A Telegraph reporter over the weekend shared a fake image showing President Donald Trump meeting with one of the alt-right leaders present at a white supremacist rally in Virginia.
"Millennial Matt," an alt-right troll, was one of the participants in the pro-Nazi, pro-Confederate rally in Charlottesville, Va. that saw one counter-protester murdered and dozens injured.
"Here's a photo of @Millennial_Matt with Trump and carrying a burning torch in Charlottesville," Telegraph Middle East correspondent Raf Sanchez tweeted Saturday. "This isn't complicated."
Sanchez evidently got the photos from Millennial Matt's Twitter account. But what he failed to realize was that the Trump photo was a fake created by the alt-right troll.
People think the pic of Trump and I is real. It is a photoshop hah
— ProudBoys™ (@Millennial_Matt) August 13, 2017
Sanchez later realized his mistake and deleted the tweet, tweeting out a picture of the original image for good measure. The correction tweet failed to crack a thousand retweets, compared to the over 22 thousand retweets the original received.
It appears @millenial_matt's profile picture is photoshopped. Here's the original Trump picture. pic.twitter.com/OClcOFbZ2w
— Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) August 13, 2017
It's right to correct. It's also right that a great many of the Nazis in Charlottesville were Trump supporters. Ask David Duke.
— Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) August 13, 2017
UPDATED Aug. 15, 12:20 P.M.: An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that Millennial Matt is a leader of the "Proud Boys," a group run by former Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes. He is not a member.