Stealth Edits Were Made to Stacey Abrams Piece on MLB Boycott, the USA Today Needs to Explain Why

Ever since Major League Baseball decided earlier this month to pull the All-Star game from Georgia and along with it some projected $100 million in revenue over the state’s new voting law, the MSM, so-called “fact-checkers” and Twitter have all been trying to rescue Stacey Abrams from criticism that her efforts led to MLB’s decision.

For example, here’s what trended on Twitter Friday and Saturday:

Twitter and the media are playing cleanup for Stacey Abrams. pic.twitter.com/ji4fF8dKuu

— Chief Impact Officer BT (@back_ttys) April 23, 2021

Here’s the Politifact write-up where they cast Abrams as a staunch opponent of boycotts over the law she repeatedly called “Jim Crow 2.0”:

Gov. Brian Kemp lumped together the positions of President Biden and Stacey Abrams on a boycott, but that’s misleading. Biden expressed support for the idea of a boycott, although the WH later recast his position. Abrams repeatedly spoke against a boycott. https://t.co/qkQMNFln8C pic.twitter.com/HGpK7AYU2K

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) April 21, 2021

Not surprisingly, CNN’s resident “fact-checker” (and noted Democrat apologist) Daniel Dale also tried to ride to Abrams’ rescue, taking issue with a video tweet from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) where he blasted Abrams during a Senate hearing last week over her false statements about the law:

This is misleading. Abrams wrote that boycotts work under certain conditions…but proceeded, in the same op-ed, to argue that Georgia’s conditions weren’t right for a boycott. In a web video that day, she explicitly said, “Please do not boycott us.” https://t.co/Ym0uIdFZy8

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 22, 2021

The big problem with all the various “defenses” of Abrams’ stance on boycotts is that part of the “evidence” used by them was a USA Today op/ed published just a couple of days before MLB made the announcement, an op/ed that former NRSC advisor Matt Whitlock discovered over the weekend had been stealth-edited after MLB issued their statement. The stealth edits, you will not be surprised to learn, soften Abrams’ original language to make it appear like she was even more opposed to boycotts of her state than her original piece let on.

Whitlock brought the receipts after Dale ran interference for Abrams:

The op-ed Dale and others cite defending Abrams was heavily edited from its original version AFTER the MLB decided to move the All Star game.

Paragraph on the left is before, paragraph on the right is AFTER. Clear attempt to cover tracks.

Archived here https://t.co/4CF7JUXLu8 https://t.co/QRwxT0XBvi pic.twitter.com/zdNuOetZFK

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) April 23, 2021

She removed “I can’t argue with an individuals choice to opt out” (referring to boycotts — see previous tweet)

And followed with major changes to her paragraph about the pain boycotts cause, adding in the updated version “Boycotts invariably also cost jobs.”

Interesting. pic.twitter.com/5jezS3zq7t

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) April 23, 2021

To be clear here — @ddale8 is quoting lines that did NOT change between drafts.

But it’s VERY interesting that she went back in to her op-ed that starts with “boycotts work” and HEAVILY edited it after the fact to be MORE anti-boycott.

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) April 23, 2021

He then took Politifact to task as well for using the revised op/ed as part of their defense of Abrams:

Classic @PolitiFact

In arguing on behalf of Stacey Abrams against @BrianKempGA — that she had always argued against boycotts — they cite lines from her op-Ed about boycotts costing jobs.

But those lines were added AFTER the MLB move. https://t.co/IE7CsdycKD pic.twitter.com/uE54r2kRf3

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) April 24, 2021

Twitter sleuth Jeryl Bier also did some digging and confirmed the edits were done earlier in the month without the paper noting they’d been done (until just a few days ago):

And yet, as this 4/21 archive shows, the editor’s note was not present. It appears the op-ed was revised on April 6th, but an editor’s note about the change was only added within the past 2 days:https://t.co/JLR1YWTeDd pic.twitter.com/bqpxOmIBjK

— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) April 23, 2021

Why were these changes made that watered-down Abrams’ original piece without letting readers know they were? The USA Today owes their readers an explanation because if this is how they normally operate, the history of someone’s words can literally be erased and most people would not know otherwise:

When politicians can stealth-edit op-ed columns a week after they publish, you have not just broken fact-checking. You have broken journalism.

— Jim Stinson (@jimstinson) April 27, 2021

As to the overall “defenses” of Abrams from the usual corners, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: From prior experience with calls for boycotts in Georgia, Abrams knew the moment she started referring to the law as “Jim Crow 2.0” how the outrage mobs on the left would respond, and yet she continued for weeks to lie about it.

She and her knights in shining armor in the media can play word games all they want to on this issue, but the actual facts about how she and other Democrats including President Biden himself and Sen. Raphael Warnock laid the groundwork for the boycotts to proceed and MLB to pull the game speak for themselves.