Jordan Peele’s newest smash hit Us stars Lupita Nyong’o whose character mimicked a real-world disability in order to convey a sense of creepiness to her character “Red” within the movie. According to ABC News, this has created something of a scandal, but upon following the bread crumbs, there actually wasn’t a scandal at all, and ABC News was ginning up controversy all on its own.

The condition Nyong’o mimicked was called “spasmatic dysphonia,” which causes ones vocal cords to spasm leading to an irregular flow of air. It reportedly affects 50,000 people throughout the United States according to the National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association.

“I worked with an ear, nose and throat doctor, a vocal therapist and my dialect coach to make sure that I could do it and do it safely because I had two roles to play. I couldn’t afford to damage my voice,” Nyong’o told Variety in a red carpet interview.

According to ABC news, this has angered some who feel their condition is being painted as horrifying, and they posted a few tweets in order to back it up.

https://twitter.com/Lindaloverlips/status/1109411485107789824

Please.
Wearing disability as a costume, especially as a shorthand for "creepy" in a horror movie is not a sign of good acting. I'm really tired of people thinking imitating a disability is the height of acting. I'm really tired of us being used as horror movie tropes & villains. https://t.co/jJwTAiMuBB

— TheDisabilityEnthusiast (@twitchyspoonie) March 27, 2019

Please comment on the voice of the main character…she is mimicking a neurological disease that destroys my life and thousands others. Spasmodic Dysphonia, Google it…she is using Robert Kennedy as her model. Have some class Peele.

— Cathy graham (@GrahamCgram51) March 25, 2019

ABC took these three tweets and created an entire news story around it, even going so far as to make it a segment on Good Morning America,  involving professionals and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suffers from the condition.

But conservative commentator Stephen Miller went through the tweets and found some oddities. For one, two of the tweets were from accounts that had next to no followers. The only one with a hefty following was “The Disability Enthusiast” with around 3,500. Meaning that ABC made an entire scandal, making it seem like a giant controversy had arisen…out of three angry people tweeting something.

This "backlash" story includes 3 tweets. One of the accounts has 25 followers. The other has 35. Which means this is a major network news story about the one other person who has 3,500 hundred followers saying something on social media. https://t.co/RSFlMuERhf

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) April 2, 2019

1 account which isn't verified to be who or what they claim tweeted their disapproval at an actress, for acting, and ABC News is fucking on it. pic.twitter.com/h8XwHkA1NV

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) April 2, 2019

After going through these respective Twitter accounts, all of them seem to be hard leftist as well. While that may be a coincidence, it’s an interesting thing to note when it comes to the creation of this scandal.

To be fair, ABC news did note that Kennedy’s response was that it was a positive thing that the condition was represented on the big screen and that it was brought to the public’s awareness. However, that’s not how ABC framed it.

ABC deliberately made — or at least attempted to make — a national news item out of three tweets. They used those tweets to create an issue by which they attempted to bring in a much larger name to express outrage, and even brought in experts on the condition as a way to make the report seem far more legitimate than it was.

I’m not sure if ABC was attempting to push the social justice idea of “ableism” infesting movies, or they were being sensationalistic to gin up things to talk about because it was a slow news day. Either way, this is a major news outlet utilizing its stage to purposely create a problem in our country out of one that wasn’t even there to begin with.