The Biden administration and its allies in the mainstream media are working very hard to convince the public that damaging videos of President Joe Biden are being taken out of context and horribly deceiving.
In pursuit of this goal, Biden’s allies have coined the term “cheap fake,” like deepfake but instead of being generated by artificial intelligence, they are allegedly just deceptively edited.
And on Tuesday, CBS News happily promoted the White House’s propaganda about these videos, airing segment that falsely claimed a video of the president seemingly wandering off at the G-7 before being retrieved by the Italian prime minister had somehow been “digitally altered.”
Rhona Tarrant, the executive editor of CBS News Confirmed discussed the prevalence of “cheap fakes,” including the video from the G-7 summit.
Now, the White House wants you to believe that millions of people were deceived into thinking Biden was just aimlessly wandering off into the abyss, when in reality he was trying to thank soldiers and the video was deceptively cut off.
However, that explanation really does not cut it. As IJR reported when the video first surfaced, Biden was trying to communicate to the soldier — whether they noticed is unclear. But that does not make the incident any better.
What was alarming, or concerning, was the fact that every other member of the G-7 seemed to know what was happening, that the skydivers would be coming up to the world leaders and they would get a chance to talk to them. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said as much. Yet Biden, who has a history of seeming to magically forget his stage directions, decided to wander away from the group to talk to the same individuals he would’ve gotten a chance to talk a little bit later.
Sure, it is a little dishonest to cut the video before you can see the skydiver as some outlets did, but that does not make the full context any better. Again, every other leader seemed to know what was happening, did Biden? Or did he forget? Did he think for some reason that’s what was happening?
What is more disturbing is the fact that CBS News is simply parroting the White House’s talking points about this video, accepting without apparently having any shred of doubt the claim that the full context totally absolves Biden’s behavior, even going so far as to state the viral video had been “digitally altered,” when in reality it had been cut short and not somehow altered.
It is not as though the video shows Biden doing something he did not actually do. He did walk away from the group. He did try to talk to a soldier. And the G-7 leaders did look perplexed about his departure. That all happened. There is nothing fake or twisted in the video.
Perhaps you could say cutting a video in the most basic sense is digitally altering it. Yet, by that definition, many of the segments and interviews we see on network and cable news are digitally altered and should not be trusted because they could be cheap fakes.
Instead of just running with the narrative, reporters should be asking: why this furious push back now? It is not as though we just started to see such videos of Biden, even ones that have been “digitally altered.” For the three and a half years he’s been in office we’ve seen him fall down stairs, fall off bikes, fall on stage, struggle to speak, make up completely fake stories, or look confused or lost. Many of those videos have just been short clips of him walking or wandering around without the full context.
So what happened? Why are the Biden team and their allies in the media so forcefully pushing back right now? It’s a little bit late if they’re just concerned about truth and accuracy or downplaying concerns about his age.
If they’re so insistent on telling us our eyes are not seeing what we’ve been seeing for years at this point, it makes you wonder if there is something worse than what has been on display that they are trying to hide now.
Instead, the media are so afraid of the possible return of the Orange Man they are shamefully covering for the White House instead of doing their jobs.
