So the story here is that Mike Pence gave a speech at a rehabilitation center in Virginia and, before the speech, he was part of a photo op unloading some boxes of PPE from a van and bringing them to the door of the center. At one point after unloading the van, he returned and there were still several boxes inside. Before Pence reached for them, someone there with him said, “Those are empty, sir. We’re good to go.”

Pence replied, “Well, can I carry the empty ones? Just for the camera?”

“Absolutely, they’re a lot easier,” came the reply.

Jimmy Kimmel took that part of the clip and made it part of his online show saying, “Mike Pence pretending to carry empty boxes of PPEs into a hospital is the perfect metaphor for who he is and what he’s doing: A big box of nothing delivering another box of nothing.” The clip of the Kimmel segment was then shared by a pollster named Matt McDermott. As I write this, the clip has been liked more than 105,000 times and retrweeted nearly 50,000 times.

Mike Pence caught on hot mic delivering empty boxes of PPE for a PR stunt. pic.twitter.com/IduvGhiPwj

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) May 8, 2020

McDermott really piled on this claim that Pence was delivering empty boxes for show:

No better example of the institutional failures that have happened during this crisis than the Vice President delivering empty boxes of masks to a nursing home before a gawking press.

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) May 8, 2020

Raw Story devoted a whole post to this titled, “BUSTED: Mike Pence caught on hot mic asking to deliver ’empty’ PPE boxes into a nursing home ‘for the camera’.”

And it wasn’t just random people on the internet liking and sharing this, it was blue-checkmarked journalists and progressives: MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Aaron Rupar and Matt Yglesias from Vox, Tommy Vietor, NY Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, expert Tom Nichols, etc. This clip was very, very popular with the same set of people who were certain that high school kid Nick Sandmann was a villain.

And that was just quote tweets, here are some of the people who gave it a straight up retweet: pic.twitter.com/D0j1NQBBxo

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) May 8, 2020

But just like the Nick Sandmann situation, it turns out they all jumped on this without seeing what really happened. If you watch the full clip, you’ll see that immediately after making the joke about carrying the empty boxes (you can hear people laughing), Pence closed the doors of the van and then moved on with the event. Several people pointed this out, including David Mack of Buzzfeed.

This isn't true. The clip cuts out at a selective point. When you watch the CSPAN footage (9 min in), Pence makes the crack about carrying the empty ones and the guy says "Absolutely. They're a lot easier!" Pence laughs then immediately shuts the van door. https://t.co/SOD5KAAPkH https://t.co/1ZODmvg2PG

— David Mack (@davidmackau) May 8, 2020

VP Pence’s communications person:

https://twitter.com/JonThompsonDC/status/1258776949381619712

CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski:

51K RTs but this viral clip isn't true.

Mike Pence carried a bunch of loaded boxes in and then made a joke about carrying the empty ones. And he never actually carried them and closes the van door.https://t.co/kffkAD9mxfhttps://t.co/eBXgCKw2Op

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) May 8, 2020

And Jerry Dunleavy from the Washington Examiner posted a video (apparently pulled by Breitbart) showing what really happened:

Here's an unedited version of @VP Pence delivering PPE to Woodbine Rehab Center. The clip from @JimmyKimmel and sent viral by @mattmfm & others is quite deceptive. Pence is clearly joking when he talks about empty boxes for the camera, & shuts the van doors right after the quip. pic.twitter.com/HyV8iBiljS

— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) May 8, 2020

So you have people left, right, and center saying this is bogus. Kimmel apparently pulled down his copy of the clip but hasn’t apologized yet. Pollster Matt McDermott whose tweet of the clip went viral added this “additional context” after learning it was bogus:

Additional context to @jimmykimmel segment. With 75,000 Americans dead, Pence is joking about about empty boxes of PPE during a publicity stunt, after the White House press secretary said they had no time for "publicity stunts" in the middle of a crisis. https://t.co/hFeSp83lJs

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) May 8, 2020

Andrew Kaczynski pointed out that McDermott had a similar viral tweet about President Trump back in 2017. Back then he claimed Trump hadn’t spent Easter at church. It turned out that Trump had gone to services that same day but McDermott refused to delete his inaccurate tweet because “it wasn’t factually inaccurate when it was posted.” What he meant was, he didn’t know he was wrong at the time.

Bottom line, this guy is a hack’s hack and is not going to delete his Pence tweet even though it’s clearly wrong. Just since I started writing this it has racked up another 23,000 likes and 5,000 retweets.

Finally, here’s the C-Span coverage of VP Pence’s appearance at the rehab center.

Update: Oops!

Glad we asked…turns out he was joking! We checked the original tape. Reporter on scene says @VP did deliver PPE https://t.co/XkZJsVaOWR

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) May 8, 2020

Her original retweet with comment has itself been retweeted 4,400 times and liked 13,000 times. The correction will get a tiny fraction of that.

Update: Here’s Kimmel’s snarky correction.

it would appear that @vp was joking about carrying empty boxes for a staged publicity stunt. The full video reveals that he was carrying full boxes for a staged publicity stunt. My apologies. I know how dearly this administration values truth. https://t.co/hI9cO4lxcX

— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) May 8, 2020

Notice that the clip of Pence Kimmel used had the C-Span logo. He or his staff must have had the full clip all along (or known where to find it). They cut it before Pence closed the van doors on purpose. Now they’re pretending to be surprised by the truth. He’s lying and he’s not sorry.

Update: Joe Scarborough just retweeted the bogus video.

https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/1258848363136659457

Update: The retweet above is missing because Joe finally figured it out.

I guess Twitter is a full time job. I apologize to Mike Pence for retweeting a tweet that had been disproved. I’m deleting now.

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) May 8, 2020