{"id":296662,"date":"2017-02-26T19:18:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-26T18:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/false-flags-russian-trump-pennants-prank-at-cpac-causes-social-media-meltdown\/"},"modified":"2017-02-26T19:18:26","modified_gmt":"2017-02-26T18:18:26","slug":"false-flags-russian-trump-pennants-prank-at-cpac-causes-social-media-meltdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/false-flags-russian-trump-pennants-prank-at-cpac-causes-social-media-meltdown\/","title":{"rendered":"False flags: 'Russian Trump pennants' prank at CPAC causes social media meltdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Critics of President Donald Trump were quick to take offense at \u201cRussian flags\u201d handed out to the audience for his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Staff rounded up the flags and accused an activist of handing them out as a prank.<\/p>\n

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Trump addressed the conference<\/a> on Friday morning, following appearances by Vice President Mike Pence and senior White House staff the day before. Former CNN reporter Peter Hamby was first to notice the flags \u2013 a white, blue and red tricolors with \u201cTrump\u201d<\/em> printed in gold block letters on the blue stripe.<\/p>\n

Hamby\u2019s pictures were quickly shared far and wide, with a variety of outlets critical of Trump \u2013 from Vox<\/a> to Raw Story<\/a> \u2013 using this as proof of his alleged \u201cRussian connection.\u201d<\/em> Democrats have accused Trump of being a \u201cpuppet\u201d<\/em> of Russian President Vladimir Putin and blamed Hillary Clinton\u2019s stunning electoral defeat to \u201cRussian hacking.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Former CIA agent Evan McMullin, put forth as a rival to Trump by the establishment wing of the Republican party, jumped on the bandwagon as well.<\/p>\n

The flags \u201cappeared to be a prank,\u201d<\/em> The Hill reported. CPAC officials told Daily Mail Reporter David Martosko that \u201cliberal activist Ryan Clayton\u201d<\/em> was responsible.<\/p>\n

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CPAC confirms to me that it was liberal activist Ryan Clayton who was ejected today for handing out the Trump-branded Russian Flags.<\/p>\n

\u2014 David Martosko (@dmartosko) February 24, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Clayton was reportedly ejected from the conference.<\/p>\n

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CPAC people saw red, white blue and “Trump”. They didn’t think past it for a second. 🇨🇱🇨🇷🇨🇺🇫🇷🇱🇺🇳🇱🇵🇷🇷🇺 < Moar close enough flags xD<\/p>\n

\u2014 Tw1t3r_J3$u$ (@ZombiesAreBad) February 24, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cWe brought in the flags for a little bit of satire, for a little bit of humor for this ever-dreary narrative that’s been going on,\u201d<\/em> Jason Charter, one of the activists involved in the prank, told RT.<\/p>\n

He confirmed working with Clayton to buy a number of Russian flags and print Trump\u2019s name on them, then distribute them to the audience at CPAC. The stunt intended to show \u201cthat Donald Trump and Russia have very strong ties and that something needs to be done about it,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published time: 24 Feb, 2017 19:19Edited time: 25 Feb, 2017 13:39 Critics of President Donald Trump were quick to take offense at \u201cRussian flags\u201d handed out to the audience for his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Staff rounded up the flags and accused an activist of handing them out as a prank. Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":296663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-296662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}