The tweet on the right caught my attention this morning.  It contains a screenshot of Gérard Araud, French ambassador to the US replying to a tweet written by Donald Trump.  Trump calls the “tragedy in Paris” “interesting” given that France has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and Araud calls Trump “repugnant” and lacking “human decency”.

My immediate reaction was skepticism: even Trump, now running for president, wouldn’t write such an insensitive tweet following November 13th’s tragic attacks.  So, after getting over the shock value of what I read, I went into fact checking mode.  It didn’t take very much research to poke holes in this claim.  The screenshot posted in the tweet shows the tweet by Trump was sent on January 7th; obviously not after the attacks.  I also checked Donald Trump’s twitter account, and quickly observed that the tweet was not in his timeline, and he had in fact tweeted prayers for Paris.  

However, the tweet by Trump is real and a quick google search found it (at the time of writing this, it has not been deleted):
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/552955167533174785

Rather than being about the attacks on November 13th, the tweet was written in response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks, which happened January 7th, 2015.  (The tweet by Araud seems to be legitimate and has been mentioned by various sources, but has been deleted)

So how did so many people miss this fact?  

Continue reading Did Donald Trump write an insensitive tweet about the Nov 13th attacks in Paris? →