House Republicans say they’re trying to determine how a doctored version of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address made it onto YouTube after a liberal website pointed out the edited video.
‘Think Progress’ noted that the House Republicans’ official website put a version of Obama’s speech onto YouTube that didn’t include some of his Republican-critical remarks about climate change.
After first dismissing the ‘Think Progress’ altered video claim Wednesday morning, Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, said later in the afternoon that the video post was ‘inadvertent and we’re working with YouTube to figure out what happened.’
‘Think Progress emailed me this morning, but our staff didn’t have a chance to check it out until the past hour or so,’ Steel added.
Missing in the YouTube video was a section of the speech where Obama blasted Republicans for claiming they are ‘not scientists’ when comes to climate change matters.
‘I’ve heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they’re not scientists; that we don’t have enough information to act,’ Obama is supposed to say at 43:25 minutes into the video. ‘Well, I’m not a scientist, either. But you know what – I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major universities. The best scientists in the world are telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe.’
But the video instead skips to Obama saying ‘The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.’