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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/14/cheapfake-biden-videos-enrapture-right-wing-media-deeply-mislead/
>“What is Biden doing?”
>— Republican National Committee social media post, 1:01 p.m., June 13
>“Biden wanders away at G-7 summit before being pulled back by Italian PM”
>— headline of New York Post article, posted less than two hours later
>“Meander in Chief: Biden embarrasses U.S. with confused wanderings at world conference.”
>— front page of New York Post, posted June 14
A particularly effective attack on a political candidate can come in the form of a video snippet that appears to reinforce an existing stereotype. The social media feed of the RNC regularly churns out misleading clips of President Biden, 81, intended to show that he is too old for the job.
Biden’s Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump, turned 78 on Friday, but polls show there is less concern about his physical and mental fitness for office. In a recent Pew Research poll released in April, fewer than a quarter of voters expressed a high degree of confidence in Biden’s mental fitness (21 percent) and physical fitness (15 percent). By contrast, about four in ten voters were extremely or very confident about Trump’s mental and physical fitness. So there is an incentive for the Republicans to keep hammering away at a perceived vulnerability for Biden.
This past week, the RNC feed has misleadingly called attention to two video clips of Biden. One was so distorted that it resulted in a “community note” on the X platform calling out its dishonesty. But the RNC’s dismal track record — which we have highlighted on multiple occasions — has not stopped right-leaning outfits from echoing the RNC’s framing and reinforcing its narrative that Biden has lost a step.
>“What is Biden doing?”
>— Republican National Committee social media post, 1:01 p.m., June 13
>“Biden wanders away at G-7 summit before being pulled back by Italian PM”
>— headline of New York Post article, posted less than two hours later
>“Meander in Chief: Biden embarrasses U.S. with confused wanderings at world conference.”
>— front page of New York Post, posted June 14
A particularly effective attack on a political candidate can come in the form of a video snippet that appears to reinforce an existing stereotype. The social media feed of the RNC regularly churns out misleading clips of President Biden, 81, intended to show that he is too old for the job.
Biden’s Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump, turned 78 on Friday, but polls show there is less concern about his physical and mental fitness for office. In a recent Pew Research poll released in April, fewer than a quarter of voters expressed a high degree of confidence in Biden’s mental fitness (21 percent) and physical fitness (15 percent). By contrast, about four in ten voters were extremely or very confident about Trump’s mental and physical fitness. So there is an incentive for the Republicans to keep hammering away at a perceived vulnerability for Biden.
This past week, the RNC feed has misleadingly called attention to two video clips of Biden. One was so distorted that it resulted in a “community note” on the X platform calling out its dishonesty. But the RNC’s dismal track record — which we have highlighted on multiple occasions — has not stopped right-leaning outfits from echoing the RNC’s framing and reinforcing its narrative that Biden has lost a step.
