Photojournalist Catches the Truth Behind Trump’s TelePrompter Flub

Photojournalist Catches the Truth Behind Trump’s TelePrompter Flub

President Trump stepped up to the podium last Monday to read prepared remarks about the shootings in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas. Except that in the final blessings of the speech, he named Toledo instead of Dayton, a different city about 150 miles away.

While many in the media were quick to blame a staffer or a teleprompter error, as is often the case, it took a photojournalist to provide a definite answer. Leah Millis, a photographer for Reuters, tweeted out a photo that clearly showed the president’s teleprompter during the part of the speech in question:

https://twitter.com/LeahMillis/status/1158402035043229696?s=20

In the text, the words “Texas and Ohio” are clearly visible with Toledo nowhere to be found.

The White House, in what seemed to be a moment of self-awareness, did make a note of the error, which seemed to be entirely on Trump, via a strikethrough in the official transcript that was released to the media later on Monday.

It’s unclear if that would have been the case if the Millis photo had not been widely circulated after the statement.

This isn’t the first time Trump has been held to account by eagle-eyed photographers. Washington Post photographer Jabin Botsford has previously captured Trump’s notes about Ilhan Omar and some really egregious spelling errors in remarks about democrats in the past.

It’s a bit of a sad commentary on photojournalism today when photographers have to worry equally about capturing the moment and surreptitiously capturing the president’s notes at the same time, just to make sure that they can prove their case if the president attempts to label their reportage as “fake news.”

Wasim Ahmad's picture

Wasim Ahmad is an assistant teaching professor teaching journalism at Quinnipiac University. He's worked at newspapers in Minnesota, Florida and upstate New York, and has previously taught multimedia journalism at Stony Brook University and Syracuse University. He's also worked as a technical specialist at Canon USA for Still/Cinema EOS cameras.

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69 Comments
Previous comments

And how about a little Photoshop work on that teleprompter, changing the words to "And I pray to our merciful Lord in heaven that I do not end up dying in jail like my old pal Jeffrey Epstein."

No doubt about it, OConnor, you are simply an idiot.

false consciousness.

i think it's hilariously disturbing that some of you are mad because the facts don't line up with what you want to believe.

It's called Trump Derangement Syndrome.

And it's in this blog... Why exactly?

I had to look at what it means, I am not an American so some of your expressions/abbreviations are not familiar to me.

Yes, I fear you are right. Well, they (fStoppers) are getting lots of comments here and the SEO will help them so I guess they had that in mind.

Too bad they had to resort to that, I wish they took some other direction to liven up this blog.

It’s called photojournalism. Look it up.

I don't believe I would call 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' photojournalism but we are all entitled to an opinion :-)

Yeah.... fstoppers has WAY too many trumpets in their commenting section.. like seriously. This man has clear and documented reading disabilities backed by several of his closest aids.

It's not a great article, it's not relevant to the site, and it's just as funny as laughing at a disabled kid in a wheelchair.

But it's not fake, it's not "unfair" and it's fact.

When Trump wins again in 2020 will the op still be posting trump articles for another 4 years?

I will personally give the teleprompter tech $100 if they slip in a "...and go f**k yourself America" the next time Trump has to make a speech and says it without realizing. One. Hundred. Dollars.

Add my $50 to that.

Sadly, it’s a well documented fact he cannot read.

If I were Trump's campaign manager, I'd gather up every photograph and quote extolling the Donald prior to him running for president. They loved him when he was the celebrity and giving money to them. However, when he became president, that was forgotten. A good journalist would have already done this, but, then, there are no good journalists left.

I wanted Senator Rubio to become the president, but that didn't happen. What did happen is the Democrat party ran a really lousy candidate and a businessman with no political experience defeated her. You can blame all of this Trump Derangement Syndrome on 2 things; first, the Republicans that ran against Trump were the ones that wouldn't do their due diligence as the 'faithful opposition' during President Obama's terms and the voters remembered.

Second, the 'coronation' of Clinton as the Democrat nominee. It's really that simple. And don't give me a ration of horse hockey about the Russians. I would have voted for Joe Sh*t the rag man before I voted for Clinton, and there's a LOT of people out there that held their collective noses and did the same.

Put a cat who doesn’t like dogs and a dog he doesn’t like cats in a small room, that’s the camera forum comments section equivalent of politically charged articles.

MSM: Trump accidentally mixes up a word, therefore proving he's racist.

Why is this article even here?

Totally agree with you, why is it here. Fstoppers should have squashed it, I don't come here to hear personal opinion politics.
If you took a count on President Trump's word count on his public speakings, and how many flubs are part of that, I would assume that it is very small (based on actual flubs and not content opinions).

Of course if this is all you can come up with to complain about, then President Trump is doing pretty good, and keep your complaints to the bar stool conversations.