At the end of December 2023, a recording circulated on the Internet, allegedly showing the US President hugging the void. We decided to check if anything like this actually happened.
In the 28-second clip, Joe Biden stands behind a podium and then turns his back to the camera and walks away, gesturing and appearing to address someone who is not visible to the viewer. The video, accompanied by derogatory comments, was shown by some Russian media, for example “Ren-TV" TV channel "360"Posted the video on his blog on the Zen platform. Internet users also shared the post on social networks (“VKontakte", Instagram). Popular Telegram channels wrote about Biden’s alleged embarrassment, for example “Observer"(197,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Solovyov"(196,000), "Uncle Slava"(175,000), "Not Morgenstern" (143,000), "Pool N3“(113,000), etc. Most of the posts contain the same comment: “Handshakes with an invisible interlocutor are a passed stage. Now Biden is embracing the void.”
December 20, 2023 Joe Biden visited in Milwaukee, the Wisconsin Black Chamber of Commerce, which unites black entrepreneurs in the state of Wisconsin. There, the American president spoke about how he and his administration are promoting the development of black small businesses in the United States, and criticized his predecessor Donald Trump for his anti-immigrant statements.
This performance was shown on many TV channels, including CNBC, from the broadcast of which the fragment that spread across the Internet was taken. The cameraman of this channel filmed the president in close-up, so Biden really looks strange in the video - as if he was really addressing someone invisible, because there is no one in the frame except him. However, earlier in the same broadcast visiblethat there are spectators sitting on both sides of the stands.
If CNBC showed Biden in one shot, then in the official broadcast White House It was filmed from different angles and at different sizes. These frames also clearly show that there are listeners sitting behind the president, to whom he obviously addressed after finishing his speech.
The White House video cut off immediately after Biden's speech, and the controversial moment was not captured. But he is clearly visible in the TV channel’s broadcast C-Span (after 18 minutes). The shooting angle makes it clear that Biden was gesticulating and talking to real people present in the room, and not at all to emptiness, as many Internet users wrote.
The earliest publication of a fragment of the broadcast with a commentary about hugs with emptiness, which “Verified” was able to find in the Russian-language segment of the Internet, appeared on December 21, 2023 at 09:55 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Pool N3" Literally a few minutes later a video with exactly the same comment posted a few more pro-Russian ones channels, then it was shared hundreds of times on Telegram throughout the day. “Verified” has more than once accused “Pool N3” of disseminating false information, in particular fake covers magazine Charlie Hebdo and others publications. The channel also published videos with Biden taken out of context - for example, those where the US President says that sold a lot of state secrets or what? opened skull to confirm the presence of a brain. In the English-speaking segment of the Internet video I also disagreed with similar comments about embracing emptiness, but everything posts, which we managed to find, were published later than in Pool N3.
Thus, the video where Biden, after his speech, allegedly tries to embrace the void, is nothing more than a fragment of a broadcast from one of the American television channels taken out of context. At the same time, more complete video recordings in other sources show that there are spectators sitting behind the politician, to whom he is addressing.
Cover photo: X @POTUS
Read on the topic:
- Reuters. Fact Check: Biden addressed off-camera guests at Milwaukee event, not ‘invisible people’
- Is it true that Joe Biden addressed invisible audience members during his speech and asked them not to jump?
- Did Biden say he was 856 years old?
- Is it true that Biden suggested getting vaccinated against a hurricane?
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