Accounts and pages on social media have circulated a clipped video of Aleppo Governor Azzam al-Gharib, taken from a television interview, in which he appears to answer the presenter’s question about the governorate’s budget by saying, “You mean tea and sugar.”
Kashaf’s team reviewed the full episode of the “Salon al-Jumhuriya” program and the interview’s original sources, and found that the circulating clip was taken out of its context. The interview is not recent — it was published on 13 October 2025 — and the governor said the phrase only as a passing joke, before immediately following it with a detailed, professional explanation covering the details and tracks of three budgets allocated to the city of Aleppo — the part that was cut from the viral video.
Why is the story misleading?
Clipping and removal of context: the governor’s joking reply was isolated from the financial discussion around it, and the extensive, detailed explanation he gave immediately after the quip was cut out — distorting the facts and presenting a false picture to the public.
