On Saturday evening, Glenn Beck apologized for falsely claiming—based on a photoshopped hoax Tweet from faketrumptweet.com—that GOP frontrunner Donald Trump voted for Barack Obama in 2008.
Beck made his apology after Trump called him out on his lie and obliterated Beck at a Saturday campaign event in New Hampshire.
“My apologies for the misinformation,” Beck wrote on his Facebook page. “I owe Donald Trump an apology for the error of this tweet. More importantly I owe you an apology for making the water muddy where the water is crystal clear on his record.”
Beck had Tweeted that Trump had voted for Obama in 2008 before making the false allegation on Fox News’s O’Reilly Factor on Friday, insisting to host Bill O’Reilly, “he voted for Obama in ’08, come on Bill.”
New media and bloggers quickly pointed out that Beck based his comments on a photoshopped Tweet that did not even have Twitter’s verified check mark next to Trump’s name. The “delete” option, which is only visible to the account holder, was also visible on the fake Tweet.
“This dopey guy, Glenn Beck, he looks like hell. No, he’s like a dope. And I’ve watched him cry on television all the time. He’s doing very badly. His thing is falling apart. His company is falling apart,” Trump said in New Hampshire.
Trump, who publicly endorsed McCain in 2008, pointed out that he was “on John McCain’s committee, raised a tremendous amount of money for John McCain, had dinner with John McCain and his wife right before the election, and I’ve got to listen to this idiot named Glenn Beck.” Trump also said he asked O’Reilly, “Bill, why do you have a guy like that on television?”
Trump has called Beck a “real nut job” who speaks “badly of me only because I refuse to do his show.” On Saturday, Trump again said that Beck started attacking him after Trump refused to go on Beck’s program.
“Unlike me, his viewers & ratings are way down & he has become irrelevant,” Trump previously Tweeted.
Trump, as he has done to the mainstream media, has prevented Beck from spreading lies and misinformation during this election cycle. Trump pointed out on Saturday that “the thing about having a large microphone is that we can at least explain to people that these people lie so much.”
Trump said there is often “no one to refute” people like Beck when they lie and said he has discovered “how smart the public is, how caring the public is” while taking on the lies that Beck and the mainstream media have tried to disseminate.
Beck has had it out from Trump since Trump started leading the the 2016 presidential polls. Beck has gone on left-wing National Public Radio to slam Trump as a “progressive” just like he did against Newt Gingrich in 2012 when Tea Party supporters started to support Gingrich over Mitt Romney. After insisting that “we have a real, serious issue with civility,” Beck called Trump a “son of a bitch.” The political shock jock/entertainer also mocked Trump for keeping all of the Bibles people send him in a safe place and vowed to not support Trump if he is the GOP nominee.
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