Was this done to help discredit O’Keefe?
Doubtful. This JoeySalads guy has a long history of filming prank (and faked) videos that he calls “Social Experiments”.
Looking at his Twitter feed, he seems to be a Trump supporter (and also a fan and follower of InfoWars). Maybe he thinks this helps. Or he’s just a jerk trying to make a name for himself and make money off his YouTube videos. Or he could be trolling us. Who knows.
But I am getting so frustrated by Drudge and sites like Gateway Pundit and Conservative Treehouse, etc. falling for these fakes, just like the one about the supposed postal worker’s tweet that claimed he was tearing up Trump ballots, and which, just like this one, was so easily debunked.
This video has already been posted here twice and I saw it on my FB feed twice this AM, posted by friends.
So if it is an attempt to discredit conservative media outlets, unfortunately it is succeeding because of the laziness of those sites/blogs, and then the other blogs and people that re-post for not taking a few minutes to research and vette before posting or re-posting.
And unfortunately, whether intentionally or not, it probably does hurt O’Keefe’s credibility.
The problem is IMO what is called confirmation bias. We see a video like this or a tweet and if it confirms what we already think is true, we assume it is true.