Just when you thought that politics couldn’t become any more stupid and ridiculous after the bizarre press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping over the weekend, Boris Johnson decides to go one better by sending a congratulations message to Joe Biden that was originally intended for Donald Trump.
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This massive faux pas was first revealed on Twitter, where Guido Fawkes looked into the congratulations message that was posted from Johnson’s account and managed to figure out that it was a hastily prepared document that was pasted over one that was originally meant for Trump. Unfortunately for Johnson and his team though, with a bit of Photoshop/Paint editing it was fairly easy to see some words that were still present from the previous message.
Take a look and see what you think:
A bit more editing and what looks like the words “second term” more clearly emerge… https://t.co/AcVpNKtHGu pic.twitter.com/ZNDE7rL6OE
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) November 10, 2020
Now, there’s obviously some ambiguity over whether or not this is actually true, but it seems like so many people have looked into it on Twitter and come up with so many different colourways and variants of it that it’s pretty much indisputable at this point. Here are a few other variations of it:
“Johnson’s Biden win tweet contains hidden Trump congratulations”
1000% this is not a mistake. As a graphic designer myself, you simply just change the text. So Boris’ team decided to add some extra text and turn down the opacity really low…@allthecitizens @carolecadwalla pic.twitter.com/QvuhoZKMZg
— Zamaan Qureshi (@zamaanq47) November 10, 2020
somewhat unbelievably, there really is a hidden message congratulating Trump just about visible underneath the graphic Boris Johnson tweeted congratulating Biden on his win. I have no idea why Downing Street just didn’t start a new image, or why they are so bad at Photoshop pic.twitter.com/RLY0SV0680
— Matthew Champion (@matthewchampion) November 10, 2020
P.s. If you’re wondering why letters appear quite distorted, this is because they used an image that was already compressed, to create the second image. They took a JPG, not original adjustment document, erased the obvious lettering and left the compression artefacts by mistake.
— Jenn 🌍😊 (@PhotoJennBo) November 10, 2020
He always has two versions of everything pic.twitter.com/6h9v0LP0P9
— Garry Vaux Illustrator (@GarryVaux) November 10, 2020
People are missing the most important here:
Why did the UK govt have a Trump re-election congratulatory tweet ready when all the polls & everyone else was assuming a Biden win?
And why was it changed so late they had no time to do it properly? https://t.co/OdVt0FAviB
— Nick🇬🇧🇪🇺 (@nicktolhurst) November 10, 2020
Wow. Talk about amateur, but I suppose nothing should really surprise us about the ineptitude of our leaders given the previous year underneath them.
What I really don’t get though is why they didn’t have another statement prepared in the event that Biden might actually win, especially considering it seemed like he definitely was going for the past two days before it was eventually called? Surely that wouldn’t have been that difficult?
And even if they did rush to get it out once Biden was declared wouldn’t it have been easier to just start a new one from scratch to avoid the possibility of any mistakes like this? It’s not like it’s an even overly impressive graphic, it’s the kind of thing that an eleven year old could probably whip up in five minutes? Would argue it actually looks completely shit and is actually kind of insulting to be honest, so it makes the whole incident even stranger really? Politics hey?
For more of the same, check out when Boris won an award for talking complete and utter nonsense. Should probably win it again this year.
