On June 13, the American newspaper The New York Post published a video on X from the G7 summit, held in Borgo Egnazia, Puglia. In the footage, shot on the first day of the summit, the group of heads of state and government is seen watching a parachute display by the Italian army’s Folgore sports division. At one point, U.S. President Joe Biden turns to the left and moves a few meters away, raising his thumbs to the air. He is called back moments later by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who invites him to listen to the speech by the soldiers who had just landed. The text accompanying the video, posted by the News Corp-owned publication run by Australian magnate Rupert Murdoch, reads: “President Biden seemed to drift off during the G7 summit in Italy, and officials had to bring him back to focus.”
A week earlier, in France, during the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, the White House resident was filmed attempting to sit on a “nonexistent” chair. At the end of the ceremony, he is seen leaving the stage escorted by his wife Jill, ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron, who stays behind to greet World War II veterans.
The videos quickly go viral, sparking debate over Biden’s ability to lead the United States. These contents are central to the Republican Party’s disinformation campaign ahead of the November 5 presidential elections. The goal of Donald Trump’s Grand Old Party is to portray the challenger as a “senile old man” too old for his role. At 81, Biden is the oldest sitting president in U.S. history and would be 86 at the end of a second term. He has occasionally appeared disoriented and has stumbled several times on the steps of Air Force One during international trips.
However, the right-wing campaign exaggerates the opponent’s weaknesses, manipulating his image to make him seem more troubled than he is. The technique is effective and employs so-called cheap fakes, low-cost false content, as opposed to deep fakes, which are artificially created with artificial intelligence. The clips are quickly edited, simple to produce, and highly persuasive. Often, as Toluse Olorunnipa and Adriana Usero write in the Washington Post, “they distort events, manipulate video or audio, or omit context.” Four-second clips of Biden with his eyes closed, or footage where the president appears so still he seems frozen, become evidence of “physical and mental problems.”
In the case of the G7 video released by The New York Post, which reached seven and a half million views on X, Biden appears to be wandering aimlessly, facing a different direction from the rest of the group, but the content is decontextualized. The footage is vertically cropped, omitting side elements. In the full video, published on YouTube by the Italian Prime Minister’s office, a wider shot shows Biden congratulating a group of kneeling paratroopers who had just landed on the golf course. This detail is even clearer in a reel published on Instagram by NBC News, showing Biden from behind admiring the paratroopers’ arrival.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates wrote on X that “Murdoch’s channels are so desperate to distract from Biden’s record results that they resort to lying. In this case, they use an artificially narrow shot to hide from viewers that he had just witnessed a parachute demonstration.” The same concept was expressed by Biden campaign spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg, who directly targeted Republicans: “They have resorted to pathetic manipulation and distortion of footage because they cannot attack Biden’s record of results for the American people,” she wrote in a note cited by the Washington Post.
The Normandy gaffe is also manipulated. The 12-second video showing Biden trying to sit on an invisible chair (which is actually there) is incomplete. The footage, shared on social media by some right-wing influencers, is cut off just as the president turns to his wife, who, according to an interpretation by users not confirmed by any official source, suggests he stop to avoid falling. But in the longer, 17-second video, those around him, including Jill Biden and Emmanuel Macron, are seen sitting. Biden remains bent and almost motionless for a few seconds, merely waiting for the speech to end.
Such a strategy may seem trivial and self-serving, incapable of influencing a large number of people and voters. In reality, thanks to some right-wing outlets – in addition to the New York Post, there’s The Sun, also part of Murdoch’s News Corp – tens of millions of users are reached. The use of crude and offensive terms, like those uttered by Trump supporter Tucker Carlson on his show Ask Tucker, also plays a role: “Biden is dying in front of people in real-time – how much longer can the president’s team keep this farce and prop up the corpse?” A broadcast that circulates in pro-Russian propaganda Telegram groups like Donbass Italia and InfoDefense Italia. And on X, through new influencers like Collin Rugg, disinformation content spreads easily.
The attacks are not limited to international summits. On Saturday, June 15, the president was at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles for a fundraising event to finance his re-election campaign. On stage with him, besides ABC host Jimmy Kimmel and some Hollywood stars, was Barack Obama, who was in the White House from 2008 to 2016. In a short video shot at the end of the show, Biden stands still for a few seconds, staring at the crowd of supporters, then returns backstage accompanied by his longtime friend. Once again, the New York Post offers a misleading interpretation of the event. The day after, Murdoch’s outlet, founder of the conservative and pro-Trump Fox News channel, publishes an article on its website titled “Biden appears frozen, has to be led off stage by Obama during Los Angeles mega-bucks fundraiser.” According to the article’s author, Chris Nesi, the moment when the African-American leader “takes the president’s wrist” and leads him off is “embarrassing.” Donald Trump shared the video on his platform Truth Social, commenting: “Do you really want him as your president?” The post received over 12,000 likes, nearly 5,000 shares, and 3,000 comments. Obama’s senior advisor, Eric Shultz, refuted the story with a brief tweet: “This did not happen.”
Mainstream media, including CNN, reported Democratic corrections, but Republicans remain convinced that Biden’s behavior is “a pattern, not an isolated incident.” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in an interview: “We’re not making these videos. This is Joe Biden in real-time. We’re just posting it for the world to see. It’s outrageous to use the words ‘fake’ and ‘cheap’,” she continued. “There’s nothing cheap or fake about these videos. They’re real clips of Joe Biden acting bizarrely.”
Photos and audio created with artificial intelligence also hinder Biden’s re-election bid. For example, a phone call last January during the Democratic primary where Biden supposedly tells New Hampshire voters not to vote. Or the image of the president in a military uniform at a “meeting with the country’s top military leadership.”
Then there are memes, which reach a wide audience. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred to the cheap fakes during Monday’s press conference, stressing that the videos are distorted and “made in bad faith.” The Republican National Committee reposted her words on X, noting: “Karine Jean-Pierre is outraged because we distribute unfiltered, unedited, and publicly available clips of Biden. We’ll do more of it.”
The U.S. president’s age and his public behavior are the main targets of the Republicans’ defamatory campaign. The portrayal of a clumsy, confused leader out of control fuels tension ahead of the vote. According to a recent NBC News poll, 76% of Americans surveyed are very concerned about Joe Biden’s mental and physical health. At the same time, Trump’s candidacy raises more than a few doubts: in February, 61% of voters were most worried about the four criminal and civil trials for multiple charges against the tycoon. A figure that, after the 34-count conviction in the Stormy Daniels trial, is at least worth re-evaluating.
Click here for the Italian version
