Washington CNN —
A conservative commentator with a substantial Twitter following went viral late last week by making false claims about the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 – and Twitter owner Elon Musk amplified some of the misinformation, pushing it to millions of people.
The conservative commentator, Chuck Callesto, inaccurately tweeted that various publicly available videos of January 6 had been “censored.” Musk amplified one of these claims. Callesto also put inaccurate captions on other January 6 footage to push a baseless narrative that the riot perpetrated by Trump supporters was actually carried out by left-wing Antifa activists.
Here is a fact check of three of Callesto’s tweets.
On Friday, Callesto tweeted a video of a man who was putting on pro-Trump attire and urging another man to do the same in order to “blend in.” Callesto wrote: “JUST IN: Previously censored video re-emerges showing ANTIFA members dressing up a Trump supporters in DC…”
Facts First: False. This was no Antifa video, and it had not been censored. The man dressing up as a Trump supporter on camera is comedian Walter Masterson, who regularly mocks the far-right and went to Capitol Hill with a colleague on January 6 with the intention of producing humorous interview content. Masterson’s extended footage, including the part where he puts on the pro-Trump outfit and talks about blending in, has been on YouTube for more than two years. He responded on...
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