Toddlers’ parents sue Trump campaign over ‘racist baby’ video

Trump shared a video of two toddlers that was later found to have been altered

Sep 18, 2020

Donald Trump is being sued for posting a manipulated video of two babies.

The Olympian reports the president shared a video featuring two babies, one white, one Black, that was found to have been manipulated. The original version was of the children hugging, while the altered version made it seem like the white toddler was chasing the Black toddler with a caption that read, “Terrified toddler runs from racist baby” and “Racist baby probably a Trump voter.”

The original video of 26-month-old Maxwell and 27-month-old Finnegan was posted to Facebook by one of the toddler’s parents, Michael Cisneros, last September. The two children were friends who rode the school bus to daycare together, per CNN. Trump shared the doctored video in June.

It is unclear why the President retweeted the video, though the original video resurfaced amid the summer’s racial protests. Now the toddler’s parents are suing him and the man who altered the original video. The lawsuit filed on Thursday, in New York Supreme Court lists Cisneros, Alex Hanson, and Erica and Daniel McKenna as parents.

Named in the suit is a pro-Trump meme maker named Logan Cook, also known as Carpe Donktum. The parents say that Trump’s decision to share the video is “extreme, shocking and outrageous…beyond the bounds of decency” and pushes “his brand of sensationalism in complete disregard for the truth.” The lawsuit also says the video is damaging because “a portion of it out of context, sending out an extremely distorted and false message,”

On July 2, Cisneros wrote an article for Newsweek saying, “Seeing that Donald Trump had shared a manipulated version of my video on Twitter — I had a flood of emotions. I was shocked and I was appalled. I couldn’t believe that the President of the United States would tweet out a video that is sharing a message of hate in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests. Something that could cause more division and ignite his base.”

The couples are suing for unspecified damages.

Twitter removed the video from Trump’s personal Twitter account after flagging it ‘manipulated media.’

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