CNN Split-Screen Fools Amanpour into Thinking Obama and Putin Are Standing Together
President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin may have shared an exceedingly awkward moment after a luncheon at today’s D-Day memorial ceremony in France, but they did not stand side-by-side on national television for the whole world to see. That’s what CNN’s Christiane Amanpour briefly thought she was witnessing during her coverage of the event this morning.
CNN’s chief international correspondent was remarking that Putin was “not getting an incredibly warm welcome” from the veterans and others in attendance every time his picture went up on the big screens there when she stopped in her tracks to report a surprising development. “And there they are together!” she exclaimed. “Are they?”
“No, that’s a split screen, Christiane, it’s a split screen,” Carol Costello said back in the studio.
“Oh no!” Amanpour exclaimed, noting that the entire venue was reacting to the image on screen as if the two men were standing together as one united front. “You just saw something remarkable,” she said in reference to the reaction the split screen image received from the dignitaries and world leaders at the ceremony.
“If I might be so bold, part of it is because it’s an interesting picture to see on a day like this and a time like this when so clearly these world leaders are at loggerheads,” Amanpour continued. While she said the threats Europe faces from Russia in the present are “obviously not in the scale that we saw back” during World War II, she did allude to similarities between to two eras.
Watch video below, via CNN:
[Photo via screengrab]
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