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Steve Scalise, a leading Republican in the House of Representatives, has deleted a tweeted video that contained an edited exchange between Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and activist Ady Barkan. The altered video appeared to show Biden clearly endorsing reduced funding for police, while the genuine clip was more ambiguous.

The segment was part of a longer video that portrayed Democrats as advocates of police abolition and “mob rule.” Twitter slapped the tweet with a “manipulated media” label over the weekend.

“These are not my words,” wrote Barkan, who suffers from ALS and as a result speaks with a synthesized computer voice. “I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts.” He called on Scalise, the House Republican whip from Louisiana, to remove the video. “You owe the entire disability community an apology,” he said.

Scalise honored Barkan’s request to take down the tweet, but he didn’t apologize. He reposted a version of the video with the doctored portion removed and defended his claim that Biden wanted to cut funding for the police.

“Twice in one interview Biden says ‘yes’ and ‘yes absolutely’ to questions about ‘redirecting’ police funding,” Scalise wrote. “Dems and their partners in the media want to blame ‘editing’ to pretend this isn’t exactly what he believes.”

Biden has resisted calls to defund police

This is a sensitive issue because Biden has resisted calls from many of his own supporters to defund police. Biden has called for increased funding for social services but has not clearly endorsed slashing police budgets—an idea that’s popular on the left but not among Americans in general. On his campaign website, Biden calls for a modest $300 million increase in the COPS program, which provides federal funding to hire local police officers.

The altered video clip in the Scalise video came from a July interview between Barkan and Biden. Barkan suggested to Biden that policymakers could “reduce the responsibilities assigned to the police and redirect some of the funding for police into social services.”

“Are you open to that kind of reform?” Barkan asked. “Yes,” Biden answered, detailing his plans to increase funding for mental health services, collect better statistics on police misconduct, and to stop selling military hardware to police departments. He pointedly did not say anything about cutting police funding.

Barkan cut Biden off: “Do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding?”

Again Biden answered “yes absolutely.” He then talked about the need to reform the prison system and again didn’t mention cuts to police funding.

Biden’s quick changes of subject created some ambiguity about whether Biden was endorsing cuts to police funding or dodging Barkan’s question on the topic.

Scalise’s video included the final section of Barkan’s interview with Biden, but someone added the phrase “for police” to Barkan’s question, so that he appeared to ask Biden “do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding for police?”

The video then showed Biden answering “yes absolutely,” giving the impression that Biden was unambiguously endorsing reduced funding for police.

“This video is doctored—and a flagrant attempt to spread misinformation at the expense of a man who uses assistive technology,” Biden tweeted on Sunday. “It should be removed now.”