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WaPo Corrects Maddow's Claim That the White House Edited Out a Question for Putin from Transcript

Lauretta Brown
Lauretta Brown  |  July 25, 2018 3:20 PM

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow accused the White House Tuesday evening of editing out a key question for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last week about whether he had wanted President Trump to win the 2016 election. Putin answered in the affirmative. However, the White House’s transcript is missing part of the question.

The Washington Post explained Wednesday that the error was due to a technical issue and not because of intentionally deceptive editing by the White House.

"President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?" Reuters reporter Jeff Mason asked.

"Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal," Putin answered in Russian.

But in the White House transcript, the question is cut off to read "And did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?" 

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Maddow asserted during her show that "the White House has disappeared from the official U.S. government record" the question, arguing "it wasn’t a mistake, it was on purpose."

“What happened?” The Post’s Philip Bump asked. “If you watch the videos, it’s pretty clear. At some point in the middle of that question, there’s a switch between the feed from the reporters and the feed from the translator. In the White House version of the video, you can hear the question being asked very faintly under the woman who is translating saying ‘president.’”

“You can hear the same audio in The Post’s feed, starting at about a minute in,” he added. “We did not edit the question out. This is the feed we were provided.”

“Our transcript and the White House’s were apparently based on the feed that runs only in the right channel,” Bump explained. “A White House official told CNN’s Abby Phillip that its transcript ‘did not have Mason’s audio turned up in time,’ referring to Reuters reporter Jeff Mason, who asked the question.”

“This is not a conspiracy from the White House,” Bump concluded. “While the White House certainly has a track record of misrepresenting facts, this would have been a remarkably futile revision of reality to attempt. As it turns out, they didn’t.”

In response to The Post’s clarification, Maddow doubled down Wednesday arguing in a tweet thread that “nothing here from WaPo disproves our report” and emphasizing that the "White House has let it stand uncorrected."

Bump replied to Maddow that her assertions that the video was edited was incorrect. 

CNN also focused Wednesday on how the White House has yet to update the error in the transcript.