Misleading GOP videos about Biden are going viral. Fact checks have a hard time keeping up.

More Americans may think that the president Joe Biden tried to sit on a non-existent chair the other day than know the boring truth that There was actually a chair.

The President-Who-Was-There was just one of many quick video clips that the conservative media ecosystem has turned into vitality over the past two weeks, leaving fact-checkers and Biden’s team little chance to catch up.

The Republican National Committee, major conservative media outlets, and right-wing influencers have managed to release videos claiming show “proof” from Biden wandering, freezing or same filling your pants with a substance commonly represented by a brown swirl emoji.

Independent fact checkers and the Biden campaign pointed that videos, although not manipulated by artificial intelligence, tend to fall apart even under basic scrutiny, as when moments are seen in context or of wider camera angles.

“Fresh off being fact-checked by at least six mainstream outlets for lying about President Biden with cheap fakes, Rupert Murdoch’s sad little super PAC, the New York Post, is back to disrespecting its readers and itself once again.” , White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement in reference to a video of Biden at a fundraiser with former President Barack Obama over the weekend that landed on the covers from the Post, a conservative tabloid.

While “deepfakes” are deceptive audio, video, or images created or edited with artificial intelligence technology, a “cheap fake,” according to researchers Britt Paris and Joan Donovan, is a “cheap fake.”manipulation created with cheaper and more accessible software (or none). Cheap fakes can be rendered through Photoshop, lookalikes, image recontextualization, speeding up or slowing down.”

Still, even if they’re misleading, videos still work existing concerns of voters about Biden’s age and are tailor-made for internet virality, meaning busy voters may be more likely to encounter the brief incendiary clips than the more rigorous fact-checks that dog them.

“The lie is running the 100-meter dash and the fact-checking is taking a walk on the beach. Then you will never reach it. And it will never have the same reach,” said Eric Schultz, a Democratic strategist and Obama spokesman who on Sunday publicly called the Post’s characterization of the fundraising as false.

Last week, Republicans released a video of Biden in Europe, attending the Group of Seven summit, in which he allegedly “wandered” in a confused haze before the Italian prime minister pulled him back. Uncut videos and wider-angle photos showed that Biden was greeting a skydiver who had just landed during the ceremony.

The controversy generated by the video grew so much that the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, was invited to testify as an eyewitness of the moment.

“Everyone had disembarked and he was being very polite. And he just went and talked to them all individually,” Sunak told reporters.

Before that, the RNC opposition research report suggested Biden was having a medical incident because he wasn’t dancing at a June event, even though Biden has long said he’s not a good dancer and barely danced at her inaugural ball in 2021.

At the fundraiser in Los Angeles, Biden and Obama waved to supporters after receiving a standing ovation as Biden glanced at the audience for a moment before the more punctual Obama signaled it was time to leave the stage. Several people at the event said that I didn’t recognize the New York Post’s interpretation that Biden appeared to “freeze.”

‘A pattern of behavior’

Republicans are unapologetic about the individual videos — despite fact-checks from the mainstream media they distrust.

“It’s a pattern of behavior. It’s not like it was an affair,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in an interview. “It’s not like we’re making these videos. This is Joe Biden in real time. We’re just putting it out there for the world to see.”

Asked about the cropped video that Republicans said showed Biden trying to sit in a chair that didn’t exist (in fact, it was just hidden from view from the camera angle), Leavitt said, “The videos speak for themselves.”

“It is outrageous that the words ‘cheap counterfeit’ [are] even though they are used,” she said. “There is nothing cheap or fake about these videos. These are real clips of Joe Biden acting bizarrely.

“The whole Biden campaign strategy is to convince people not to believe their own eyes,” she added.

The spread of the videos highlights what academics say could be a particularly tumultuous election cycle. Many major social media platforms have rolled back the few checks and balances on the spread of false or misleading information under pressure from republicans. Meanwhile, the power and reach of just a few accounts in X can spread talking points to millions of people which is then picked up by the more conservative media.

Taking liberties with video editing – or simply misrepresenting what’s happening in a video – is nothing new. But former President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party pushed the party further beyond the murky divide between lying and falsehood, as technology allowed clips to be cut and broadcast constantly.

Reaching voters who don’t consume much political news is challenging at the best of times, and it becomes even more difficult when organizations try to reach the same voters a second time to try to change their views on previously missed political content. found.

Conservative media outlets that disseminate such clips include not only those that are notoriously ideological, like Fox Newsbut also the vast network of local TV news stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, dozens of which have repackaged identical versions of the same title about Biden appearing to freeze.

Few conservative media outlets offered any resistance to the video attack. Howard Kurtz, Fox News host and media journalist, is one of the few notable outliershaving called out the New York Post and fellow presenter Sean Hannity for their coverage of the G7 video.

And the algorithms of Internet platforms and the organic behavior of their users tend to reward the surprising and controversial, while ignoring the mundane.

‘We can’t stop them from doing this’

Democrats’ strategy for dealing with the videos is two-pronged, according to several people familiar with the thinking of the Biden campaign, the White House and allied outside groups.

First, they will try to contain them to the conservative media ecosystem and extremely online spaces of political discourse like X, hoping to prevent them from infiltrating the mainstream as much as possible.

Per being aggressive By fact-checking the facts, quickly publishing more complete video clips with appropriate context, and publicizing the media reporting them, the White House and the Biden campaign hope to prevent them from spreading too far.

“We can’t stop them from doing this. What we can do is fight hard to get fact checks and release them,” said a Biden campaign official who requested anonymity to speak candidly about strategy. “Does this potentially target independent voters? Yes, and that is what we are protecting ourselves and fighting against.”

Second, Democrats are stepping up their own attacks on Trump online, aggressively posting their own viral videos of Trump’s verbal dead ends, curious tangents and embarrassing actions.

They include highlighting what they say are Trump’s most important moments, like one at a Saturday night rally when he said Biden “should have to take a cognitive test” — just moments later. flub the doctor’s name who administered a similar test to him.

Much of this came from Biden headquarters, an account that the Biden campaign’s research and rapid response teams use to attack Trump. For example, in a clip from the same event, Trump promised to answer questions after his speech — “This is different from Joe Biden. He doesn’t answer any questions” — but he left the stage without answering any questions.

Schultz said: “Both candidates are old, but one is coherent and has cogent thoughts. So to the extent that happens, I think we’ll be fine in November.”

The Trump campaign has also complained about the way the Biden campaign has misleadingly portrayed its own videos in the past. This included when Trump told auto workers there would be a “blood bath”if he is not elected. The Trump campaign said the term referred specifically to the auto industry and that Democrats intentionally mischaracterized it, making it appear as if Trump was inciting violence.

Still, Democrats, including Biden himself — hardly a digital native — seem to understand the challenge of suppressing viral videos that many Americans want to believe.

“The truth is in the way we communicate with people these days there are very few — there are many opportunities to just lie,” Biden said at the fundraiser in Los Angeles. “A lot of what’s on the internet is absolutely a blatant lie.”

First lady Jill Biden addressed the issue of Biden’s age on Saturday at an event for seniors in Phoenix: “Joe and the other guy are essentially the same age, so let’s not fool ourselves.”

According to polls, voters so far do not agree with her. And some Democrats seem to be constantly preparing for some important, unedited moment in which Biden shows his age.

NBC News‘ national survey at the end of January found three-quarters of voters, including many Democrats, saying they had major or minor concerns about Biden’s physical and mental health.

This article was originally published in NBCNews. with