Less than 5 months before the US presidential election, the Republican camp is flooding the Internet with out-of-context videos aimed at portraying 81-year-old Democratic President Joe Biden as a man who is not whole.
The White House protested these cropped and manipulated videos at a time when many voters are questioning the president’s physical and mental health. His rival, Donald Trump, who is 78, has made his rival’s age a major attack in his campaign.
Videos purported to show a disoriented Joe Biden watching a parachute show or freezing during a concert illustrate how personal and hateful the campaign has become since Donald Trump’s conviction and ahead of the first campaign debate between the two candidates.
According to the White House, the videos posted on X by an account of the Republican National Committee (RNC) were “cheap fakes” – a term used by specialists to describe content manipulated using rudimentary, low-cost technologies.
In a clip shared by the RNC Research account, the US president makes a sitting gesture during a ceremony commemorating the Normandy landings in World War II.
Conservative influencers pounced on the 13-second video, falsely accusing the president of trying to sit where there is no chair.
But if you look at the images, you can see that there is indeed a chair behind him.
Jake Schneider, an account manager for the Republican Committee, told AFP he was happy to post clips that “come straight from the newsroom video feeds.”
The video in question was posted with the title “Disturbing.”
An AFP fact check showed that the video has been edited to cut the following frameswhich show the president beginning to sit down, pausing to wait for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, then sitting down for good as Austin stands up to speak.
Zeev Sanderson, director of the Center for Social Networks and Policy at New York University, explains that videos with cropped footage are effective because they are not as obviously manipulated compared to footage that is entirely fictional or AI-generated.
“People may be more inclined to take such de-contextualized videos at face value because they contain ‘real footage of Joe Biden being old.’he says.
“They are in line with the general feeling that already exists in the public space. If people thought that Joe Biden was young and energetic, these clips would hardly have spread so widely,” he told AFP. “It’s an extremely effective tactic.“
In another widely circulated video, Joe Biden appears disoriented, drifting away from other leaders during a skydiving demonstration at the G7 summit in Italy.
After the footage was released by the Republican Party, the New York Post shared it online the video from which the paratrooper Joe Biden went to greet was cut.
The White House also objected to the much-discussed excerpt released by the National Committee’s account and the newspaper showing the president “freezing” during a concert.
“It is telling that right-wing critics, including (conservative tycoon) Rupert Murdoch’s pathetic little political action committee, the New York Post, are resorting to misinformation and cheap fakes.”White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates complained in a statement to AFP.
According to him, the achievements of the previous president “are so threatening in their eyes that they feel the need to invent things”.
Stephen Chen, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, responded that the opposing team’s comments were “ridiculous” in the face of the “harsh reality.”
Polls show that far more Americans think the current president is too old for a second term than those who think the same about Donald Trump.
For this reason, Zeev Sanderson expects disinformation campaigns against Joe Biden’s fitness to intensify.
“We will continue to receive content related to Biden’s age because it continues to concern voters”.
According to BTA
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