Kellyanne Conway over the weekend defended the White House for sharing what appeared to be an edited video which incorrectly appeared to show CNN correspondent Jim Acosta assaulting a White House staffer.
During a Sunday interview, Fox News host Chris Wallace confronted Conway for the decision to tweet the "clearly altered" video.
"What do you mean by edited or -- as others are saying -- 'doctored' video?" Conway replied. "He put his hands on her and grabbed the mic back or he did not -- and he clearly did."
"No!" Wallace interrupted. "He clearly did [keep the mic] but the video was altered and there are experts who have looked at it to make it look speeded up."
"But that's not altered," Conway sighed. "That's sped up. They do it all the time in sports to see if there's actually a first down or a touchdown. So I have to disagree with the, I think, overwrought description of this video being doctored as if we put somebody else's arm in there."
"He should have apologized to that young aide," Conway said of Acosta. "You have to show respect to the White House, to the presidency, the president. And I think what Acosta did was very unfair to the rest of the press corps."
Conway's glib dismissal of the doctored footage ignores that it wasn't just sped up, but actually repeated several frames to exaggerate Acosta's movements, or that they acquired the video allegedly from Paul Joseph Watson of conspiracy site InfoWars, thereby punishing a legitimate reporter via a completely non-legitimate site.
