Republican candidate Colin Schmitt has been caught posting a deceptively edited video of his Democratic opponent Pat Ryan. Republicans are paying extra attention to this race because Ryan blindsided them in a special election. From the Wikipedia link:
Congressman Pat Ryan
In the August 23 special election, Ryan faced Republican nominee and Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro. Ryan was seen as the underdog as every poll had him trailing Molinaro and many believed that President Joe Biden's unpopularity would hinder Democrats in the swing district. Ryan narrowly defeated Molinaro by 2,858 votes, 51.1%–48.8%,[20] which was considered an upset. He outperformed Biden's 2020 margin in the district by 0.8%. In explaining his victory, political observers noted that Ryan campaigned strongly in favor of protecting abortion rights in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade.[21] His victory was attributed to college-educated voters', particularly women's, support for abortion rights.[4][22]
Molinaro is currently running in NY 19, one of the newly redrawn districts in New York, against Josh Riley. Ryan is now running in NY 18 against Schmitt.
Here’s the current story via Patricia Doxsey at the Daily Freeman, Kingston, NY:
KINGSTON, N.Y. — Republican congressional candidate Colin Schmitt on Friday shared a dishonestly edited social media post taken from a Freeman video interview to inaccurately suggest his Democratic opponent responded to a Freeman question in a way he did not.
The post, which appeared on Schmitt’s Twitter account along with a comment stating “honesty is the best policy,” cut Ryan’s actual answer from the video interview.
Ryan, who is running for the 18th congressional district seat, sat down with the Freeman on Friday in a one-hour video interview. Schmitt declined repeated invitations to participate in a debate hosted by the Freeman or in a video interview with the paper. Of all the invited candidates, Schmitt was the only one to reject the Freeman’s invitation.
emphasis added
To expand on Doxsey’s report, here’s the gist of the deception:
As part of the Freeman interview, [Democratic Candidate Pat] Ryan was asked about his prior employment with Dataminr, which gathers public information from social media and sells it to a variety of companies across the world.
In the interview, Ryan responds: “Sure, this is another area where there’s a lot of b.s. information out there where it’s totally misleading.”
In the campaign clip, though, the video ends after Ryan said the word “sure” in an effort to suggest that Ryan admitted that the content gathered was sold to Russia.
emphasis added
Schmitt retweeted the deceptive edit posted by National Republican Congressional Committee Regional Press Secretary Samantha Bullock which has this caption: Refreshing honesty from @PatRyanUC as he admits he sold Americans’ data to Russia in his role at Dataminr #NY18
To put this in context, Ryan was responding to a question about what he did while working at Dataminr. “...and what was done with the information that was mined? Was it sold to Russia?”
To repeat Ryan’s full response that was cut off after the “sure”: “Sure, this is another area where there’s a lot of b.s. information out there where it’s totally misleading.”
Here’s the tweet in question, which was still up as of Tuesday October 25, 2022.
Ivan Lajara tweeted a reply to Schmitt’s tweet: “This is dishonest clipping of our reporting, at best. "Sure" was about responding to the question. The whole clip has it, as does the follow up. https://bit.ly/3DsrOqZYou were also invited and chose not to participate.”
The entire interview with Ryan is available on line, per Lajara; the segment in question starts at about 43 minutes in the hour long interview. Ryan goes on to make a couple of points, 1) that a lot of politicians don’t really understand how technology works and 2) this is a continuing effort to smear his patriotism.
Dataminr is collecting information that is publicly available on social media for anyone to see; they collect it and analyze it for legitimate purposes. Republicans are trying to make it sound as though Ryan was spying for Russia.
Here’s the entire interview:
Back to Doxsey’s report:
Despite being told both on his Twitter feed and in an email that the clip was dishonestly edited and that Ryan had not said what the two were claiming, Bullock and Schmitt, a state assemblyman from New Windsor, did not remove the post from their Twitter accounts.
Schmitt’s campaign manager Taylor Weyeneth also shared Schmitt’s post.
Bullock did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Weyeneth defended the reposting of the deceitful tweet, stating the assemblyman’s Twitter account “simply shared a post” from the National Republican Congressional Committee, although Schmitt had made comments of his own — including that “honesty is the best policy” and that “Pat sold us out” — when he retweeted Bullock’s post.
To summarize, the Republican candidate, who has dodged interviews and debates, published information about his Democratic opponent that was edited and framed in a way that smeared his opponent’s patriotism with deceptive information. When contacted by the press and informed that the information was in error and a deception he refused to retract it or admit it was deceptive.
It’s possible to have an honest debate about what the parties stand for and what their candidates will do — but when there’s a clear cut example of dishonesty, it should end the debate.