12,700+ Retweets – Raw Story & Daily Kos print false claim that Trump’s team switched off recording devices during the President’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin

Feb. 2: Trump Meets Putin

The Claim: Trump’s team switched off recording devices during the president’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Source: Raw Story and Ilan Berman, vice president of the Foreign Policy Council.

The Facts: Berman actually just speculated during a panel discussion on the reason there was no readout of Trump’s call with Putin. He offered, by way of speculation, that perhaps White House staffers had switched off the recording devices. Raw Story saw his suggestion after it was tweeted out, and they published a report titled, “Foreign policy insider: ‘No readout of Trump-Putin call because White House turned off recording.”

But contrary to Berman’s suggestion, there is indeed a readout of Trump’s call with Putin, although it’s vague and short on details. Second, White House calls are generally not recorded, and they haven’t been since the time of Richard Nixon, according Yahoo’s Olivier Knox. Third, as Berman stated repeatedly after the Raw Story report was published, he was only speculating about the readout. By his own admission, he has no idea what actually happened.

Raw Story has updated its story to note that no one knows what they’re talking about. On that they are correct, in part.

But they still have the tweet up! Notice the 12,700+ retweets!

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