In July 2023, a video from a bookstore went viral in the Russian-language segment of the Internet, where the US President allegedly chooses manuals with brain exercises. We decided to check if this video is true.
A video of Joe Biden looking at books on a counter with a sign “Brain exercises for dementia” was published by some Russian media, for example “Constantinople", "Arguments of the week", "Ura.ru" And EuroAsia Daily. The video also spread on Telegram: it was posted, for example, in the channels “Uncle Slava"(180,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Voblya (141,000), "Ostashko! Important" (101,000) and "Russian format"(64,000). Users of other social networks also published it: Twitter, "VKontakte", TikTok.
The video being shared is not of very good quality, but if you look closely, you can make out the covers of some books on the counter. In particular, one of them shows the name of a children's writer Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG. Biden himself is holding a book from a popular children's room. series about Olivia the pig. Apart from the sign, there is nothing to indicate that the video is a department with benefits for people with dementia. In addition, such books are usually not placed on the counter in the center of the room, because most visitors to a bookstore, unless it specializes in medical literature, are not interested in them.
The logo of the CBS television channel is visible in the lower right corner of the video, which means that most likely it was not an amateur video, but a news story. And indeed, if you enter the keywords “Biden” and “books” into Google in English, as well as the name of the TV channel, on the first page of the search results appears video, posted on the verified YouTube channel of CBS News. It's a one-and-a-half-minute story about how "Vice President Joe Biden stopped by the new [supermarket chain] Costco store in Northeast Washington, D.C., for holiday shopping and purchased children's books, electronics and other items." The story was published on November 29, 2012, when Biden was still only vice president in the Barack Obama administration. Approximately 35th second you can see the same footage spread across social networks, but no sign about dementia is visible on them.
In more detail plot on Biden's visit to Costco, filmed by C-Span, the politician is asked why he buys these books (7:43). He replies that the printed publications are intended for a charity program Book Buddies, opened by his wife and aimed at helping low-income families who cannot buy books for their children on their own. In this video, unlike the CBS story, there are wider shots of the book department, but there is no sign about dementia. Obviously, it was added later in the video editor.
Despite the fact that most posts with this video present it as new, this is not the case - for example, Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent Alexander Kots published him on his Twitter back in 2021. The narrative about the inadequacy of 80-year-old Joe Biden is very popular and is often supported by fake photos and videos both in the United States and in other countries. For example, recently “Verified” already denied the news that the American President sniffed the child at a public event and statedthat his skull was opened several times to ensure the presence of a brain. Therefore, it is not surprising that the same reports supporting this statement periodically surface within a few years of each other.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to find out who edited the video and for what purpose, adding a sign about exercises for dementia: it has been circulating in this form on the Internet for quite some time, and the original source could have been deleted as part of social networks’ efforts to combat the spread of false information.
Cover photo: Twitter Alexander Kots
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