A video has been widely circulated on the Internet in which the US President leans over a child and loudly sniffs him. We decided to check if it is true.
A 21-second video has circulated on the English and Russian-speaking segment of the Internet in which the American leader leans towards someone and makes a sniffling sound, as if sniffing someone or something. On Telegram, the video is most often accompanied by the following caption: “Nothing unusual. It's just that Grandpa Joe is showing an unhealthy interest in children again. This time Biden decided to sniff the teenager.” Such posts were posted by many popular Telegram channels, for example “Observer"(227,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Voblya (155,000), "What happened?" (123,000) and "Tough of the day"(84,000). Popular publications about a strange incident involving Biden and on other social networks (“VKontakte", Facebook), as well as on blogging platforms.
In the video, apart from a close-up of Biden and a certain woman next to him, quite little is visible, however, after the 10th second, people in the background enter the frame - and many of them are military personnel. Having studied press releases about events with the participation of the US President on the official website of the White House, Verified discovered that on June 9, 2023, he visited Fort Liberty military base, where he signed decree on improving conditions for spouses of military personnel. Details of Biden's clothing (such as the color of his suit and the striped tie) seen in the video being circulated match what can be seen in photos from the event, such as in the report Associated Press or on the official website US Department of Defense. It turns out that the video in its current form was distributed on RuNet almost a month later - at the beginning of July 2023.
To our colleagues from the agency’s fact-checking division Reuters managed to find the original video - it was published in TikTok on the day of the event. The hashtags #FortLiberty and #Army confirm that the recording was indeed made at the same meeting with Biden at a military base.
The video, which lasts almost twice as long as the viral one, shows that the hero of the video is not a teenager at all, as some Internet users write, but a baby, whom the woman filming the video is holding in her arms. Moreover, in the original video there is no that same snorting sound. Instead, Biden is heard telling the child, “Let me tell you a secret...”, then whispering in the child's ear, and subsequently adding, “Don't tell mommy what I told you.” It is noteworthy that neither the child’s mother herself nor the commentators under her original video see anything seditious in it, reacting with emotion rather than indignation.
Apparently, the video was subsequently edited: it was cropped and the sound of sniffing was superimposed. In the English-speaking segment of the Internet, the processed video appeared earlier, so, most likely, Russian-speaking bloggers simply distributed it, providing it with an incorrect signature, but did not create it themselves. Thus, the earliest post in the Russian-language Telegram, which was discovered by “Verified”, appeared only on July 8 at 17:56 Moscow time, in other social networks - even later, and in the English-language Twitter video spread already on the night of July 7-8.
This is not the first time that “Verified” has caught Telegram channels spreading fakes about Joe Biden that make him look like an inadequate person. Thus, earlier information had already circulated on the RuNet that the American president allegedly during a speech asked the invisible man not to jump, put his hand on the buttocks of Ukrainian President Zelensky or told how his skull was opened a couple of timesto make sure there is a brain. All such posts were supported by photos or videos, but none of these messages were true, and the evidence was falsified.
Thus, the video of the American president sniffing a teenager is not true. Firstly, the video is not a teenager at all, but a very small child. Secondly, there is no snoring sound on the original video; it was added later in a video editor, probably to falsify yet another piece of evidence to support the negative image of Joe Biden.
Cover photo: Twitter @POTUS
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