Kellyanne Conway on Sunday stood by the White House’s widely criticized decision to share a misleadingly edited video of CNN reporter Jim Acosta refusing to give up the microphone at President Donald Trump’s press conference last week.
The top White House adviser appeared to contradict herself on “Fox News Sunday” when she admitted that the video of Acosta’s interaction with a White House aide had been “sped up” but not “doctored.”
When Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked why White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted the “clearly altered” video, Conway downplayed the video’s manipulation.
″By that do you mean sped up?” Conway asked. “That’s not altered. That’s sped up. They do it all the time in sports to see if there’s actually a first down or a touchdown.”
“I have to disagree with the overwrought description of this video being doctored as if we put someone else’s arm in there,” she added.
Video editing experts have said some parts of the clip in question were slowed down and then sped up to make it seem as though Acosta had forcefully pushed aside the arm of the intern during Trump’s contentious Q & A with the press on Wednesday.
Sanders announced hours later that Acosta’s White House press credentials had been revoked in light of the incident, which she falsely characterized as Acosta “placing his hands on a young woman.” An unedited video of the exchange shows Acosta turning away from the intern as she reaches over his arm to try to take the microphone from his hand.
Later Wednesday, Sanders defended the decision on the Twitter post that included the altered clip, which was first tweeted hours earlier by a contributor for InfoWars, a conspiracy theory website that has falsely claimed the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre never happened.
Trump defended the video on Friday, despite backlash from political commentators on both sides of the aisle.
“No one manipulated it, give me a break,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.
Conway, infamous for her unapologetic attempts to spin the news in favor of her boss, went beyond refusing to acknowledge the misleading nature of the edited video during her Fox News appearance.
Acosta “should have apologized to that aide and as far as I know he has not,” she said.