President Trump and the White House regularly circulate imagery that has been manipulated by A.I. But the photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong was different.
When Nekima Levy Armstrong was transported from the federal courthouse in St. Paul, Minn., to the Sherburne County Jail with three layers of shackles on her body — around her wrists, waist and feet — it was the closest, she said, that she had ever felt to slavery.
Still, she walked calmly, her face resolute, her head held high.
But if you saw a photograph that the White House disseminated of Ms. Levy Armstrong, who was arrested for protesting at a church service, you would not know it.
The White House posted a manipulated photo of her arrest to its official social media account, depicting Ms. Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and activist, as hysterical — tears streaming down her face, her hair disheveled, appearing to cry out in despair. “ARRESTED” was emblazoned across the photo, along with a misleading description of Ms. Levy Armstrong as a “far-left agitator” who was “orchestrating church riots in Minnesota.”
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The photograph of Ms. Levy Armstrong [. . .] has the hallmarks of brazen disinformation from the top level of government: smearing and humiliating one citizen in order to influence public opinion, while sending a warning to other critics to beware of crossing the administration. And it adds a new, social media-era dimension to Mr. Trump’s long record of distortions and lies in the service of his policies and political standing.