US President Donald Trump promoted a doctored video that falsely showed that Joe Biden stood 12 seconds low after he was formally signed as the Democratic nominee for president on August 18, 2020. In fact, the recordings were delayed and song a moment that actually lasted only a few seconds, during which Biden took a beat to record the applause of fans.
The video was original placed by Raheem Kassam, a former far-right activist in the UK Independence Party who co-hosts Trump’s former senior adviser Steve Bannon for a podcast called “War Room.”
In his tweet, Kassam of Biden wrote, “Does he even know what’s going on?” Trump then retweeted the video, accompanied by Kassam’s title, to 85 million Twitter followers:
Trump’s reelection campaign has publicly questioned Biden’s mental acuity – the president is 74, while Biden is 77 – and the president usually refers to his Democratic opponent by the nickname, “Sleepy Joe Biden.” Kassam’s video and title form a claim that Biden did not understand what was going on around him while receiving his party’s nomination. Trump’s promotion of the tweet turned out to be another attempt to advance his broad accusation of his campaign that Biden was not fit to run for president.
We asked the presidential re-election campaign whether Trump was aware that the video contained in Kassam’s tweet was doctored, but we did not receive a response for publication at the time. Trump’s retweet remained online for more than 12 hours after it first appeared.
What Kassam – and Trump – presented as 12 seconds of Biden blaring into space actually lasted only a few moments. Before it was delayed, the clip was taken from CNN’s cover of the second night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), on August 18, 2020.
Footage of the DNC’s livestream shows the moment when Delaware’s convention leaders cast all 32 of their votes for Biden, completing the formal nomination of Biden’s party as its presidential candidate for 2020. As party activists and supporters, Appearing on camera from around the country applauding and cheering, Biden takes a beating to absorb her acclamation. The actual moment shown in Kassam’s video lasted about three seconds – not 12.
Twitter has rules against videos or images that appear to be “significantly and misleadingly altered or fabricated”, and its guidelines state that the company may take action against such content, including: Add a tag to tweets, warn users before retweeting or such as violating tweets, and reducing the visibility of content that is “misleadingly altered.”
The president has fallen foul of those rules in the past. In March 2020, Trump retweeted a video clip posted by his aide, Dan Scavino, that falsely presented Biden in support of Trump’s reelection. Scavino’s tweet, and Trump’s promotion of it, were both the label “Manipulated media” by Twitter.
At the time this article was published, Biden’s doctored and misleading video had been on the DNC for more than 12 hours, and had not yet carried any labels or warnings. We asked Twitter whether Kassam’s tweet, and Trump’s promotion of it, was in violation of the company’s guidelines on misleadingly changing media, but we did not receive a response for publication at the time.
For his part, Kassam has openly admitted that the video has been edited, and wrote on Twitter that it “slowed down so you can see his reaction.” Biden’s reaction to his party’s nomination was easily seen in the original video footage, and gave no indication at all of any confusion on his part. Kassam’s acknowledgment that the footage was edited was not necessarily visible to those who saw his original tweet, and not at all visible to those who only saw the video retweeted by Trump.
Doctored and misleadingly edited video images have become an increasingly prominent tool of political disinformation in recent years. In May 2019, right-wing critics of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, including Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, shared and promoted a video of Pelosi that slowed down to give viewers the false impression that Pelosi was drunk. Snopes debuted a similar attack on Pelosi in August 2020.
Asked for a response to Trump’s promotion of Kassam’s tweet, Rosemary Boeglin, spokesman for the Biden campaign, told Snopes:
“These doctored attacks on [former] Vice President Biden are just like Trump: failed, disingenuous, pathetic and off-topic. Democrats spent the night talking about real solutions to tackle the crises facing us as a nation, while Donald Trump sits on Twitter in vain trying to divert attention from his reckless mismanagement of our economy and public health. nation. “
