Fact check: Prominent Republicans spread false claim about Taliban executing a man from a helicopter

[Nevilledog]

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Tweet text:
Daniel Dale
@ddale8
When I reached out to Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s office about his promotion of the false “hanging” claim, his spokesman said he, the spokesman, wouldn’t respond to my request for comment on this until I accepted his demand to fact check a certain Biden comment.

Fact check: Prominent Republicans spread false claim about Taliban executing a man from a helicopter
Numerous Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, promoted a false claim on Monday and Tuesday that the Taliban had just executed a man by hanging him from a helicopter.
cnn.com
6:43 PM · Aug 31, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/31/politics/fact-check-taliban-helicopter-hanging-cruz-crenshaw/index.html

Washington (CNN) — Numerous Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, promoted a false claim on Monday and Tuesday that the Taliban had just executed a man by hanging him from a helicopter.

Cruz and Crenshaw, among other conservatives, shared a video that had been tweeted by a self-described "comedian" who goes by the Twitter handle @Holbornlolz. The video, which was somewhat blurry, showed a man dangling from a rope attached to a helicopter. The "comedian" inaccurately captioned the video: "Taliban hanging someone from a helicopter in Kandahar."

Cruz added his own assertion above the comedian's tweet, tweeting: "This horrifying image encapsulates Joe Biden's Afghanistan catastrophe: The Taliban hanging a man from an American Blackhawk helicopter. Tragic. Unimaginable." Crenshaw also used the video to criticize Biden's withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan, tweeting: "In what f***ing world was it a good idea to just hand over a country to these people."

Some popular Twitter accounts went so far as to make declarations about the identity of the person supposedly being executed. Indian journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, who has more than 6 million Twitter followers, wrote, "Taliban hang a person, presumed to be an American interpreter, from a U.S. Blackhawk helicopter."

*snip*


Hannity TONIGHT

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[msongs]

1. it's trumps withdrawal deal nt

[TheRealNorth]

2. The first impression has been made....

They don't care if they have to quietly retract it later, cause the sheep will only remember the sensationalism of the first impression.

[Nevilledog]

3. Yup

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Tweet text:
Vishal P. Singh (They/He)
@VPS_Reports
That Taliban helicopter fake news is a perfect example of our post-truth era. It literally doesn’t fucking matter that the story was debunked. That’s why Hannity & Gorka still run the clip.

It. Doesn’t. Matter.

Right wingers don’t believe the fact checkers. The damage is done.

Acyn
@Acyn
Hannity still showing the helicopter clip
Image
7:28 PM · Aug 31, 2021

[Kid Berwyn]

4. Projection: How NAZIs operate.

People tossed from airplanes in Chile by Pinochet, for example. Operation CONDOR kept the proles in line.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/events/operation-condor-1968-1989