Republicans are flooding the internet with out-of-context videos of US Prez Biden, using what the White House has characterised as deceptive editing tactics to cast the 81-year-old as infirm less than five months from Nov’s election. The specious posts claiming to show Biden lost or freezing up underscore how increasingly bitter and personal the campaign has become online in the wake of former prez Donald Trump’s criminal conviction and as attack ads ramp up ahead of the first debates.They also come amid some voters’ worries over Biden’s physical and mental condition, with Trump making age a top rallying point – despite being, at 78, just three years younger.
The White House has branded the videos – many of which originated with an X account run by the Republican National Committee, or RNC – as “cheapfakes”, a term misinformation experts coined to describe content altered using basic and affordable technology. One short clip the “RNC Research” account shared this month shows the prez hunching over during a ceremony in France to commemorate the anniversary of the D-Day landings. Conservative influencers jumped on the 13-second footage, falsely accusing Biden of trying to sit when there was no chair behind him. Others insisted he had lost control of his bowels. Jake Schneider, who runs the “RNC Research” account as the committee’s rapid response director, said the page has merely been posting clips that “come straight from pool feeds”.
Rolling the tape further, however, makes it clear there was a seat beneath the prez. AFP fact-checkers found the RNC’s video was cut to omit the ensuing footage, which revealed that Biden started to sit as the music stopped, paused to wait for defence secretary Lloyd Austin’s introduction and then fully sat as Austin rose to speak. In another video spread widely online, Biden appeared to stray from other world leaders and flash an errant thumbs-up gesture during a skydiving demonstration at the G7 summit in Italy. After the GOP account highlighted the footage on X, the New York Post tagged Biden on its front page as the “Meander in Chief”. But the New York Post’s cover photos – and a video the newspaper shared online – altered the clip’s frame to crop out the parachutists Biden was congratulating.
White House pushed back. “It’s telling that rightwing critics, including Rupert Murdoch’s sad little super PAC, the New York Post, resort to misinformation,” Andrew Bates, its senior deputy press secretary, said. “Biden’s record is so threatening to them that they feel a need to make things up.”
The White House has branded the videos – many of which originated with an X account run by the Republican National Committee, or RNC – as “cheapfakes”, a term misinformation experts coined to describe content altered using basic and affordable technology. One short clip the “RNC Research” account shared this month shows the prez hunching over during a ceremony in France to commemorate the anniversary of the D-Day landings. Conservative influencers jumped on the 13-second footage, falsely accusing Biden of trying to sit when there was no chair behind him. Others insisted he had lost control of his bowels. Jake Schneider, who runs the “RNC Research” account as the committee’s rapid response director, said the page has merely been posting clips that “come straight from pool feeds”.
Rolling the tape further, however, makes it clear there was a seat beneath the prez. AFP fact-checkers found the RNC’s video was cut to omit the ensuing footage, which revealed that Biden started to sit as the music stopped, paused to wait for defence secretary Lloyd Austin’s introduction and then fully sat as Austin rose to speak. In another video spread widely online, Biden appeared to stray from other world leaders and flash an errant thumbs-up gesture during a skydiving demonstration at the G7 summit in Italy. After the GOP account highlighted the footage on X, the New York Post tagged Biden on its front page as the “Meander in Chief”. But the New York Post’s cover photos – and a video the newspaper shared online – altered the clip’s frame to crop out the parachutists Biden was congratulating.
White House pushed back. “It’s telling that rightwing critics, including Rupert Murdoch’s sad little super PAC, the New York Post, resort to misinformation,” Andrew Bates, its senior deputy press secretary, said. “Biden’s record is so threatening to them that they feel a need to make things up.”
