A clip was circulating on social media that appeared to show Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) defending the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
A Twitter user named Timothy Burke tweeted on Friday night, “Ron DeSantis went on Hannity, and things got SPICY.”
In the video, a combative DeSantis appears to push back on host Sean Hannity for calling the search of Mar-a-Lago a “raid.”
“It was not a raid. They were serving valid process [sic] in accordance with the laws and the Constitution of the United States and the state of Florida. They did it with integrity, they did it with honor. And to say it’s a raid is disinformation,” DeSantis says in the video.
Watch the video below:
Ron DeSantis went on Hannity and things got SPICY pic.twitter.com/F22YqEjbFr
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) August 13, 2022
Later in the video, DeSantis appears to defend the FBI agents and he said, “These people did their jobs. They’ve been smeared as the Gestapo for doing their job.”
Twitter applied a label to the video that stated it was “manipulated media.”
Meanwhile, The Associated Press fact-checked the video and called it an “altered video.”
“Video of a recent episode of ‘Hannity’ has been edited to insert footage of DeSantis at a 2020 press conference, where he spoke about state authorities executing a search warrant on the home of a former Florida Department of Health data analysis,” the AP explained.
It added, “The creator was clear in subsequent posts that the clip was edited, and was intended to contrast DeSantis’ 2020 remarks with his recent comments on the FBI’s actions at Mar-a-Lago.”
Still, the outlet notes it received over 3 million views and some users “retweeted it as a real interview.”
Hannity tweeted Saturday, “WARNING IF YOU SEE THIS ON TWITTER IT IS EDITED FAKE NEWS. This never happened!! They spliced in comments the Governor made years ago. Twitter needs to step in and remove this immediately!!”
WARNING IF YOU SEE THIS ON TWITTER IT IS EDITED FAKE NEWS. This never happened!! They spliced in comments the Governor made years ago. Twitter needs to step in and remove this immediately!! https://t.co/hKRa7JuvyO
— Sean Hannity 🇺🇸 (@seanhannity) August 13, 2022
Meanwhile, DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw tweeted, “Video of DeSantis Arguing with Hannity About FBI Raid is Fake, Footage from 2020.”
While the clip appeared to show the governor defending the raid, Desantis condemned it on Aug. 8.
“The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic,” he tweeted.
