Claim: A video shown by Fox News about Florida Government Ron DeSantis Hannity says that The FBI Search of former President Donald Trump was not a raid.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: Modified videos. The video from the episode “Hannity” was recently edited to include DeSantis at a 2020 press conference where he spoke about state authorities searching the home of a former Florida Department of Health data analyst.
The Facts: The redacted video was first posted on Twitter late Friday after a federal judge unsealed the warrant that authorized Monday’s search of the former president’s property in Palm Beach, Florida.
The video shows host Sean Hannity appearing to speak on split screens with DeSantis and Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. Hannity begins by saying, “This raid happened, and it was a raid.” The video then shows footage of DeSantis saying, “It’s not a raid, I mean with all due respect.” Lara Trump says, “It of course was a raid,” and the three then appear to verbally spar over the definition throughout the one-and-a-half-minute clip.
The video was viewed more than 3 million times on Twitter, where it was posted with the caption: “Ron DeSantis went on Hannity and things got SPICY.”
Its creators explained in a later post that the clip had been edited and that they intended to compare DeSantis' 2020 comments with recent comments about the FBI's actions at Mar-a-Lago. On Monday, DeSantis tweeted that the "raid" was "another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents." While many Twitter users acknowledged the clip was related to showing something, others retweeted it as a real interview. "I did not expect this from DeSantis," wrote one user who shared the clip. The video also went viral on Facebook and TikTok, where many users also believed it was the original Fox clip of the Florida Republican governor.
