Dutch rightwing politician Baudet shares Tweet which incorrectly suggests Douma chemical attack was fake
At April 14 a man who calls himself Thomas Binder and states in his Twitter bio he is a cardiologist sent a Tweet saying the picture of children being taken care of by a docter is fake. The picture was taken after the chemical attack in Douma, Syria at April 7.
Some people immediately after the Tweet was posted expressed serious doubts about the statement of Binder.
Binder seems to Tweet only on conspiracy topics. He wrote many blogposts on ISIS. And he has doubts on what happened at 9/11 judging by this blogpost.
As a cardiologist I can say that these ECG electrodes are completely wrong positioned. They would not get any signal. This picture is faked!@VanessaBeeley @EvaKBartlett pic.twitter.com/rSurzvK51b
— Dr. Thomas Binder, MD (@Thomas_Binder) April 13, 2018
The Tweet was retweeted about 13000 times. Also rightwing politician Thierry Baudet who is leader of the Dutch Forum voor Democratie political party (2 seats in Dutch Parliament) retweeted the Tweet to his 152K followers. However after one hour he deleted the retweet. The website Politwoops.nl archived the Tweet as shown below.
In 2017 Thierry Baudet signed a letter addressed to Donald Trump requesting a new investigation into MH17. The letter was signed by many conspiracy theorists like notorious Joost Niemoller and Peter Haisenko.
Some of the other people who shared the Tweet and the number of followers:
@VRSoloviev (1,5 million) @barisatay (1.15 million) @DrodriguezVen (499K) @AvarBanu (474K) @husnumahalli (361K) @georgegalloway (285K) @barbarosansalfn (309K) @ceydak (303K) @OlegGazmanov (214K) @CarlaOrtizO (76.7K)
At April 16 Thomas Binder sent a new Tweet saying he made a mistake. This Tweet had only 19 retweets!
The WH are exposed thanks to brave people like @EvaKBartlett and @VanessaBeeley. First I saw only the electrodes in the centre. On the phone I see they are placed quite correctly. I did not lie. I made a mistake! I apologise. Will the WH and others too? https://t.co/Z9p5UbgMyi
— Dr. Thomas Binder, MD (@Thomas_Binder) April 15, 2018
This blogpost has a detailled reconstruction of the misinformation by Binder and how it was distributed.
