The parents of the toddlers featured in the doctored “racist baby” video have sued President Trump and the creator behind the meme.
Michael Cisneros, Alex Hanson, and Erica and Daniel McKenna filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Donald Trump and Logan Cook, accused of creating the doctored video without their written consent.
According to The Wrap, the lawsuits states Trump, his re-election campaign, and a pro-Trump meme maker named Logan Cook who made the video engaged in “extreme, shocking, and outrageous” behavior.
The parents said the doctored video was “beyond the bounds of decency” and said Trump sharing it was pushing “his brand of sensationalism in complete disregard for the truth.”
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In June, Trump tweeted a fake and edited video of two children – one is black and the other is white.
The clip shows the black toddler running away from the white child while on a sidewalk.
“Breaking news,” the video said with a fake lower-third television news headline that read: “Terrified toddler (sic) runs from racist baby.”
The caption then changed to: “Racist baby probably a Trump voter.”
The video in question wasn’t real – but the footage of the two toddlers was.
The real meaning of the viral video, reported by CNN in September 2019, was about the friendship between two toddlers, running towards each other and hugging, before chasing after one another in a playful way.
Maxwell and Finnegan, the two boys, were heralded in the viral clip for their adorable friendship.
Twitter labeled the video as “manipulated media” and linked to a web page outlining Twitter policies relating to selectively edited clips.
The social media platform confirmed Trump “shared a version of the video which many journalists confirmed was edited and doctored with a fake CNN chyron.”
Following their guidelines, the president's tweet was marked because: “You may not deceptively promote synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm.
“In addition, we may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context.”
The video was later taken down by both Twitter and Facebook due to copyright complaints.
Twitter also suspended Cook, who created the video, from the platform because of numerous copyright violations.
The parents’ lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages.
