trump let us all know how he really feels, which is that some Nazis are actually very fine people (who voted for him).

Obamas tweet dethroned the previous, equally sad champion, Ariana Grandes heartbroken statement on the deaths of 22 people at one of her concerts in May. According to NPR, Obama has two more tweets in the top five most-liked ever, including one in support of John McCain after McCains brain cancer diagnosis and another announcing that he was taking a quick vacation after leaving office. (Ellen DeGeneres famous Oscars selfie rounds out the top five.) Those all received in excess of 1.5 million likes apiece. Trump, meanwhile, has failed to crack 200,000 likes in the past month, and got 605,000 likes on a tweet where he body-slammed CNN back in July 2. Obama also has nearly three times more Twitter followers than Trump, 93.6 million to Trumps 36.1 million. Given his clear love for the social-media platform, maybe its not just his crowd size and hand size that make Trump feel small.

[via The Root, which, like The A.V. Club, is owned by Univision Communications.]

Submit your Great Job, Internet tips here.

Previous Great Job, Internet! Watch America rid itself of Confederate statues with this constantly updating map

Read the rest here:
Obama's Charlottesville response breaks the record for most-liked tweet ever - A.V. Club

Communications technology lies at the center of politics: The printing press, the telegram, radio, television, and the Internet have successively formed a long cascade of change in how politicians and leaders communicate with citizens. Twitter ( twtr ) seems to be the latest iteration in this evolution. Studies like Twiplomacy , which conducts a yearly survey of how world leaders tweet, attest to the global importance of the platform.

Barack Obama and Donald Trump both notably relied on the social media platform to build their presidential campaigns and build direct, personal rapport with their supporters. And yet, there is one glaring difference between their profile pages: Obama has around three times as many followers as Trump.

Make no mistake, both have a disproportionate amount of power on social media. Klout, a firm that measures social media influence, puts them at around the same score98 for Obama and 95 for Trump, on a scale of 100. Even casual observers know that both can elicit worldwide reactions from their tweets, which is most lamentable with Trumps proclivity for tweets on North Korea and nuclear warand yet, Obama boasts 93.6 million followers on Twitter and has six of the 10 most-liked tweets of all time, while Trump has a comparatively paltry 36.1 million followers.

It is important to realize that all high-profile politicians, regardless of country or party, have fake bot followers on social media. This fact in particular makes the Trump administration's claims of popular support based on his online following tenuous at best. This is a phenomenon Oxford researchers have deemed manufacturing consensus. All the same, given Trumps savvy for digital propaganda , it is surprising he only commands a third of the following that former president Obama does. Obama's longer tenure as a figure in the international public eye may have contributed an initial boost to this following, but something deeper must be underlying the numbers. Whats behind the enormous gulf?

A Harvard scholar of political science, Joseph Nye, coined the term soft power in the 1980s. Nye has written that Soft power is the ability to get what you want by attracting and persuading others to adopt your goals. It differs from hard power, the ability to use economic and military might to make others follow your will.

Unlike real-world politics, there is no hard power in the online sphere. Soft poweressentially a synonym for coolness, received admiration, or genuine respect hereis the currency of social media. Obama exuded a presidential equanimity and global consciousness that drove worldwide perception of the United States up 15% during his eight years as president, according to Pew Research. That positive view of the States immediately suffered a precipitous drop when Trump took office in January. Where 64% of global citizens favored Obama, only 22% of them have a positive view of Trump.

These numbers, coupled with the fact that Trumps first day in office inspired the single largest protest in U.S. history , underlie one simple conclusion: People simply dont like Trump. They dont like him in real life, and they dont like him online. In the real world, they may laugh at his antics, they may watch his borderline syntax-less speeches, they may even obligingly vote for him as the least worst of two options, but they still dont like him. Conveniently for the electioneering Trump, this fact can be hidden in real life, but onlinewhere popularity among human users is truly democratic and organicthe numbers tell the whole story.

Nick Monaco is a research affiliate at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and ComProp , the Computational Propaganda Project at OII.

See original here:
How Obama Is Owning Trump on Twitter - Fortune

President Trump speaks during a visit to Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 4. Michael Reynolds/Getty Images hide caption

President Trump speaks during a visit to Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 4.

President Trump's astonishing press conference on Tuesday was, ostensibly, an announcement about infrastructure. But his brief remarks on the permitting process were entirely overshadowed by his defense of attendees at a white supremacist rally, among other remarks.

But the president was, in fact, announcing a new executive order with serious repercussions. Among other things, he is rolling back an Obama-era order that infrastructure projects, like roads and bridges, be designed to survive rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change.

The executive order was meant to protect taxpayer dollars spent on projects in areas prone to flooding and to improve "climate resilience" across the U.S. that is, communities' ability to cope with the consequences of global warming.

President Barack Obama signed the order in 2015, but the changes have not taken effect; FEMA has been soliciting input and drafting new rules.

Now, the order has been revoked as part of an effort to "slash the time it takes" to approve new infrastructure projects, as Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao put it in a statement.

Speaking at Trump Tower in New York City, Trump said, "We're going to get infrastructure built quickly, inexpensively, relatively speaking, and the permitting process will go very, very quickly." Few details were revealed in that news conference, but the text of the order has since been published and it specifically revokes Obama's flood risk rules.

Supporters say the Obama flood rules would protect lives, by positioning new roads and buildings on safer ground, and protect financial investments by ensuring that infrastructure projects last as long as they were intended. Some business advocates have objected, saying the new rules would increase the cost of new construction.

Trump's decision to roll back the policy was denounced by environmental groups as soon as it was first reported.

"This is climate science denial at its most dangerous, as Trump is putting vulnerable communities, federal employees, and families at risk by throwing out any guarantee that our infrastructure will be safe," Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement ahead of Trump's remarks.

The Obama administration's order covered only public infrastructure projects. But revoking it could have implications for private development as well for example, if the government builds a road in a flood-prone area, residential development might follow.

In an op-ed in Politico, an environmental advocate and an insurance industry advocate Robert Moore of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Franklin Nutter of the Reinsurance Association of America urged Trump to maintain the standards. They said climate resilience is crucial across the country: "While many Americans may think flooding is only a problem for coastal regions prone to hurricanes and tropical storms, it is far more widespread than that and can devastate any state or region across the country. In just the past five years, all 50 states have experienced flood damage."

This is not the first time Trump has reversed an Obama order and pushed the U.S. government not to factor climate change into decisions. As Jay Price of member station WUNC reported for NPR earlier this year, the president told the federal government that it didn't need to treat climate change as a national security threat despite the fact that rising sea levels pose a flooding hazard to military bases.

"The risks were highlighted in a report last summer by the Union of Concerned Scientists. It said 128 American military installations are at risk from sea level rise," Price reported.

Excerpt from:
Trump Rolls Back Obama-Era Flood Standards For Infrastructure Projects - NPR