Biden said 'yes' to redirection of police funds despite poor editing from Scalise team

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) has been accused of posting a manipulated video of disability and social justice activist Ady Barkan in a political ad aimed at shining light on Democratic encouragement and involvement in the violent rioting and protesting seen across the country over the last several months.

Twitter flagged the video as "manipulated content" and Scalise removed the tweet and the video, posting a new version with Barkan's content cut out. Scalise stated on Twitter, "While Joe Biden clearly said 'yes,' twice, to the question of his support to redirect money away from police, we will honor the request of @AdyBarkan and remove the portion of his interview from our video."

Nancy Pelosi demanded, ".@SteveScalise tried to steal @AdyBarkan's health care with more than 60 votes to repeal or undermine Americans' health care. Now, he's trying to steal Ady's words by lying. Congressman Scalise must take his doctored video down and apologize immediately."

Barkan's organization Be a Hero, released a statement saying, "That deep fake changed the meaning of the question Ady asked Vice President Biden. Then, when fact-checkers, reporters, and even Republican pundits began calling out his lie, Rep. Scalise didn't apologize; he doubled down with a link to the original video, never acknowledging that his doctored version had intentionally added fake words Ady never said."

The controversy has been convoluted. CNN reported, In the original video, "Barkan asks Biden if he can agree that 'we can redirect some of the funding,' for police departments toward mental health services, to which Biden replies, 'Yes.'"

They continue, "The clip tweeted out by the number two Republican in the House edits in the word 'for police' in a digitized voice to make it sound as if Barkan is asking Biden if he agrees they can 'redirect some of the funding for police.'"

In the original video, posted by Now This, Barken says, at 0:56, "We can reduce the responsibilities assigned to the police and redirect some of the funding for police into social services, mental health counseling, and affordable housing."

He goes on to give an example of this by arguing the case of Rayshard Brooks, who was killed in an altercation with police in June, could have been better handled by a wellness counselor rather than police. He then asked Biden, at 1:23, "Are you open to that kind of reform?"

Biden responds saying "Yes, I proposed that kind of reform…" and goes on to give many examples of how he would reform policing, reducing military surplus and change laws regarding "no-knock" warrants for drug offenses and "stop and frisk" practices.

At 2:57, Barkan interrupts saying, "But do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding?" To which Biden says "Yes. Absolutely…" and goes on to discuss changes to the prison system. Per The Hill, Scalise's video uses that timestamp but adds "for police" from the prior timestamp, "The clip Scalise tweeted spliced in the words 'for police' from earlier in the interview at the end of the question in the same computerized voice Barkan uses to communicate."

Ady Barkan responded to the original Scalise post tweeting to him, "These are not my words. I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts. You and your team have doctored my words for your own political gain. Please remove this video immediately. You owe the entire disability community an apology."

On Fox and Friends, Scalise responded to the controversy saying, "Look, it shouldn't have been edited." He continued, "But at the same time, the comments were always about—in fact, twice in that interview he asked Joe Biden if he was for redirecting money away from police. And in both times, Joe Biden said yes."

It appears that Scalise’s team chose to use the second version of the question instead of the first, although it is not clear why. Barkan stated to Biden that his view is that some funds should be redirected from the police to fund other social services and then interrupted Biden to confirm that Biden agreed with that aspect, as Biden had only discussed a series of policy changes to general policing.

In context the meaning was not changed whatsoever and Scalise's team did not add words Barkan did not say, as the accusation implies. But they did edit the clip by apparently copying the words "for police" from one sentence and inserting it after the second.

Without the Scalise clip to compare, but in context of the second version which did not contain the Barkan clip, the point was to show Biden agreeing to redirecting funding from the police, which contains a multitude of short clips of rioting and Democrats responding to them.

Within the context of the interview, the assertion that Barkan was asking Biden if he would support redirecting some funds from the police is not controversial and it is not misrepresenting Barkan's views in any way. The only issue at hand is the copying and pasting of part of one sentence to the end of a follow up question for clarification that is controversial.

Although Scalise's team should not have edited the video in this way, the outrage is far more over-the-top than it should otherwise be. They did not artificially create words and insert them into an otherwise different conversation or use words from another interview out of context. The flow of the conversation makes perfect sense. But it demonstrates how careful Republicans have to be in making these ads and the importance of being 100 percent accurate even when the context is assumed and there appears to be no other controversy. The ability of the left to blow these things out of proportion and manufacture incredible amounts of outrage cannot be underestimated.