Joe Biden So Spry RNC Uses 'Cheap Fakes' To Make Him Look Old
Meanwhile, Donald Trump forgot his own doctor's name.
It’s not new news that, unable to find any scandal in the Biden family beyond Hunter and Ashley being recovering addicts, the right-wing-o-sphere has desperately been trying to portray Joe Biden as enfeebled. Just like they all did with Hillary! Never mind that Joe’s only three years older than his rival, a 34-times-convicted felon who struggles to walk down stairs, drink a glass of water with one hand, and yaps gibberish nonstop.
But what is new is the use of “cheap fakes,” deceptively edited videos, being media-washed from the Republican National Committee directly into the more mainstream disinformation ouroboros.
The latest is what the Washington Post (gift link) calls a four-Pinocchio “whopper:” a video edited to make it look like Biden is doddering away from a group of G7 leaders at a skydiving demonstration in Italy. In reality, Biden, outgoing and friendly man of the people that he is, walked a few steps to give a thumbs-up and greet the parachutists. Watch the clip yourself if you want!
By the way, as a convicted felon, Trump is not even allowed to visit Italy, or even pass through the airport, until he’s served whatever sentence he gets and completed all the probationary requirements, LOL.
Anyway, the RNC, desperate to deflect from how its presumptive nominee’s brain is a soggy bowl of moldering oatmeal, cropped the video to edit out the parachutists to make it look like Biden was staring into space. The RNC blasted the clip on its Xitter feed, where it was immediately and unquestioningly lapped up by right-wing media.
“What is Biden doing?” just-asking-questions-ed an RNC social media post at 1:01 p.m., June 13. Within hours, the “story” hit Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post web site (“Biden wanders away at G7 summit before being pulled back by Italian PM”), then the cover of the print edition the next day (“MEANDER IN CHIEF: Biden embarrasses US with confused wanderings at world conference”), then got picked up by international right-wing garbage media, including Fox News and its local affiliates, the world news page of the UK’s Daily Telegraph, India Today, The Toronto Sun, and Radar Online.
Unable to find footage of Biden nonsensically jawboning about sharks and electric boats, praising Hannibal Lecter, or shitting on Milwaukee, the RNC has now resorted to just making stuff up, and the video clips of Biden’s recent trip to Europe to commemorate D-Day produced a boon of clips for selective editing, the Washington Post documented (another gift link). There’s Biden pausing before he sat in a chair, which Donald Trump Jr. posted was an “embarrassment” showing American weakness. Unlike that time his daddy refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery because the humidity might have dampened his weave.
Other deceptively edited clips posted by the RNC: Biden “pulled away” from a D-Day ceremony by Jill, though they were leaving an event after shaking veterans’ hands in a normal sort of way. There’s right-wing media accounts claiming Biden was “sleeping,” because he briefly closed his eyes while listening to a solemn speech. And Fox, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph ran a story that Biden “appears to freeze” at a Juneteenth event, because he was the only person in a group who wasn’t dancing.
Sure is a whole lot of projection going on! Remember how Trump froze for 37 seconds during an NRA speech last month while some creepy QAnon anthem played behind him? And sleep-farted through his own criminal trial? No worries about Melania having to lead him anywhere, though, she won’t touch him with a 10-foot pair of tongs.
Hilariously, old man Trump also bagged on Joe last weekend for being too energetic. “Europe, did you see, he flies back and forth and back and forth, he’s wasting hundreds of billions of dollars.” Hundreds of billions!
The burning stupid of it all is funny, but also scary, given how the fake news travels faster than anybody can correct it. Public Notice and Judd Legum’s Popular Information documented how Sinclair Broadcast Group took that Wall Street Journal hit piece that quoted only Republicans with the theme “Joe Biden old” and turned it into a packaged script for their 185 local news stations:
“We are here to deliver your message,” Sinclair president David Smith reportedly told Trump in 2016, and he kept his word making sure Sinclair goes above and beyond to exalt brain genius Trump and play BIDEN OLD on repeat.
It’s required that every time we mention David Smith to note that his family values include picking up a prostitute in Baltimore city in his company Mercedes and getting a beej from her while he was driving on a public interstate, in full view of other motorists. A source told GQ, “He's a whoremonger. A real whoremonger. He loves the titty bars. The only people he likes go to the titty bars with him. Those are the only people he trusts.” Smith, a nepo baby whose daddy started Sinclair, recently bought the Baltimore Sun, and immediately had the prostitute story about him scrubbed from its website.
But fake news, Sinclair is very worried about it!
Frustratingly, the “feeble Biden” story line seems to be effective. About 27 percent of voters believe Biden is too old, and Trump isn’t. Are we on the same planet, here?
And it ain’t just the usual suspects in Foxmurdochlandia. The New York Times has published 26 “Biden Old” stories, only ONE of which mentioned that golf motel grandpa is also old, which is three times as many stories as they published about Trump trying to pull out of NATO.
Meanwhile, Saturday night in Detroit, Trump forgot the name of his own White House doctor. “I think [Biden] should take a cognitive test like I did. I took a cognitive test and I aced it. Doc Ronny, Doc Ronny Johnson. Does everyone know Ronny Johnson?” he said of his former drug dealer, Ronny “Pill Mill” Jackson:
The irony, it burns!
Yeah, Joe Biden is old. Trump is old. They’re both old. But only one of these people is certified, bona fide, pea-turkey bananas, and it’s not the one who can still ride a bicycle.
[WaPo gift link / Other WaPo gift link / C-SPAN / Public Notice / GQ]
As one of my friends posted:
"You're not getting a pony. No one is getting a pony. Your choices are an old but devoted and tireless workhorse or a loud squealing pig."
I profoundly miss the parameters of the Fairness Doctrine that Reagan regretfully revoked.
Formerly it fucking MATTERED that new agencies were legally responsible to articulate the FACTS insofar as they were available sans histrionic deliberate disinformation.