Instead of celebrating the takedown of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Peter Souza, Obama’s former White House photographer, decided to take a shot at President Donald Trump.
Souza suggested that the photo released by Trump of the Situation Room during the raid was staged, according to the Washington Examiner — but he was later forced to eat his words.
The raid, as reported, took place at 3:30PM Washington time. The photo, as shown in the camera IPTC data, was taken at “17:05:24”. https://t.co/XV0MFfFiTt
— Pete Souza (@PeteSouza) October 27, 2019
Attack Trump at all costs
Souza jumped to a lot of conclusions — as did his liberal followers — without having all the facts. Very little about the raid was known when Souza sent out his tweet.
The entire premise of Souza’s attack was that the raid happened at 3:30 p.m. EDT, at which time Trump was on the golf course.
Souza said the time stamp on the photo was just after 5 p.m., so he was implying that the picture was staged. without actually saying it. Of course, he later clarified.
Just to be clear, I didn’t say it was staged. Trump himself said he didn’t arrive to the Situation Room until “around 5pm”. So it’s definitely possible the photo was taken during the raid. https://t.co/h3yx8BbLAT
— Pete Souza (@PeteSouza) October 27, 2019
Still, liberals were more than happy to pile on, with more than a few comparing the pictures of Trump during the al-Baghdadi raid to Obama during the Osama bin Laden raid, claiming that Obama, of course, was more dignified.
Which of these pictures looks real and which looks posed? pic.twitter.com/2xnYUAq3Dj
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) October 28, 2019
Wrong Again!
The only problem for Souza was that he got his facts wrong. As more details about the raid were revealed, it became apparent that Souza jumped the gun reporting on the timestamp of the picture.
Not long after Souza sent out his tweet, a story broke in The New York Times that the Delta operators left Iraq and headed to Syria around 5 p.m. EDT, not 3:30 p.m., as Souza had previously reported.
Since the flight to Syria was more than an hour long, the early stages of the raid were only just getting underway when the picture was snapped. About two hours after he put out the first tweet, Souza was forced to correct himself, but he never actually fully admitted he made a mistake.
In his last tweet on the matter, he merely corrected the times of the raid rather than issuing an apology for floating the idea that Trump staged his photo.
The latest reporting from the NYT: the helicopters left Iraq at 5PM (Washington time), and they reported it was about a 70-minute flight to Syria. So actual raid had to happen some time after 6:10PM. https://t.co/rErbPLJlpD
— Pete Souza (@PeteSouza) October 27, 2019
So, once again, we have a prime example of a member of the liberal media doing everything in his power to make Trump look bad — and once again, it is fake news.
