Human Events Editor in Chief Raheem Kassam exposed a major Fake News story on Twitter.
The Sun originally published a piece claiming that Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage was “trapped on Brexit bus due to people armed with milkshakes.”
However, Kassam, who was at this event, presented a different account. He set the record straight in a tweet thread.
Kassam encouraged his followers to tweet at Tom Newton Dunn, the editor of The Sun, and expose this error because Dunn had blocked Kassam.
The Human Events editor provided some context to this event:
After several walking campaign stops (including, bravely, between a McDonalds and a Burger King) @Nigel_Farage was due to pull up to supporters on his bus and do media interviews from the top deck. He was never scheduled to get off.
It was established that Farage would not get off the Brexit bus as he and his associates campaigned throughout Kent. Kassam noted this:
We all knew that because 5 mins before we arrived we were told by organizers “we don’t need to get off, we’re not getting off”.
Regardless, Kassam got off the bus to interact with people in the crowd.
I got off anyway, and mingled in the crowd. Did some selfies. Then I spotted the so called milkshake assassins. They hadn’t “surrounded” the bus. They were 2 rather polite kids and one mid aged guy who were quite nice when engaged in debate. We shook hands.
There was a Periscope video of this interaction as well.
The supposed milkshakes that The Sun discovered were actually empty frappuccino cups.
You can also see their “milkshakes” which were actually frappuccinos I think (important distinction) were basically empty. They had no intention of throwing them, and everyone knew that.
The Sun allegedly quoted the Brexit bus driver, Michael Botton, but Kassam asserts that they never interviewed him during this event. The Sun was only told that Farage was not getting off the bus.
Kassam made it clear that there was no “milkshake army” of protestors like The Sun depicted.
After Kassam left the area, Farage actually got off the bus to pose for selfies.
In a final tweet, Kassam pointed out that The Sun editor, Tom Newton Dunn, is the son of former Member of the European Parliament Bill Newton Dunn. Bill Newton Dunn was a member of the Conservative Party who later switched to the Liberal Democrats party. This coverage of the Brexit event suggests some degree of political bias given that the Lib Dems are only at 19 percent in the polls, while the Brexit Party is firmly in first place at 37 percent.
If these polls stay intact come election time on May 23, 2019, Farage’s Brexit Party will be the largest single party in the European Parliament.