White House criticizes “bad faith” videos that claim to show Biden confused

The White House on Monday released a series of altered videos purporting to show President Biden wandering or confused, calling the footage “bad faith” and a sign of desperation from Biden’s critics.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the recent spate of videos, which resulted from Biden’s trip to France earlier this month, his visit to Italy last week and his stop at a fundraiser on Saturday.

Jean-Pierre referenced a Washington Post article that called the footage “fake and cheap” videos and said they were being released in bad faith by “right-wing critics of the president.”

“That says everything we need to know about how desperate the Republicans are here,” she said.

“And instead of talking about the president’s performance in office, and what I mean by that is his legislative victories, what he was able to do for the American people across the country, we’re seeing these deep fakes, these doctored videos ,” she continued. “And this is, again, done in bad faith.”

Polls have long shown that voters are worried about Biden’s age and cognitive ability to do the job as he seeks re-election at age 81, and videos that have spread in recent days have served to fuel those concerns.

The New York Post Office shared a clip last week, which showed Biden with other Group of Seven (G7) leaders in Italy watching a skydiving demonstration. While the full view of the event showed Biden stepping back to gesture toward one of the skydivers, the Post version of the video shows a tighter angle where it’s unclear who Biden is gesturing toward before the Italian prime minister pushes him back toward the group.

A community note attached to the X post indicates that the video was cut.

Another clip from the New York Post focused on Biden on stage at a fundraiser with former President Barack Obama and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. The Post wrote about the video with the headline: “Biden appears to freeze, has to be led off stage by Obama at mega-dollar fundraiser in Los Angeles.”

At the end of the event, both Obama and Biden were leaving the stage, waving goodbye to the crowd. Obama grabs Biden by the hand and pats him on the back before they walk away.

But White House and Obama aides rejected the Post’s characterization of events.

In a post on the social media platform X, Eric Schultz, Obama’s senior adviser, republished the New York Post article and said “this did not happen.”

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said the Post was “pretending that the president had a crowd applauding for a few seconds is somehow wrong. His ethical standards could do with a little thawing.”

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story