The United Kingdom’s international trade secretary, Liam Fox, this weekend learned about an important technology feature this weekend: screengrabs.
During an appearance on live television, Fox denied sending a potentially inflammatory and controversial tweet about Europe while, unbeknownst to him, an image of said tweet was displayed on a giant screen directly behind him.
“Just as a point of clarification, I didn’t send out a tweet,” Fox said during an interview on Sky News as a screengrab of the tweet displayed behind him. “Number two, it was taken from a speech I gave about a year and a half ago and it was tweeted out, I think, by the Guardian, and it was an incomplete reference in any case.”
“What I said was Britain has … always felt less emotionally attached to the European Union because in our history we had never felt the need to bury the 20th Century in a pan-European project.”
Despite Sky journalist Sophy Ridge bemusedly gesturing to the screen, Fox failed to notice—for better or worse.
The tweet in question is remains on Fox’s feed and, for posterity, here it is:
"The United Kingdom, is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its 20th century history" #scc16
— Liam Fox MP (@LiamFox) March 4, 2016
At least part of the tweet, published March 2016, appears to be a direct quote from a speech given by Fox at a conservative conference in the run up to the U.K.’s Brexit referendum. It resurfaced last week as reports circulated that some British officials were calling their plans to strike trade deals with African countries “Empire 2.0.”
H/T Mashable