NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden’s simple act of sitting down while commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France, gained more attention than the ceremony itself in some circles as social media users shared a shortened version of the clip to falsely claim he was reaching for a nonexistent chair.
The clip was the first of at least three out-of-context or trimmed videos shared widely over less than two weeks in June to fuel a narrative that Biden is mentally and physically unfit for office.
It’s long been standard practice in politics to spin real moments to make an opponent look bad. Yet the recent spate of misleading videos — which amassed millions of views and were picked up by right-leaning outlets around the world — shows how the reach of social media and real concerns about Biden’s age have made the tactic especially powerful in 2024.
Experts say voters can expect to see both Republicans and Democrats weaponizing unflattering, out-of-context moments to label each other’s presidential candidates as weak, confused or senile — especially considering their ages of 81 and 78. Indeed, edited and misrepresented clips have also circulated about former President Donald Trump.
“Any misinformation that seems to reinforce or resonate perceptions or dominant narratives, whether they’re 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.
At the G7 summit in Italy, where Biden headed after Normandy, a clip of the president watching a skydiving demonstration was cropped to make it appear as though he wandered off for no reason. A wider view of the video shows he was greeting paratroopers who had just landed. And at a Los Angeles fundraiser last weekend, a pause by Biden as he left the stage amid cheers was used to say the president froze, while Biden’s campaign said he was only stopping to take in the applause.
The clips have been especially effective at activating concerns about Biden’s competency, according to Nisbet, because he is the oldest sitting president the U.S. has ever had, and he moves with more difficulty than he once did.
Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s physician, wrote in a February memo after the president’s annual physical that he “continues to be fit for duty” and that his stiff gait is the result of arthritic changes in his spine. He said that Biden has reported additional hip pain and started using a new device for his sleep apnea, but that he showed no signs of stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or other similar conditions.
After the fundraiser clip spread online, Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer blasted such negative characterizations as a tactic from those who “are so scared of losing to Joe Biden, they’ll make anything up" to distract voters from Trump's misdeeds.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a press briefing called the videos “cheap fakes," a term for videos edited using cheap video editing software rather than artificial intelligence.
Trump’s campaign has doubled down on the clips and circulated 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 piling on one another.
“The attention economy within conservative media helps perpetuate these cycles of circulation and these sorts of misinformation and campaign messaging,” said A.J. Bauer, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama who studies conservative news.