(Credit: Chinese_Taipei_Paralympic_Flag Wikipedia)
Russian news agency Interfax unpublished a story after falling for a fake Donald Trump quote about the Paralympics, BuzzFeed reported. The fake Trump Paralympics quote came from a Russian satire story.
The quote claimed Trump said to the BBC:
“The decision to not admit Russian paralympians was made by complete idiots, they are the ones that are really disabled here. How do you explain the fact that athletes from Russia with all these scandals around doping, still competed at the Olympics in Rio and all of the Russian Paralympic team, which has never been involved in doping scandals, will not go to Rio? Isn’t it just meanness and baseness?”
Trump didn’t say that to the BBC, though. iMediaEthics has contacted the Trump campaign and Interfax for comment.
According to BuzzFeed, numerous Russian news outlets picked up the fake quote from Interfax. “The story was covered by news site Life.ru, a big conservative newspaper, a business paper in Saint Petersburg, the large broadcaster NTV, and even the official paper of Russian Parliament, to name a few,” BuzzFeed reported.
Interfax later issued a message to its subscribers saying it was a “mistake” to publish the quote and apologized, according to Voice of America.
