Hurricane Irma has left a trail of death and destruction across the Caribbean and battered Florida with 130mph winds. What it has not done is left planes trying to navigate a waterlogged runway at Miami international airport – as Donald Trump’s director of social media tweeted on Sunday night.

As the sunshine state took shelter from the superstorm, Dan Scavino shared a video of a flooded airport saying: “Here is Miami International Airport. STAY SAFE!!” He tagged both the president’s and the vice-president’s official Twitter accounts.

Scavino was swiftly corrected by Miami airport, which tweeted to say that the information was inaccurate – the airport is closed – as others pointed out that the footage he shared appeared to be from Mexico city.

White House aide Dan Scavino spreads false video purporting to be Miami International in Irma.

Miami international has to correct the WH. pic.twitter.com/ZvkcUC06Li — Alan Yuhas (@AlanYuhas) September 10, 2017

Scavino removed the video from his official government account, saying that it was among hundreds of photos of videos people had sent him and that he was trying to notify those who might have shared it. A correction job that also fell to Miami airport, which has also been updating passengers about travel disruptions caused by the storm.

It is not unusual for fake images from extreme weather events to circulate online, but the mistake left many to question why Trump’s social media director failed at the fundamentals of his job: to verify content before posting it online.

That the president frequently uses the charge of fake news to attack his detractors made the slip-up more egregious to some Twitter users.

“There appears to be nobody in the administration who understands fact-checking, vetting sources, or value of only speaking truth,” said one. “Perpetrating Fake news. Way to go White House. I feel safe!” joked another.



As Scavino continued to tweet details about how the administration was responding to to Irma, whose severity has now been downgraded, others on Twitter are teasing Scavino with images and videos that are also clearly not of Florida.

Hey Dan Scavino and Fox News, why not post this definitely real footage from Miami? pic.twitter.com/lA1tmF1zUM — End the Idiocracy (@TFDark) September 10, 2017