Search Results: year anniversaries

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aoc-empty-parking-lot/
Does an Image Show Ocasio-Cortez Fake-Crying at a Migrant Camp?

Origin
On the one-year anniversary of a large protest against the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy that separated migrant children from their parents, photojournalist Ivan Pierre Aguirre posted photographs he took during the June 24, 2018, event in Tornillo, Texas.

One picture captured then-U. S. House of Representatives candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez having an emotional reaction while looking through a fence toward a detention facility housing children. Conspiracy trolls latched on to that image, claiming without evidence that the series of photographs from which is was taken were staged

Fox News also quoted a social media user voicing another critique, writing: “Excuse me while I take the time to put on bright red lipstick, a pristine white outfit and a Movado watch before I go see little kids locked up in the desert.”

Aguirre said the group Ocasio-Cortez accompanied to Tornillo wore white as part of their protest. The rest of the criticism, he averred, seemed much ado about nothing. “You can’t wear lipstick and be at a protest?” Aguirre said. “Her watch — OK she has a new watch. People are just criticizing everything.”

Reporting that real but politically inconvenient events were actually staged is a long-standing practice at InfoWars. Jones was successfully sued for defamation by parents of children who were slain in the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre after Jones led his fans to believe the shooting was staged, and some of them relentlessly tormented those parents, believing them to be acting on behalf of a vague cabal seeking to undermine national sovereignty.

Paul Joseph Watson, the InfoWars Twitter personality who helped boost the bogus “empty parking lot” story, was also key in pushing unfounded claims in April 2019 that the fire at the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris was intentionally set by Muslims.