In September 2023, a video showing the US President allegedly getting lost in the Congress building went viral. We checked whether this video is true.

The video being circulated shows Joe Biden and a woman. “We're in the Capitol building and you're going the wrong way. Exit on the other side of the building, as we indicated to you on the map,” she allegedly whispers in the ear of the American president. It is alleged that this is an urgent instruction from the security service of the head of state. On September 14, this video with the comment “Biden went the wrong way in the building where he worked for 40 years” (the politician is really 36 years old) was a senator from the State of Delaware. — Approx. ed.) published in Telegram channels “Live broadcast"(703,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Truthfulness"(211,000), "Putin on Telegram"(182,000) and Voblya (149,000), as well as TV presenter Ruslan Ostashko (118,000). According to the TGStat service, the total reach of such posts exceeded 3 million views. The video also went viral on the English-speaking Internet, becoming popular in TikTok And X (Twitter).

Distributed video

The subtitles for the video are generally correct, with the exception of the error in using the word capital (capital) instead of Capitol, as is their translation into Russian in popular posts. However, the woman's lips in the video are out of sync with the audio. They correspond to several labialized (labial) vowel sounds pronounced in a row. There are only four such sounds in the audio track (in the words you, going, wrong and of), and all of them do not coincide with the movements of the woman’s lips. This suggests that the audio is not original.

English speaking users X (Twitter) discovered original video on the website of the cable channel C-SPAN, which broadcasts materials from the US government, and on its official YouTube channel. This entry is part live broadcast Biden's addressAbout the state of affairs in the country"(State of the Union, an analogue of the President's message to the Federal Assembly in Russia), made at a joint meeting of Congress in the Capitol on February 7, 2023.

The broadcast continued after the end of the speech of the American president, and the informal part of the event was captured. On video with original sound due to the noise and conversations of others, it is basically impossible to hear what a woman is whispering in Biden’s ear. The politician’s answer is also quite difficult to make out, except for the phrase “People will get angry. They feel like they're being used" (“People will get angry. They feel like they are being used”), but even from this fragment it is clear that this was not at all about the disorientation of the American leader in space. This is proven by the next 10 seconds of the video, during which the woman clearly repeats “so true” several times and adds: “Anything I can do to help support that, I will.” Biden then talks to security and tells one of the guards to get the phone number of the woman who spoke to him.

Thus, the video is falsified: the original recording, made more than six months ago, is cropped, and a new audio track is superimposed on top with the aim of compromising Biden. This is not the first time that a politician has been attributed to senile dementia. Earlier, “Verified” examined reports that the US President allegedly allotment a veteran receives a medal backwards or applied to invisible listeners with a request not to jump. These stories were also fabricated.

Cover photo: Still image from C-SPAN broadcast