NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden’s simple act of sitting down during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France, received more attention in some quarters than the ceremony itself, as social media users posted a shared a shortened version of the clip falsely claiming he was reaching for a non-existent chair.
The clip was the first of at least three decontextualized or shortened videos that were widely shared in less than two weeks in June to fuel the narrative that Biden is mentally and physically unfit for office.
It has long been standard practice in politics to distort real moments to make an opponent look bad. Yet the recent wave of misleading videos — which have been viewed millions of times and picked up by right-wing media around the world — shows how the reach of social media and real concerns about Biden’s age have made the tactic particularly powerful in 2024.
Experts say voters can expect both Republicans and Democrats to weaponize unflattering, out-of-context moments to cast each other’s presidential candidates as weak, confused or senile — especially considering their ages of 81 and 78. spread across the former president Donald Trump.
“Any disinformation that appears to reinforce or resonate with perceptions or dominant narratives, whether accurate or not, is very effective,” said Erik Nisbet, a professor at Northwestern University who studies media, public opinion and public policy in democracy and elections. studies.
At the G7 summit in Italy, where Biden was heading to Normandy, a clip of the president watching a skydiving demonstration was cropped to make it appear as if he had wandered off for no reason. A wider view of the video shows him greeting paratroopers who had just landed. And at a fundraiser in Los Angeles last weekend, a pause by Biden as he left the stage to cheers was used to say the president froze, while Biden’s campaign said he only stopped to take in the applause.
According to Nisbet, the clips have been especially effective in raising concerns about Biden’s competence because he is the oldest sitting president the US has ever had and he is moving with more difficulty than ever.
Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s doctor, wrote in a February memo after the president’s annual medical that he “remains fit for duty” and that his stiff gait is the result of arthritic changes in his spine. He said Biden has reported additional hip pain and started using a new device for his sleep apnea, but that he showed no signs of a stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or other similar conditions.
After the fundraiser clip circulated online, Biden campaign spokesman James Singer blasted such negative characterizations as a tactic by those who are “so afraid of losing to Joe Biden that they’ll make anything up” to distract voters from the misdeeds of Trump.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the videos “cheap fakes,” a term for videos edited using cheap video editing software rather than artificial intelligence, in a news conference.
Trump’s campaign has doubled down on the clips, spreading a meme that defined a “cheap fake” as “any unedited video of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline that the Biden administration does not want the public to see.”
Experts say these attacks can be iterative, with social media influencers and campaigns stacking on top of each other.
“The attention economy within conservative media helps perpetuate these circulation cycles and these types of disinformation and campaign messages,” said AJ Bauer, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama who studies conservative news.
For example, the Republican National Committee posted a cropped version of Biden’s video at the G7 summit in Italy shortly after it took place, with the caption: “What is Biden doing?” The RNC’s post was subsequently shared by right-wing media outlets, including Sinclair Broadcast Group syndicated stations and the New York Post, which anchored the RNC’s post in its story.
This excerpt was also picked up by publications abroad, including the tabloid The Sun in Britain and the newspaper Corriere della Sera in Italy. A pro-Trump super PAC highlighted the latest social media reporting as evidence that “the world is laughing at us.”
Joshua Tucker, a professor of politics and co-director of the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University, said Republicans are likely to move aggressively over concerns about Biden’s age, but they should expect Democrats to hit back at Trump, who is only a few years younger.
“Given Trump’s behavior lately, the RNC is kind of playing with fire here,” Tucker said.
Biden’s campaign has begun responding with attacks on Trump via its quick response account on the social media platform
The decontextualized post followed other left-wing attempts to use videos to portray Trump as confused, senile or attention-seeking.
For example, social media users earlier this month used an image of Trump holding Donald Trump Jr.’s hand at a rally last fall in Hialeah, Florida, as alleged evidence that the former president had to be escorted off stage. The original video captured the moment in full context, showing the father and son only briefly joining hands in greeting as Trump left without assistance.
The fact that these images and videos undergo simple editing or misrepresentation, rather than being manipulated with editing software or artificial intelligence, gives them even more power at a time when Americans are worried about high-tech fakes, experts say.
“It’s compelling because it’s not made up,” Nisbet said. “They are simply distorted visual cues to give a false impression about what happened.”
At next week’s debate – the first in this cycle between the two leading candidates for president – both Trump and Biden will be under pressure to show that they remain healthy, sharp and fit to become president.
Both men have made public verbal blunders, mixing up names, dates or facts. Health experts warn that such confusion is common and can be worsened by stress. They also point out that some cognitive aging is normal, including delays in memory retrieval. And Biden has battled stuttering since childhood, a challenge that critics have used to attack and ridicule him.
Experts agree that most voters are unlikely to switch candidates based on misleading videos, but they said such misinformation could further entrench people’s beliefs or reduce their enthusiasm for participating in the political process. temper.
“This election will not be about conviction,” Nisbet said. “It’s about mobilizing – the Democrats are mobilizing Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, Trump and Republicans are doing the same. And it will be an exciting election.”
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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves in Washington contributed to this report.
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