The Paper's reporter Nan Boyi intern Zheng Shujing
On the 25th, an author posted on the "Today's Headlines" platform, "The latest news, former US President Trump declared that the largest (illegal immigrant) caravan in history is coming towards the United States, and the Biden administration is unprepared and has done nothing." And accompanied by a screenshot of a suspected "Trump Twitter".
The search found that the above-mentioned "Trump statement" was widely circulated on social platforms at home and abroad.
As we all know, Trump's Twitter account was permanently banned on January 8 this year for "violating Twitter rules". So where did this Trump"s "latest statement" come from? Is it really from Trump?? Is the caravan of immigrants heading to the United States really "the largest in history"?
Is Trump's "Twitter Statement" True or False?
Screenshots of the "Trump Statement" circulating on social platforms show that the publisher of the information is a Twitter account called @realdonaldtrump. However, a direct search on the Twitter website showed that the account had been shut down.
Although there are still multiple seemingly Trump-related accounts on Twitter, none of them match the avatar, nickname and account name in the screenshot.
On January 8, 2021, after the U.S. Capitol riots, Twitter announced on its official blog that it would permanently ban Trump's personal Twitter account @realDonaldTrump, citing the "risk of further incitement to violence." Before the ban, the then-president had 88.7 million followers on his account.
To this day, @realDonaldTrump is still a disabled account on Twitter. And it is worth noting that the letters D and T used in Trump's personal Twitter account name @realDonaldTrump are capitalized in English, while in the latest screenshots circulated, the account name @realdonaldtrump are lowercase.
According to the Trump Twitter Profile website, which retains all the content of the Trump Twitter account, the search showed that of the total 56,571 tweets posted (or forwarded) by the account for 11 and a half years, a total of 36 tweets containing "caravan/caravans" were included, of which 34 were originally published, 1 was forwarded, and 1 was deleted (resended after correcting a spelling error).
The original (and deleted) Tweets mentioned above were posted between April 1, 2018 and July 23, 2019, and the tweets were forwarded on August 17, 2020. Among them, there is no tweet that is completely consistent with the "Twitter Latest Statement" circulating on social platforms at home and abroad.
Therefore, the so-called "Trump statement" on the current social platform can neither come from the recent release of Trump's own Twitter account, nor is it a screenshot of his previous tweets, so it is possible that this is a post-processed image.
Where did the "latest statement" come from?
Although there is no original Twitter account provenance, the screenshots are widely circulated on the Twitter platform, and a large number of users have posted content in the copy that is exactly the same as the tweet wording in the screenshots, and also claims to be from the mouth of the 45th PRESIDENT of the United States, Trump.
Among these publishers, a Twitter user named Liz Harrington @realLizUSA particularly noteworthy.
On June 15, 2021, Trump announced that he would appoint a Republican National Committee official to replace Jason Miller as his new spokesman, and that the new person in charge was Liz Harrington.
Although @realLizUSA's Twitter account does not have any identity authentication, its account links the web page to the Trump-launched "Save America" website, and its 220,000 "followers" (according to the "Twitter Audit" website, which has 191,600 real fans) is also much higher than the ordinary Twitter account, which is roughly equivalent to the official certified account of its predecessor Jason Miller@JasonMillerinDC the number of fans (366,000).
According to Liz Harrington's Twitter image, the above "Trump statement" came from the "Save america" website, which the surging Mingcha found that in the news on October 24, there was indeed the original text of the "Trump statement" circulated on the Internet.
After losing the 2020 election, Trump changed his slogan from "Make America Great" and "Make America Great Again" to "Save America", not only established the "Save America" Political Action Committee (Save America PAC), opened a special website, and held offline campaign rallies in many places in the United States since June this year under the name of "Save America". The above-mentioned "Save America" website is its campaign website.
Based on this, it can be confirmed that the "Trump Statement" around the recent so-called "largest immigration caravan in history to the United States" does exist, but its release route is not a Twitter spread on the Internet, but a "Save america" website created by Trump.
Is there really "the largest caravan in history" going to the United States?
Although the "Trump statement" is true, the "largest caravan in history" called in its statement is still debatable.
According to Reuters news on October 23, thousands of migrants from Haiti, South America and Central America are departing from the southern Mexican border city of Tapachula and heading north. They clashed with about 400 law enforcement officers at a road checkpoint in Tapachula, who tried to leave them in Tapachula, but many still broke through the line.
NBC News noted the signs as early as Oct. 21, when they received word from Homeland Security officials that some of the migrants had tried to leave their camps and engaged in a fierce confrontation with local police.
The Washington Post reported on October 24 that it interviewed some immigrants who were stranded in Tapachula and continued to wait for permission from the Mexican government to settle down and decide to head north in search of a better life. Some of the team wanted to stay in Mexico and travel to the capital, Mexico City, while others dreamed of reaching the United States. Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins recently tweeted a video tracking the immigration team.
According to Jenkins, the migrants' route of action began in Tapachula, via Huehuetán, and is currently headed to Huixtla. Comparing the locations on Google Earth, it can be seen that the crowd is indeed moving toward northern Mexico, and most likely using the road from Tapachula to Juchitán de Zaragoza, surrounded by vegetation and traffic similar to the background shown in the video.
In addition, after verifying these videos using the inVID tool, it was found that they were all original videos. Therefore, it is true that a large number of migrants from Central America have moved from south to north from Within Mexico.
As for its size, according to Reuters, the size of the "caravan" team from Tapachula is about 3,000 people, including children. Three years ago, there was also a group of "migrant caravans" from many countries in Central and South America, and the destination was the United States under Trump.
On October 26, 2018, The New York Times reported that the number of "caravan" migrants traveling from Honduras to Guatemala to the mexican-U.S. border was around 7,000 people, including at least 2,300 children. According to a special report released by The Paper in December of that year, the team reached nearly 10,000 people at its peak.
At that time, Trump also repeatedly tweeted, asking countries along the way to block the movement of "migrant caravans".
Although this year's "caravan" migrant team is still on the move, and the final number of participants is not yet known, it may be too early to "predict" the scale of this "largest in history".
In summary, the Trump statement "specially recommended screenshot" circulated on the Internet is false, but the "Trump statement" does have its own text. However, Trump's statement that "the largest caravan in history" is advancing toward the United States exaggerates the facts.
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Wuwei
Proofreader: Yan Zhang