There’s nothing quite so good as a media self-own story.

The AFP ran a story claiming there were 100,000 illegal alien children being held in U.S detention centers.

#BREAKING More than 100,000 children in migration-related US detention: UN pic.twitter.com/67PEWc4KFi

— AFP news agency (@AFP) November 18, 2019

Other outlets also ran the story which appears to have originated from a UN source, claiming over 100,000 children in detention violates international law.

Now, of course, the point of this is to smack the current administration.

https://twitter.com/LoganDobson/status/1196957325598298112

Except there was a small problem with the story.

The number was from 2015. Guess who was president then? Hint: not President Donald Trump.

But the fake news gave the EU Bureau chief of the China Daily, the media organ of the Communist Party, an opportunity to preach propaganda against us.

This looks like a child concentration camp. In the US

— Chen Weihua （陳衛華） (@chenweihua) November 18, 2019

Great job, inaccurate media!

Just being logical, most people would know that the government wouldn’t have the facilities to house that many kids at any one time in detention centers. This is over the course of the year, as kids are moved in and out, not all at one time.

But once they figured out that it was Barack Obama, then the story was apparently no longer newsworthy. The AFP and some of the other outlets announced they would be pulling the story.

AFP is withdrawing this story.

The author of the report has clarified that his figures do not represent the number of children currently in migration-related US detention, but the total number of children in migration-related US detention in 2015.

We will delete the story. https://t.co/p30UjEWl7u

— AFP news agency (@AFP) November 19, 2019

Let’s withdraw this, because it happened in 2015, when Obama was President and Biden was Vice President.

Sounds fair🤦‍♂️

— Politically Incorrect (@xizzhu) November 19, 2019

We’re deleting the story because how it makes the last president look.

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) November 19, 2019

Whew! Good thing it was from 2015. I was almost afraid that something bad had happened.

— Papa Libertarius II (@AaronCuffman) November 19, 2019

“No replacement story will be issued.”

Weird, seems like concrete evidence of an Obama scandal –despite years of him declaring his administration had “zero scandals”– would be newsworthy. pic.twitter.com/22jtFFn0pR

— Shane Styles (@shaner5000) November 19, 2019

Why did it suddenly become not newsworthy? Hmm…

HT: Twitchy