A local Fox affiliate in Washington State has fired an editor after the station determined they were responsible for airing a doctored clip of President Trump’s Oval Office address to the nation during a 10:00 p.m news broadcast on Tuesday.
“We’ve completed our investigation into this incident and determined that the actions were the result of an individual editor whose employment has been terminated,” Erica Hill, news director for Fox Q13, told TheWrap on Thursday in an email. “This does not meet our editorial standards and we regret if it is seen as portraying the president in a negative light.”
The doctored video of Trump which ran on the network over-saturated the president, making him look more orange than usual and was also altered to show him sticking out his tongue repeatedly for unusually long intervals between breaths.
“Hopefully we can rise above partisan politics in order to support national security,” said Trump just before the doctored tongue moment.
On Tuesday, President Trump made his first speech from the Oval Office to the American people. With the United States government mired in a three-week-old government shutdown, Trump hoped to take his case for a wall along the Mexican border directly to the American people.
“The border wall would very quickly pay for itself,” Trump said. “The cost of illegal drugs exceeds $500 billion a year — vastly more than the $5.7 billion we have requested from Congress. The wall will also be paid for, indirectly, by the great new trade deal we have made with Mexico.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has vowed to stop it and has called the barrier an “immorality.”
The speech itself was brief. The president read calmly off a teleprompter in a style typical of his more sober addresses. In an off the record lunch earlier Tuesday, the billionaire admitted to reporters that he hadn’t been hot to give the speech at all but allowed himself to be talked into it by advisers.