On October 17, Tim Hains of RealClearPolitics posted "YouTuber Test: Car With Trump Stickers Looted, Destroyed By Black Youth" [1] featuring a video purporting to show five black youths smashing the windows of a car that had been supposedly parked in a black neighborhood. The video later turned out to be a complete hoax, featuring actors smashing the windows.

Perhaps the video uploader using the name "Joey Salads" should have been a clue.

If Hains and RCP couldn't verify the accuracy of the video, then they should have at least presented it as unverified. That's not what they did. This was the original RCP description:

YouTube personality Joey Salads left a car laden with Trump paraphernalia in a parking lot of a "black neighborhood" and let a video camera capture what happened next. It took 30 minutes, according to the YouTube video, for locals to ravage and loot the car. The YouTuber did not identify what city his 'social experiment' took place in.

That's now prepended with the note 'This video proved to be fake, according to this post on Twitter showing 'behind the scenes footage"' and a video, shot from a neighboring building, showing Joey Salads shooting part of the video while the "thugs" mill about behind the camera. You can watch the original video and three videos showing it to be a hoax here. Joey Salads now admits it was all a hoax.

Even if this video were real, it would serve little political purpose. It might solidify support for Trump, but Hillary Clinton supporters would always think it was fake and it would probably solidify support for her. The much smarter thing to do would be to use Clinton's immigration stance to undercut her to her base, but Trump supporters can't understand smart.

In addition to Matt Drudge and Real Clear Politics, those falling for the hoax include:

* "PJ Staff" at Pajamas Media
pjmedia . com/video/car-with-trump-stickers-gets-destroyed-in-a-black-neighborhood/
That includes "Mark Dice alleges that this video is fake. Click to the next page to see his proof" It's not clear if that was in the page initially, but the earliest comments seem to indicate it wasn't. It's also not an "alleg[ation]" considering that the video maker himself admits it was a hoax.

* Terresa Monroe-Hamilton (@terresamonroe) at RightWingNews
rightwingnews . com/crime/thugs-destroy-loot-car-trump-bumper-stickers-left-black-community-video/
At post time, there's no note that the video is a hoax.

* Pat Dollard
patdollard . com/youtuber-test-car-with-trump-stickers-looted-destroyed-by-blacks/
There's no note there either.

* Dennis Michael Lynch
dennismichaellynch . com/5-black-guys-find-trump-car-destroy-video/
Also no note.

10/24/16 UPDATE: Six to seven days later, RWN, Dollard, and Lynch haven't updated their posts to note that the video was a hoax. I also attached a screenshot of comments I left on the RCP post before it was revealed that the video was a hoax.

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[1] realclearpolitics . com/video/2016/10/17/
_youtuber_test_car_with_trump_stickers_looted_destroyed_by_black_youth.html