- Members of US President Donald Trump’s campaign team on Sunday shared images of a Washington Times cover from 2000 that supposedly declared Al Gore president.
- Tim Murtaugh, who served as director of communications for Trump’s re-election campaign, said on Sunday the headline was “a reminder that the media doesn’t select the President.”
- But the paper said the images were “doctored.” “The Washington Times never ran a ‘President Gore’ headline,” the publication tweeted.
- Insider and its election partner, Decision Desk HQ, projected Biden the winner of the election on Friday, and other major outlets like the Associated Press and CNN called the race for Biden on Saturday.
- Just hours after the Saturday calls Trump once again tweeted, falsely, that he had won the election.
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Both President Donald Trump and his supporters flocked to Twitter over the weekend to slam the media for projecting Democratic candidate Joe Biden as the President-elect.
To prove that the media has wrongly called elections in the past, Trump campaign staffers tweeted an image of a Washington Times cover from 2000 that declared Al Gore had won that year’s presidential election. Former President George W. Bush beat Gore in a tight race.
But the paper immediately pointed out that the photos were “doctored.”
“The Washington Times never ran a ‘President Gore’ headline,” the publication tweeted.
In a tweet that has since been deleted, Tim Murtaugh, who served as director of communications for Trump’s re-election campaign, said on Sunday the headline was “a reminder that the media doesn’t select the President.”
—Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 8, 2020
Jenna Ellis, who worked as a legal adviser for the campaign, also tweeted the photos and later deleted them.
Democrat candidate Gore narrowly lost the 2000 election to Bush. Some news outlets mistakenly projected Gore the winner.
But The Washington Times correctly declared Bush the winner.
Insider and its election partner, Decision Desk HQ, projected Biden the winner of the election on Friday, and other major outlets like the Associated Press and CNN called the race for Biden on Saturday.
Just hours after the Saturday calls, Trump tweeted: "I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!"
Trump, his campaign team, and his supporters have since criticized the media for calling the election. Trump has not yet conceded.
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2020
Trump previously falsely claimed he had won the election while votes were still being counted in several key states.