The hotel putting out a press release a couple of years after Trump stayed there, announcing that the room had been redecorated, is pretty strong evidence though. It’s also the sort of thing that would be easy to overlook if you were convinced the tape was real, but objective enough that most people would agree that it was probably fake.
Given the attempt at verisimilitude (ie getting most every detail of the room as it is now correct), but leaving that one, easily corroborated mistake (the room had been redecorated), make me suspect it was deliberate bait. It was published quietly, so that there was no distraction caused by a particular person pushing it.
Presumably they were waiting for some otherwise reputable source (eg the WSJ) to pick up on it, and brand it true, before swooping in and pointing out that it must be a fake in order to destroy their credibility.
(Worth noting that it probably wouldn’t work tin the other direction, trump voters would ignore the retraction as ‘fake news’).
A well thought out and executed plan, but there was always going to be some people who’d assume it was just too good to be true. Unfortunately for the planners, it was one of those people who spotted the flaw early, before there was any significant publicity calling it true.
