Similar posts shared the image in Threads, Instagram aand
The claims come amid voter concerns about pre-election age November presidential elections.
Republicans have flooded the internet with out-of-context videos about the US president Joe Bidenusing what the White House has characterized as misleading editorial tactics to portray the 81-year-old as weak. In a recent exampleThe White House pushed back on claims that a video showed former President Barack Obama escorting Biden off stage after a fundraiser.
Some social media users directly referenced the attacks on Biden as they shared the image of his predecessor.
“I can’t imagine why they keep faking photos and videos of Biden,” Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko said in a June 17 post on Threads. “It’s almost an attempt to distract while still projecting like you always do.”
But the image of Trump – who has made Biden’s age a top issue in the campaign, despite being only three years younger at 78 – is also misrepresented.
A reverse image search showed that Reuters took the photo at a November 2023 rally in Hialeah, Florida (archived here).
“Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump holds hands with Donald Trump Jr. as he walks during a campaign rally at Ted Hendricks Stadium in Hialeah, Florida, USA, November 8, 2023,” the caption reads.
However, livestream footage shows that the interaction lasted about a second (archived here). After briefly grabbing his son’s hand, the Republican businessman continued down the slope without any assistance.
Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communications director, told AFP in a June 20, 2024 email that the image is a “cheap fake” – a term disinformation experts have coined to describe content that has been altered using simple and affordable technology.
The Biden campaign has repeatedly used the same term to characterize misleading videos from the Democrat.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.
