President Joe Biden has posted numerous heavily edited and cut videos over the past few months, with the White House team slamming the president's other videos as “cheap fakes.”
Over the past two months, the president's own account has posted video clips in which the camera switches every three seconds, amid what White House press secretary Karine Kearns-Pierre has called “cheap fakes” edited to discredit Biden. His account rarely tweets full-length, uncut footage of Biden speaking or interrupting voters, instead putting events together into short, highly edited montages by his team.
After Biden appeared on camera frozen The White House slammed the footage of the incident, which took place during Juneteenth celebrations and during a stint at the G7 summit, claiming that media outlets and social media accounts, including the New York Post and the Republican National Committee (RNC), had misleadingly edited and cropped it. Jean-Pierre tried to popularize the label “cheap fake,” implying that the video was edited to discredit the president.
While the White House lab was “editing” the videos, the president's personal account posted a series of videos with jump cuts and splices that experts say may have been used to cover up mistakes.
For example, on May 15th video In the video of Biden challenging former President Donald Trump to a debate, the president speaks directly to the camera. The 14-second clip is cut five times to zoom in and out without changing the camera angle.
Donald Trump lost two debates against me in 2020. He hasn't appeared in a debate since.
Now he is acting like he wants to argue with me again.
Well, have a great day, my friend. pic.twitter.com/AkPmvs2q4u
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 15, 2024
“The very rhetoric that the Biden administration is trying to push, this cheap fake idea that somehow the Republican National Committee investigative account is posting cheap fakery, that the Republican National Committee investigative page has been posting content featuring Joe Biden longer than the Biden White House has been,” conservative digital political activist Alec Sears told the Caller.
“The zoom level of the camera. That may just be an editing trick to hide the cut. It's a pretty common editing trick. You can easily hide the cut by just changing the zoom level a little bit so you don't have those weird interruptions in the video where someone changes position,” Sears said of the debate video.
Over the past two months, the president's account has featured videos of him speaking directly to the camera, visiting businesses and chatting with constituents.
In the May 16 video, Biden Busy The video cuts six times with different camera angles as he talks about marijuana for 45 seconds.
On June 30, the White House posted a video of the president speaking to the camera for 38 seconds. The camera angle was Jumped off 8 times.
Democracy is our essence. pic.twitter.com/OHwbSoDRM3
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 30, 2024
“If you look at each cut of their video as a piece of content, they post three or four seconds of pure Joe Biden content before it gets cut, whereas the RNC's polling page posts longer unedited clips of Biden,” Sears said. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley told Daily Caller editor-in-chief Vince Collianese that their social media accounts are cutting Biden moments in real time.
Other videos alternate between Biden and background footage or campaign interactions. show Biden is seen talking to the owner of an ice cream shop, and the 21-second video has four scenes that cut back and forth between the two men.
You're right Nija, I'll always be an ice cream person. pic.twitter.com/gfLvVCOdWb
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 15, 2024
“This is a classic video editing trick that any politician who does a podcast or speaks a script in front of a camera does this – they do multiple takes,” Sears said, “but they'll do the entire speech in one take, or the first minute of the script will come from the first take and the second minute from the second take. So they'll still be facing the camera for two minutes, but they'll change the camera angle halfway through and subtly hide the change.”
Some of the videos the White House denounced as “cheap fakes” appear to have been edited for stylistic reasons. In particular, the White House took issue with a New York Post video of the president appearing to wander off during a G7 skydiving event. The Post's Twitter account cropped the video vertically, a style consistently used on its social media accounts, and appeared to omit the skydivers that the White House claimed the president walked up to greet.
President Biden appeared to be distracted by the G7 summit in Italy and officials needed to refocus him. https://t.co/M50eobWwHr pic.twitter.com/Uaw1etcUB8
— New York Post (@nypost) June 13, 2024
“This is kind of conflating two things that are going on. There is certainly a little industry on social media where clips are taken out of context and used for political purposes. I think this is happening across party lines, on all sides,” Steve Krakauer told the Caller.
“But in many of these alleged 'cheap fakes' examples, that's not actually the case. If you look at the full, in-context versions of the videos, from the fundraiser with Kimmel to the G7 video, nothing actually changes what they were trying to claim was the out-of-context version. So they're using real tactics to illustrate something that's not actually relevant,” he continued.
In another video, in the same style as the ice cream parlor visit, the president chats with a customer and wishes her a happy birthday. As Biden encourages the crowd to sing happy birthday to the woman, the video cuts three times in 38 seconds. As the president puts his arm around the customer's shoulders, Biden says, “By the way,” and then the video cuts to the end of the president's remarks.
Thank you Mr Howell for letting us celebrate your birthday together. pic.twitter.com/gFEXX3FOiR
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 10, 2024
“If you're running Joe Biden's Twitter account from the White House, you have complete control over what comes out of it, so you can hide or edit out any mistakes if you want to,” Sears said. “As long as you have at least one clean take, or a clean version of what lines Biden is reading, you can piece all of those individual pieces together, whether it's 50 lines or 100 lines.”
In addition to the footage of Biden at the G7, the president's supporters also took issue with video that appeared to show the 81-year-old Biden being escorted off stage by former President Barack Obama. At the fundraiser, Biden appeared to freeze before Obama grabbed him by the wrist and led him away.
Biden freezes on fundraiser stage before Obama rushes to the rescue
Biden freezes again…this is elder abuse. 🫣 pic.twitter.com/DMrtiJC4tl
— Sumit (@SumitHansd) June 17, 2024
The White House also addressed a video that showed Biden standing motionless during an Independence Day celebration while people around him, including Vice President Kamala Harris, danced to music. Jean-Pierre said if you zoomed out of the video, you could see people in the crowd who weren't dancing.
“It was a cheap, I mean, cheap fake. It was definitely a cheap fake. That's right. It was widely fact-checked. That video was widely fact-checked, including by conservative media, to see what happened, what happened,” Jean-Pierre said.
These videos are not cheap fakes. Krakauer They argued that this is because the content of the video remains unchanged even though additional context is added. Krakauer He added that the videos posted on the president's social media accounts are not believed to be cheap fakes.
“It's almost like a ploy to spice up the video, and they might have one angle or two or three, but they put in these quick cuts to grab people's attention,” Krakauer told The Caller. “That seems to be the idea, at least at first, but when you actually cut so frequently and in such a jarring way, it's clear that these cuts are there to cover up something that didn't work in the original cut.”
“I wouldn't necessarily call these cheap fakes either,” he added. “I would say they're further indications of a panicked White House that wants to paint a narrative and is a little wary of revealing the full truth.”
Max Keating contributed to this report.
