At the end of September 2023, reports appeared on the Internet that during one of the speeches of the American president, spectators began shouting obscene statements at him. We decided to check if this is true.
Some media outlets (for example, the news agency Ura.ru, TV channel360" and edition "Moscow region today"). Social media users also shared this news: “VKontakte", X (formerly Twitter), etc. The message was most widely distributed on Telegram: the channels “Live broadcast"(760,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Voblya (159,000), "Ivan Utenkov"(123,000), "Breaking news"(94,000), "I'm aware"(83,000), etc. Almost all messages are accompanied by a 21-second fragment of the American leader’s speech, during which his speech is allegedly interrupted by people behind the scenes chanting “Fuck Joe Biden.” The authors of many Russian-language publications on social networks accompany the video with the same text: “They report that during Joe Biden’s speech, the crowd began to tell him to fuck off.”
If you take a screenshot from the video being distributed and use Google image search, you can find broadcast Joe Biden's speeches on July 11, 2022. None of the crowds depicted in viral posts were there; it was an event to celebrate the passage of a new law aimed at reducing gun violence. It took place on the south lawn of the White House, and the footage shows only a few dozen listeners sitting in front of Biden. Reportedly news agencies, attended primarily by officials and congressmen involved in the drafting of the bill, as well as family members of those who died or were injured in mass shooting incidents that occurred shortly before the passage of the law.
Biden was actually interrupted in the middle of his speech. Manuel Oliver, the father of one of the 17 teenagers killed in February 2018 during the school shooting in Parkland (Florida), began shouting something to the president. In the White House broadcast, his words are practically inaudible, since the sound comes from a microphone on the podium. In the official transcript Biden's speech reflected this moment - Oliver shouted several times "We must do more!" and demanded the creation of a new unit of the US Presidential Administration for the prevention of gun violence.
IN broadcasts channel C-Span (judging by the logo in the lower right corner, it was from this that the fragment that spread across social networks was taken), the man is heard a little better than in the White House video - Oliver actually says something similar to what is reflected in the transcript. It is this fragment, where Biden was interrupted and he tries to calm Oliver down and continue his speech, that is used in viral posts. However, what is definitely not present in any of the original videos published back in 2022 is the mass chant of the phrase “Fuck Joe Biden” - the sound was likely superimposed on the video during editing. And it’s hard to imagine that American officials—and, as already mentioned, they made up the majority of the audience—could start shouting obscenities at the president in unison. AFP as part of video verification appealed for a comment to Oliver, and he stated that he did not shout “Fuck Biden”, and also that he respects the president and voted for him.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to establish the original source of the video with the superimposed sound of obscene language addressed to Biden. In the English-speaking segment of the Internet, she spreads at least since January 2023, but for some reason it only appeared on the RuNet now. By the way, this is not the only fake that was created based on this video. So, our colleagues from USA Today analyzed a video in which Oliver allegedly asked Biden what he thought about the behavior of his son Hunter, the hero of several scandals. This video also turned out to be edited.
By the way, the gun violence prevention unit that the man who interrupted Biden demanded to be established is still the president opened — in September 2023. And his speech on this matter was also not without false messages addressed to the politician. Thus, some unscrupulous Russian-speaking bloggers took his joke out of context and wrote that Biden was out of his mind, claiming that he was 856 years old. "Verified" already sorted it out these messages.
Thus, no profanity chants are heard in the original video of this speech by Joe Biden in 2022. Then the politician’s speech was actually interrupted by one of the listeners, but his words were not at all offensive. The sound of people shouting “Fuck Joe Biden” appears to have been added later during editing.
Cover photo: Twitter @POTUS
Read on the topic:
- BBC. How many US mass shootings have there been in 2023?
- Pew Research Center. What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S.
- Is it true that there is a relationship between increased aggressiveness and computer games?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
