
On 24 May, the president of the United States tweeted out a video purporting to show Nancy Pelosi, the democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, slurring her words, seeming almost drunk. President Trump accompanied the video with the all-caps label “PELOSI STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE”.
It was taken from a Fox News report that contained one of several videos circulating portraying Pelosi in that light. They had been shared both by right-wing media outlets and widely on social media, including by Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. But all the videos share one common feature: they are all fakes, carefully and selectively edited to make Pelosi look infirm or intoxicated.