President Donald Trump and his campaign have leaned in heavily on a video that misleadingly suggests Democratic nominee Joe Biden doesn’t know who he is running against.
The Trump campaign has posted the video to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — where it has racked up millions of views. None of the companies are taking any action against the video. By Wednesday morning, the video had received almost 2 million views and had been retweeted at least 9,700 times.
The President is also playing the video at his rallies throughout the country this week, using it as a way to claim that Biden is not mentally fit for office.
Trump’s team has repeatedly pushed misleading videos trying to support this point. Some have been selectively edited. Others are plain fake.
Back in March, Trump and his campaign promoted a clip that wrongly made it seem like Biden had endorsed Trump. He, of course, hadn’t.
In August, White House social media director Dan Scavino shared a video that purported to show Biden falling asleep during a TV interview. Expect the TV interview never happened; the whole thing was fake.
In September, the Trump campaign posted a video making it seem like Biden had forgotten the Pledge of Allegiance. He hadn’t.
And this week the campaign is promoting a clip making it seem like Biden said he was running against George Bush, not Trump.
The videos appear to be gaining traction among Trump supporters.
Back in September, one of the first reasons a Trump supporter in Bemidji, Minnesota, cited to CNN when claiming Biden was not mentally fit for office was the fake video that made it look like he had fallen asleep in a TV interview. When he was told the video was fake, he said, “I definitely wouldn’t doubt that it would happen.”
Similarly, before a Trump event in West Salem, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, a woman interviewed by CNN said Biden would not be capable of running the country due to his mental capacity. “He forgets where he’s at, he forgets who he’s running against, he forgets what he’s running for,” she said.
Asked when Biden had forgotten who he was running against, she cited the misleading clip the Trump campaign has been pushing all this week that purported to show the former vice president saying he was running against Bush.
Here are the details of the video:
The full interview was part of a virtual “I Will Vote” concert, which was hosted by comedian George Lopez and Ana Navarro, a CNN political commentator. The 27-second isolated video that was widely shared on social media failed to contextualize Biden’s response to Lopez’s question, giving the impression that Biden had confused Trump with George W. Bush.
The concert began at 8 p.m. ET. About 12 minutes into the event, Lopez asked Biden, “If someone is undecided, or maybe thinking about not voting, why should they vote, and why should they vote for you?”
Biden answered, “Well, first of all, the reason they should vote is that there’s a lot on the ballot this year. I mean this is the most consequen- not because I’m running, but because of who I’m running against. This is the most consequential election, uh, in a long, long, long time. And the character of the country, in my view, is literally on the ballot. What kind of country we’re going to be.”
The excerpt in question is what came after:
“Four more years of George, uh, George, uh, he, uh gonna find ourselves in a position where if, uh, Trump gets elected, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be in a different world.”
At 9:01 p.m. ET, approximately 45 minutes after the interview, @TrumpWarRoom tweeted the suggestive clip with the caption: “Joe Biden says he is opposed to ‘Four more years of George, uh, George, uh.” “
The video sent by the Trump campaign does not inform viewers that Biden was answering a question from George Lopez.
CNN’s Hyeyoon “Alyssa” Choi contributed to this report.
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