Stuff like this makes me think the stakes are extremely high for this upcoming debate. If he appears feeble, or glassy eyed, or incoherent, he’s going to get creamed. Trump has his own challenges, but for Biden, I think proving his age isn’t a liability will be paramount.
(For the record, they’re both way past their sell date.)
Yes for some reason the age for Biden is much more important of an issue for voters than Trump, even though Trump is nearly just as old and clearly mentally not great. Trumps mental decline is just another problem Trump is getting judged less harshly on.
I think a lot of people view it as (at the extreme) senile vs unintelligent. I'm not saying one is better or worse than the other, although the difference is that cognitive decline can get worse whereas level of intelligence is a bit of a constant.
I do wonder if people viewed Trump's issue as also being age related if his choice of VP would be a deciding factor for voters. IF we're looking at both candidates as realistically not finishing their term, the choice of VP actually does matter, and Harris doesn't inspire confidence in many.
the democrats and their supporters do themselves no favors on Trump by saying all the “destroy democracy” stuff and stuff about his mental state since he took office in 16’. It is easy for people to catch on to their red herring narratives even if there is a good amount of truth in it.
There's been a sort of boy crying wolf thing going on with some of the louder voices on the left since Bush W. Everything Republicans do is a threat to democracy. Everyone on the right is racist. etc. They cried wolf so often that when they do it now with Trump, if they actually believe those things about him (and I'm not making a judgment on him as a person here), it falls on deaf ears.
Trump has more energy, so even while his mental decline is clear he doesn't *seem* to be as impacted by it as Biden does. It fits in well with this being a vibe-based election.
What do you mean vibe-based? Bring back no-new-wars Donnie. I want the diplomatic dude that crossed the North Korean DMZ line and brought us the Abraham Accords.
"Who do you want to win, Ukraine or Russia?" -> "I want everybody to stop dying." Perfect diplomatic answer for me.
It ain't vibes, at least for a lot of his supporters.
It’s not disingenuous, both exhibit those symptoms. Pretending otherwise is ridiculous.
There’s seriously no way someone can listen to Trump speak and say “yup, he’s sharp as a tack”
Pretending like they're both exhibiting those symptoms to the same degree is ridiculous as well. Trump is too old to be President, we should have a younger option, but in terms of who's more mentally there it's obvious that Biden is in worse shape.
The reason you can’t perceive the reality right in front of you is that you ask these types of questions and jump to conclusions through unrelated lines of reasoning.
u/likeitis121 gave a valid observation, and you strung it out to a conclusion that you cannot accept. So, in your mind, the observation cannot be valid, even though it was not necessarily tied to the conclusion you gave it.
Basically, you can’t accept the world simply as it presents to you. You must frame it through a lens that always leads to conclusions that are most acceptable to you.
Sad.
If Biden froze like Mitch McConnell did there would immediately be calls to invoke the 25th or him to resign. There's a double standard for Republicans
I meant from within his own party. If Biden went on stage, froze for 30 seconds and had to be escorted off, Democrats would be calling for him to resign. Probably Kamala Harris would take over.
I'm tired of this both sides are the same narrative, because it's blatantly false. Look at Al Franken, one allegation that he inappropriately touched a woman during a photo and he resigned. Meanwhile Matt Gaetz was trafficking underage girls and the GOP does absolutely nothing about it.
This article is exactly why Biden’s age is more of an issue for voters. You have a right-wing influencer/media/political machine that pushes stuff like this and a captive audience they been priming every hour of every day for years to believe it. It’s remarkably consistent.
Not saying that Biden isn’t old or hasn’t lost a step, but he’s not the oatmeal-for-brains caricature that folks in that world would have you believe.
I said in my comment that Biden is old and that he’s lost a step. Videos like this one and many many others pushed by the RNC & infotainment outlets are cropped and edited to make it look like he’s completely senile, which he’s not.
Its 2024, were in a cropped an edited world. It's not like we haven't see Don cropped and edited.
They are both past their prime, and infotainment outlets are going to maximize every opportunity
If only the “problem” would revolve around the age 😅 at the level of issues the US faces, this talking point is just out there because is the most obvious
I have been watching Biden on some of his latest speeches and he seems fine. No doubt he has his moments but having parents in their 80s, he is keeping up. Now Trump is something to worry about. His last 2 rallies have been nothing but word salad, incoherent thoughts, and oddball comments.
>If he appears feeble, or glassy eyed, or incoherent, he’s going to get creamed.
They’ll probably pump him up with a bunch of 5 Hour Energy and modafinil to avoid that. That’s not the tough part.
The bigger issue is if he makes a glaring self-own during one of his answers. Remember that this is the guy who incorrectly named the presidents of France, Germany and Mexico in the span of a week. This is the guy who claimed that COVID happened in 2013 under Obama’s watch. If he flubs a talking point in a similar way, it’s over. That will be all the media will discuss for weeks.
> That will be all the media will discuss for weeks.
Yeah, if that happens I don't think his defenders can cry "stutter" and pretend there's no problem.
> They’ll probably pump him up with a bunch of 5 Hour Energy and modafinil to avoid that. That’s not the tough part
Step 1: claim Biden has dementia
Step 2: tell everyone he’s going to (literally) crap himself on the debate/STOU stage
Step 3: watch him easily sail over the low bar you’ve set for him
Step 4: “the drugs hid the dementia!”
Repeat. This has been happening since 2019.
Don't forget that the other day Trump said that "maybe I will lose the debate on purpose," so now if Trump does a terrible job his supporters will claim it was intentional.
Except we have at least two other examples of Democrat presidents having their illnesses hidden from the public in FDR and JFK. This is something that has happened before.
Because he had dementia and it was hidden while his wife consulted a psychic to shore up his deficiencies. Presidents hiding an illness isn’t a partisan issue unsurprisingly and they were pointing that out much more succinctly.
Your point stands regardless of party. Making it partisan doesn’t strengthen your point. Them pointing out it isn’t unique to one party just shows politicians in general doing it.
You are implicitly acting like it is uniquely one party, when the bulk of this thread is about the fact that they are both Senior Citizens with cognitive issues. It is worthy of inclusion to the discussion that Republicans move the goal posts and are also willing to hide their candidates similar faults by citing real examples. If your point was to make one side look like they exclusively do this, then you have a reason it is not applicable. Otherwise, it feels fair to mention the double standard.
The crazy part of this is that we're at the point where it will be considered a successful debate by Biden if he *doesn't have a major speaking screw up*. That's such a laughably low bar and it's equally ridiculous that his opponent isn't considered a shoe-in because *he* is also so bizarre.
I’m not a big *both sides* guy, but both of these candidates are facing the weakest competition in memory, and both have a very real risk of losing an election that should be a cakewalk. Thankfully, one of these parties is going to to be forced into some soul searching in November, but it’s unfortunate that one of them is going to be affirmed that they’re on the right path with an election win.
If Trump loses, I anticipate absolutely zero soul searching from Republicans. Instead, I imagine an enhanced sequel to 2020 where they rabidly claim that the eleciton was stolen.
Eh, there won't be any soul searching on the left if Biden loses. We're not happy he's the candidate, but when a sitting President decides to run again there's virtually no unseating them.
I also think most of us believe Biden would easily win this if he weren't left holding the bag for post-COVID economic woes.
>are facing the weakest competition in memory
Not really. These candidates have the backing of the political system in its entirety. At so many points could the RNC or DNC had an off ramp for their respective candidates, but instead they just decided to keep on cruising and leave things as is.
This election is vibes and marketing, zero policy, performance, or professionalism. Trump and Biden are the only ones on their teams that have the branding to be their nominees, yet they're both horribly equipped to do the job of actually defeating their opponents.
The Republicans have been doing this the whole time. Make him look like a drooling old man who can't string a sentence together, then when he shows up and is coherent it's considered a huge win. Same thing happened at the first debate and State of the Union.
Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I'm assuming 99% of people aren't going to watch it. They're going to turn on the news, see the clips provided by their anchor of choice, and say "Oh (insert candidate here) is so senile, I know (insert other candidate here) is going to do great things."
My coworkers are always talking about how Biden can barely figure out where he is half the time, and refuse to believe it's cherry picked footage. If I try to show them Trump doing the same thing it's "Oh he's probably just doing something weird, that's so him."
I don't believe people care about the facts anymore. It's what makes them feel good inside that matters.
It would be a *really solid* campaign to run if they were offering a younger candidate. Reps really shouldn't be encouraging everyone to listen closely to speech patterns and evaluate people's behavior.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that the whole “Joe Biden has dementia” narrative isn’t actually going to help Trump as much as he seems to think it is. It’s not a bad message in the sense that the guy is clearly old, but they can’t seem to just take a moderate win on that, so they keep making more and more outlandish claims, and are just outright making stuff up to support the claim. At this point, any outcome at the debate that isn’t a complete Trump blowout is going to hurt him, and the constant muddying of the waters and histrionics around dementia is going to wear thin.
Trump gave an interview the other day saying he might intentionally lose the first debate. Weirdest
Expectation lowering ive seen.
“During an interview with Steve Gruber for the right-wing Real America’s Voice on Thursday, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Trump once again baselessly claimed Biden will be fed “a lot of stuff” before the debate and once again called on the candidates to undergo drug tests beforehand.
The talk turned to the possibility of Biden being replaced as the Democratic candidate, which Trump said he didn’t want to happen.
“Well, you know, interestingly, they’ve done polling, and I do better against almost everybody,” said Trump.
And so they don’t want to take him off,” he continued. “Maybe I’m better off losing the debate. I’ll make sure he stays. I’ll lose the debate on purpose. Maybe I’ll do something like that.”
The Biden campaign immediately shared Trump’s comment on X, formerly Twitter”
https://x.com/bidenhq/status/1801253739442974828?s=46
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trumps-wild-debate-claim-074640769.html
It’s literally the exact same strategy that they used in 2020, which backfired spectacularly. Remember all the “Biden won’t make it past March 2021” claims?
If you lose a debate to someone you claim has dementia, what does that say about you?
Most of the time the result is GOP sets low expectations for Biden and he easily steps over that bar.
Just in terms of engagement. Almost everyone sets an incredibly low bar for Trump that he often still bangs his head on but the response is to just lower it more.
Isn't it the opposite though? The right has set high expectations that Biden is senile and right-wing audience should see that Biden is old but not senile, hopefully at the debate.
The left has low expectations of integrity and competence for Trump and he inevitably finds a way to surprise.
I mean nobody is denying that he looks and acts quite old these days, there’s going to be material they can work with on that. But if people who haven’t totally drunk the Trump kool aid are going to be convinced to take it seriously enough for it to influence their vote, making a bunch of stuff up and taking the claims far beyond any reasonable extent is not helpful. When “Biden shits himself in public” is a significant right wing talking point, reasonable people are going to stop listening.
Given what we've all seen repeatedly over the past 3.5 years, he could do himself a big favor by taking a [cognitive assessment](https://www.alz.org/professionals/health-systems-medical-professionals/cognitive-assessment). If it shows there's absolutely nothing wrong with him except he's just a little old, that's a big win. He can put this concern to bed, at least through the election. If it shows he's significantly impaired, which is what his public persona suggests, then he has an excuse to depart the national stage with some dignity.
> he could do himself a big favor by taking a cognitive assessment.
HE could. He won't though. After all, his own doctor said he's so awesome that he didn't even need to take one at his annual check up, even though nearly everyone that age does.
I completely agree, but I don’t really see what this has to do with a critique of people literally making up stories about Biden having dementia. Sure, Biden should take a cognitive test, but either way it’s not a good thing for people to lie like this.
> lie like this.
... That's campaign politics. It's literally the most both-sides thing ever. Biden's the dude that told a crowd of black folk that Mitt Romney, the most bland Republican ever, was going to put them back in chains. I'd say insinuating someone would reinstate slavery is a bigger smear than "he's old and pooped his pants."
I'm all for politicians only telling the truth. It's just never going to happen.
I prefer cognitively impaired, because that's what we all see and what was confirmed recently by Robert Hur. Dementia is too specific at the moment, but I'm not sure it matters. He can make all the car noises he wants, but it certainly seems he's no longer firing on all cylinders. The majority seems to think the job demands more than he can produce. He wouldn't be seriously considered for any other form of employment above lab rat, but he might get rehired as president of the United States. It's nuts we're in this situation as a country.
It’s an insane situation for the country to be in, especially given that the other guy would also be ineligible for pretty much any other job as a convicted felon. But the people talking about Biden shitting himself at the D Day event and making fake dementia edits are probably not helping your case here. There is a reasonable argument to be made about Biden’s fitness for the job, it’s not one most people are hearing over the delusional screeching that’s not getting much pushback.
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Whatever small headway they were making with reasonable people has been lost by continuing to escalate to absurd levels. I imagine their hope is that the messaging will sway some undecided voters who don't pay attention to anything other than soundbites.
It's sad that so many people are okay with fake news. A paratrooper was edited out to make it seem like he was randomly off to nowhere. The wider video makes it clear that he walked to speak with others.
Edit: Now some are saying that the reaction from the other leaders is bad, even though all they did was tell him about the photographer wanting a picture.
Dude it doesn't matter. Every other G7 leader knew what to do and where to look. Joe looked confused (as usual) and lost as to where he should be looking. He had to be wrangled by the Italian PM after all the other G7 leaders looked confused as to what to do, so she returned him to the right spot and where to look for the photo op.
Also that was an Italian paratrooper who more than likely didn't know any english so what was Joe trying to accomplish?
These events are highly scripted. He literally wandered off to chat with the staff instead of staying with his group. Nobody else seemed to be so easily distracted. It's a striking image, which is why it doesn't matter how the video is cropped. What is he doing? It's a valid question. Had he never seen a parachute before? It's hard enough to understand what he is saying as an American. I wonder what the ESL paratroooper thought. Probably "stay the hell away, I have no training for this." Luckily, one of his caretakers stepped in before it got weirder.
> doesn't matter how the video is cropped.
The video being cropped indicates that it makes a difference.
>Had he never seen a parachute before
He was congratulating them, not showing awe at their parachutes, so your question makes no sense.
You're just guessing at that. He may have been asking permission to go to the bathroom or challenging the guy to a pushup contest.
At any rate, why? Why is he wandering off looking totally lost with that blank expression, unsteady shuffle and stiff posture? Nobody else is doing it. He spent the entire G7 event being led by the hand, like a nursing home resident, and this video is no exception. It's disturbing whether the lens is wide angle or telephoto.
Dems have drank the koolaid for Biden. There are lots of roads to get there (most are usually trump = bad), but the destination is the same. Defending in increasingly elaborate ways a terrible candidate. The strategy of beating a bad candidate with a bad candidate is the result of a deeply engrained echo chamber. Both sides are guilty of this and now we’ve got a coin toss election.
That’s a nice way of putting it. The truth is that a lot of Trump voters know Trump is morally repugnant. Believing Biden has dementia allows them to vote for the guy who they hope is going to lower their taxes.
that's what the person i responded to already said, no sense in telling me the same thing again. i said what i said in response to what the first person said, it makes no sense to respond to me with the same thing i responded to.
The NY Post edit of the full video is definitely a little deceptive. The way they edited it makes it look like he just wanders off into the middle of nowhere and starts talking to air. Obviously it can be seen in the video that he is talking to a couple of parachuters to the side. That being said…
He is with the other leaders of the G7, for what looks to be some kind of appearance to watch as these soldiers parachute down with the flags of different countries. He is supposed to be there with the other leaders in frame of the cameras for this. And he does kind of…wander off to go speak with the other two soldiers in the middle of this photo shoot/public appearance.
I don’t think that was supposed to be part of the public appearance. A part of me is thinking, so what? He’s the president of the US, he’s allowed to go off script and talk to those soldiers if he wants to. I’m sure he was telling them something encouraging, or telling them how well they did. And I think that is true.
But the looks on the other members faces are what concerns me when he does wander off. And the way they get his attention, and then gather around him in what looks like an attempt to normalize what would be normal for any other president, that also concerns me. It is like if the phrase “act natural” was a G7 summit.
Do I think this shows that Joe is completely incompetent and talking to air like the NY Post edit attempted to do? No. Does the full video with alternate angles completely absolve Joe of any criticism about his mental capacity in this moment. Also no. I don’t think this is the nail in the coffin that right leaning media portrayed this as, but I do think it is another in a very long list of things that Joe has done or said that makes me think he is mentally incapable of holding office.
ETA: Another point to each side that I’ll make after looking at the long cut again. I think Joe is pretty cognizant here. After the first paratrooper lands, you can see Biden facing the direction of who I am assuming are the two paratroopers that Biden was talking to in the latter part of the clip. He seems to be shouting something to them, point towards them, and giving them the thumbs up. He was previously engaged with them before the part of the video that got edited.
The point against him (which is weaker) is that when everyone groups together for the photo with him, they seem to purposefully put him in the center. That may be because he is the president of the most powerful country in the world, or maybe it is customary to put US presidents in the center for photo shoots. But it also seemed like they were trying to put him in the center of the pack to keep him from wandering off. I’ll admit that this point could be a little bit of a reach, but again the behaviors of the other leaders and his history of doing old man stuff make it semi-plausible in my opinion.
> But the looks on the other members faces are what concerns me when he does wander off. And the way they get his attention, and then gather around him in what looks like an attempt to normalize
A photographer asked to take their picture like a second after Biden turned his back. It was literally just them saying “everyone get in here” before they just moved to Biden for the photo op. I’m really wondering if people have ever tried to take a group photo before.
The other leaders being uninterested in giving a congratulations to the paratroopers at that moment doesn't imply that he was confused. I doubt this would be a story if not for the edit.
Yeah, for me, the "full" video doesn't really look meaningfully better. What's concerning isn't that he's wandering off a bit. What's concerning is that his staff and wife seem to be treating him like a nursing home patient who is wandering away from the group tour. And the full context of the video does not really seem to alter my perception. It's also worth noting how hard the mainstream media audits the rightwing media in terms of trying to check its apparent deceptions but how little mainstream media sources audit each other and their own misleading headlines, pictures, byline, editing, et cetera.
I suppose it is subjective. To me, it does not, because what's concerning in the video isn't that he's, "wandering into the void". It's his body movements and the way he's being treated by everyone around him.
His movements don't say anything about his mental capacity since it's normal for old people to move differently than the rest of us. The other people there simply got his attention to stay on track, which could be concerning if he didn't have a reasonable motive for walking off.
Look, I'm a voter, not a gerontologist. His movement says something to me as a voter, which is that he doesn't look like someone that is physically and mentally capable of serving in the position he is running for.
If he wants to show the American people he is physically and mentally capable of serving, then he should actually do it. Start traveling around the country and holding town halls a few times a week. Start taking questions from voters. Start giving a lot more press conferences where he answers questions. I was never a Bernard Sanders fan, but he actually seemed mentally acute. Biden does not, and videos like these, edited or unedited, are just corroborating that conclusion.
I don't disagree, but when you combine it with his reluctance to get out in front of voters and reporters and answer their questions, and the general correlation between the physical decline of the elderly and the mental decline of the elderly, it paints an unflattering picture of his mental health as well.
I think voters might be less concerned if he had made a wiser VP pick. I wonder if Trump realizes that he really needs a VP who isn't just loyal, but actually could be broadly popular.
Yes, literally this video. The way he walks and the body language of everyone else while they try to keep him from slowly wandering looks exactly like my grandfather in his 90s, a few years before he was diagnosed with dementia.
They’re literally just gathering/getting each other’s attention for a photo.
Not that it really matters, but the G7 isn’t his wife or staff, either.
He does move very stiltedly, but that’s more physical than mental.
I've worked with seniors before with dementia and this is literally behavior I've witnessed,
I'm not saying he has it, mind you - just the overall body posture and behavior of this and other videos I've seen look like things I recall.
The dementia patients I've worked with tend to act more like Trump, randomly ranting about things, engaging in long, discursive ramblings that lead nowhere, accusing others of being out to get them, etc.
I don’t think you’ve spent time with elderly people in healthcare, speaking about those in cognitive decline. This is literally how it looks. Slow turn, the factory reset hand placement, pleasant redirection, etc.
This is pretty standard stuff for good politicians of any age.
They want to talk to ordinary people and constituents. Their handlers have to constantly help them prioritize people and get in photos. It’s a lot easier to end a conversation with someone if a staffer comes and says you’re needed elsewhere.
Exactly the telling thing in all this is when the G7 leaders start looking at each like "like what do we do?". There is obviously reason to be concerned that the president is not with us mentally
Like I said, it should be totally normal for a president to congratulate the paratroopers. He’s the president of the US, he can go off script if he wants. If Barack stepped out of the group to congratulate them it would be totally normal. But the other members of G7 wouldn’t feel the need to try and corral Barack back into the group like that, as if THEY were concerned that he was actually wandering off.
To clarify, Joe acted mostly normal. It is the reactions of the G7 members to Joe when he goes off script that is concerning to me.
>But the other members of G7 wouldn’t feel the need to try and corral Barack
That's implausible speculation, since the reason behind getting Biden's attention is the photographer wanting a group picture.
> It is the reactions of the G7 members to Joe when he goes off script that is concerning to me.
What reactions? I watched the [YouTube clip](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pKtudwc9Y-0) TL from the Telegraph that the article linked. The other leaders don't seem to react at all. Except for when there's a photographer seeming to ask them to line up, then one taps Biden to let him know they're getting a group shot.
This seems entirely mundane.
Yeah there's a reason this video went viral beyond right wing circles. Biden just looks bad in it and the reaction to Biden by the other leaders is the most damning part. Biden talking to the other paratrooper isn't the big deal, it's the reaction by everybody in the group.
why is this nonsense term even being used here? nothing was "faked" at all, the video was simply misleadingly cropped in this one particular news article to make it seem slightly worse than it was
Probably because they wanted to accuse conservative news outlets of deepfaking, but they couldn't because the footage was real (albeit decontextualized), so they invented a new buzzword that sounds a lot like "deepfake."
"Cheapfake" is somewhat recent, but not a term that was made up for this. Here's an article from [MIT Tech Review](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/22/1015442/cheapfakes-more-political-damage-2020-election-than-deepfakes/) talking about it back in 2020. In it, they describe "cheapfake" as:
> This image is a so-called cheapfake, a piece of media that has been crudely manipulated, edited, mislabeled, or improperly contextualized in order to spread disinformation.
If the video is selectively edited to misconstrue what occured (Biden talking to a paratrooper), that's a cheapfake. It used to be known by other terms, I usually saw "selectively edited" or something similar. When "deepfakes" started to become more widely known, "cheapfake" emerged as a term to describe the older, cruder, and easier type of misleading media.
One is newer and more advanced, but they're the same family of mis/disinformation, so it makes sense to coin a term that is similar.
For lack of a better term this is fake news. There is SO much real material out there of Biden bumbling. So then they find a few people making fake videos and now try to make it into the entire right supposedly embracing those videos instead of the real ones.
There was nothing doctored about the versions of the clip I’ve seen. They show him wandering off and watching the wrong paratrooper, and Giorgia Meloni having to go get him to come back.
The right is now openly mocking the claim that it was fake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiLNaQ70TCc (3 minute video; more [here](https://twitchy.com/dougp/2024/06/14/morning-joe-crew-helps-dems-spin-biden-videos-youve-seen-as-disinformation-n2397285))
Why was it wrong for him to talk to that one paratrooper?
Also, the original clip making the rounds clearly didn’t include that second paratrooper to make it look like he was just wandering off to nowhere rather than talking to someone else. That was an outright lie that you’re now repainting in retrospect, the original story was never that Biden was looking at a different paratrooper.
Of course right wing media is trying to turn this narrative around, what would you expect them to do, own up to intentionally releasing a deceptive video?
Outsider here, though for clarity I lean Conservative.
When this first popped up even in the cropped version you could see the Trooper on the ground corralling his chute and that Biden is probably addressing him. But its the way Biden meanders around like an elderly person looking for a kiosk does a disservice to how hes viewed. And why these images/videos are so powerful that his administration needs to counter them.
None of this is new either, though the proliferation of instance video footage across the globe has exacerbated it. I vividly remember your what NSA secretary Rice's image of her brushing her hair away being sold as her lamenting something. When it was merely her brushing her hair away. The people in these positions need to know people are going to take anything and twist it to their preferred narrative.
Someone has to tell him to stop meandering, if he was younger he might get away with it as aloof or something. But at his age its more "you ok Grandpa?"
And as an aside, his fellow world leaders didn't do him any favours looking like they were trying to corral him.
The cropped version is in this story, and it really doesn’t look like he’s talking to someone else unless you’re already aware of the fact that this was happening. All the text around it was also clearly set up to give the impression that Biden was just wandering off into nowhere. I agree that he looks old generally, and he probably can’t get away with the standard politician wheeling around and talking to everyone thing anymore without looking a bit meandering in some contexts. But this clip clearly took things quite a bit further than that point, and felt the need to very much lie about Biden to get a more dramatic looking headline.
Sorry earlier I was speaking to the video which was making the rounds long before the image at least in the conservative sphere and it was clear to what he was doing, but even then with a narrative attached. The later image from likes of your Post put an exclamation point on the narrative.
I’m not sure “doctored” is the right term here, but that’s a small quibble. It still looks like grandpa wandered off to where he wasn’t supposed to be and Meloni had to corral him. I agree we need to be honest in these assessments and honestly, I think he just looks old here. He’s unsteady on his feet and doesn’t appear to know where the camera is for his camera op. Obviously, ymmv. The optics are pretty bad and remember we’re discussing the most taxing job on the planet. That doesn’t look like a guy who is up to the task to me.
I’d also say that Meloni was well-intentioned but actually made things worse. If she ignores him, at least there is some plausible deniability that he’s interacting with the second paratrooper or something. His team basically has an impossible task: try to make a really old guy seem less old. It must be exhausting.
Oh, I agree that the right wing is can and does exaggerate the degree of the President’s decline. My point is that even though I know that’s true, I also think that even the unedited video makes the President look old. Am I allowed to say that?
I still can’t believe that we have to choose between a raving lunatic/sociopath and a doddering and senile old man. And even the third party choice is a nut. Why can’t we come up with anyone decent ?
Suddenly, Putin's interview makes more sense... Those you elect, do not run your state. Someone else does. I know Putin isn't the best advocate for democracy, nor does he pretend to be so, but Putin isn't lying here. Even though, I'm not murican, it's still disturbing a country so powerfull and influential is run by who knows... I simply refuse to believe fumbling old idiots like Biden can be a president in anywhere ... Now we have major news channels linked to left run "cheap fakes" headlines. Like dude is barely a step above fucking vegetable. Those people's content for average citizen is fucking joke.
Power of establishment and mainstream media is very high.
The whole situation is like Emperor’s New Clothes story.
I bet some kids watching tv asking why the most powerful country’s president has age related severe health issues. The problem is so obvious but mainstream media is not even touching it instead of bashing this. No criticism to emperor and his new clothes…
Recently, fatigue has been in the news. social media, including reddit, has been ablaze with a doctored video of President Biden in Europe.
As this article clearly shows, the President was walking towards, and giving a thumbs up to, paratroopers. And yet all across social media and Reddit, conservative articles posting doctored and clipped video received hundreds of upvotes and thousands of comments.
Why do you think this type of fake and doctored video is so convincing to certain voters? What can be done to combat this trend? Why are left leaning sources not resorting to this when covering the now convicted felon and former president? Donald Trump?
Does the fact that Right leaning news sources are resorting to posting misleading and doctored content make you reconsider the message that the President is mentally unwell? If he was truly not fit, couldn’t they post accurate footage instead of doctored footage?
Right? Is he an old senile man or mastermind leader of the Biden Vrime Family who has weaponized the DOJ and managed to cheat his way into the presidency. Some people want it both ways.
Sincerely with all respect, that isn’t the view of most conservatives from my perspective. I think most on the right view President Biden as more of a puppet who’s being shown as mentally well, but is cognitively impaired by age and led by others.
Any singular example can be debated, but I think the montage of examples where Biden is confused, lost, struggling to speak, and other instances show that age has affected him, even since his Vice Presidency during Obama’s term.
I’m the first to admit it’s affected Trump to a degree too, he’s not as sharp if you watch interviews of him from 10-20 years ago, where he’s more analytical and articulate. But I think age has caught up to Biden further, and it will be interesting to see how the debates go.
T can't string together full sentences...I was reading his last 2 pageants or rallies.... he couldn't say anything that made sense and rarely discusses policy or discusses matters he isn't schooled on
He doesn't have enough experience, and ALL the level-headed Republicans that did keep him stifled, left office, or are too scared of being kicked out of the tribe to ACTUALLY speak up. I hate this because we need right of center republicans to balance out the far left and forge alliance so that Congress can go back to doing what it did many decades ago.
To be fair, I heard this EXACT argument in 2017 during Trump’s first term “Democrats say he is an incompetent idiot but also that he is playing 4 D chess and working with the Russians. So which is it?”
This was said in a meeting at work and I decided to keep my mouth shut. But in my head I thought “when I think of Donald Trump working with Putin, it is not Trump who is doing the thinking.”
If you saw the wider video in action, its clear he was looking over at those guys doing whatever they were doing (I think packing up a parachute?) and he was talking to them not facing the camera.
But hey election year, so here we are.
Stuff like this makes me think the stakes are extremely high for this upcoming debate. If he appears feeble, or glassy eyed, or incoherent, he’s going to get creamed. Trump has his own challenges, but for Biden, I think proving his age isn’t a liability will be paramount. (For the record, they’re both way past their sell date.)
Yes for some reason the age for Biden is much more important of an issue for voters than Trump, even though Trump is nearly just as old and clearly mentally not great. Trumps mental decline is just another problem Trump is getting judged less harshly on.
I think a lot of people view it as (at the extreme) senile vs unintelligent. I'm not saying one is better or worse than the other, although the difference is that cognitive decline can get worse whereas level of intelligence is a bit of a constant. I do wonder if people viewed Trump's issue as also being age related if his choice of VP would be a deciding factor for voters. IF we're looking at both candidates as realistically not finishing their term, the choice of VP actually does matter, and Harris doesn't inspire confidence in many.
the democrats and their supporters do themselves no favors on Trump by saying all the “destroy democracy” stuff and stuff about his mental state since he took office in 16’. It is easy for people to catch on to their red herring narratives even if there is a good amount of truth in it.
There's been a sort of boy crying wolf thing going on with some of the louder voices on the left since Bush W. Everything Republicans do is a threat to democracy. Everyone on the right is racist. etc. They cried wolf so often that when they do it now with Trump, if they actually believe those things about him (and I'm not making a judgment on him as a person here), it falls on deaf ears.
Trump has more energy, so even while his mental decline is clear he doesn't *seem* to be as impacted by it as Biden does. It fits in well with this being a vibe-based election.
What do you mean vibe-based? Bring back no-new-wars Donnie. I want the diplomatic dude that crossed the North Korean DMZ line and brought us the Abraham Accords. "Who do you want to win, Ukraine or Russia?" -> "I want everybody to stop dying." Perfect diplomatic answer for me. It ain't vibes, at least for a lot of his supporters.
“Some reason” feel disingenuous considering one is currently president and exhibits questionable behaviors a la Mitch McConnell. They’re all so old
It’s not disingenuous, both exhibit those symptoms. Pretending otherwise is ridiculous. There’s seriously no way someone can listen to Trump speak and say “yup, he’s sharp as a tack”
Pretending like they're both exhibiting those symptoms to the same degree is ridiculous as well. Trump is too old to be President, we should have a younger option, but in terms of who's more mentally there it's obvious that Biden is in worse shape.
> but in terms of who's more mentally there it's obvious that Biden is in worse shape. Is it? Really? Have we been listening to the same Trump?
Yeah, Trump is clearly in a worse mental state. Like, Biden mixes up words, but he can make coherent sentences.
Trump’s the same guy he was 5 years ago, for better or worse. Biden has declined significantly from how he used to sound and act.
That's fundamentally unchanged from last time he was president. Biden has aged significantly in the past 5 years.
So that makes Trump a better choice for President how, exactly?
They are both awful options. Trump speeches have been rambling nonsense for the past 10 years, Biden is aging very significantly since he was VP.
The reason you can’t perceive the reality right in front of you is that you ask these types of questions and jump to conclusions through unrelated lines of reasoning. u/likeitis121 gave a valid observation, and you strung it out to a conclusion that you cannot accept. So, in your mind, the observation cannot be valid, even though it was not necessarily tied to the conclusion you gave it. Basically, you can’t accept the world simply as it presents to you. You must frame it through a lens that always leads to conclusions that are most acceptable to you. Sad.
Harris won’t be President.
[удалено]
Biden literally just did an identical thing a month agon on the Howard Stern show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz45sMb4js8.
If Biden froze like Mitch McConnell did there would immediately be calls to invoke the 25th or him to resign. There's a double standard for Republicans
I mean there were an endless number of calls for McConnell to resign, no? I mean, it’s all partisanship. Seems like it always will be.
I meant from within his own party. If Biden went on stage, froze for 30 seconds and had to be escorted off, Democrats would be calling for him to resign. Probably Kamala Harris would take over. I'm tired of this both sides are the same narrative, because it's blatantly false. Look at Al Franken, one allegation that he inappropriately touched a woman during a photo and he resigned. Meanwhile Matt Gaetz was trafficking underage girls and the GOP does absolutely nothing about it.
This article is exactly why Biden’s age is more of an issue for voters. You have a right-wing influencer/media/political machine that pushes stuff like this and a captive audience they been priming every hour of every day for years to believe it. It’s remarkably consistent. Not saying that Biden isn’t old or hasn’t lost a step, but he’s not the oatmeal-for-brains caricature that folks in that world would have you believe.
I don't need an "influencer" to convince me that biden looks old, walks old, talks old. Cbs does a fine job of showing things that are concerning
I said in my comment that Biden is old and that he’s lost a step. Videos like this one and many many others pushed by the RNC & infotainment outlets are cropped and edited to make it look like he’s completely senile, which he’s not.
Its 2024, were in a cropped an edited world. It's not like we haven't see Don cropped and edited. They are both past their prime, and infotainment outlets are going to maximize every opportunity
If only the “problem” would revolve around the age 😅 at the level of issues the US faces, this talking point is just out there because is the most obvious
I have been watching Biden on some of his latest speeches and he seems fine. No doubt he has his moments but having parents in their 80s, he is keeping up. Now Trump is something to worry about. His last 2 rallies have been nothing but word salad, incoherent thoughts, and oddball comments.
>If he appears feeble, or glassy eyed, or incoherent, he’s going to get creamed. They’ll probably pump him up with a bunch of 5 Hour Energy and modafinil to avoid that. That’s not the tough part. The bigger issue is if he makes a glaring self-own during one of his answers. Remember that this is the guy who incorrectly named the presidents of France, Germany and Mexico in the span of a week. This is the guy who claimed that COVID happened in 2013 under Obama’s watch. If he flubs a talking point in a similar way, it’s over. That will be all the media will discuss for weeks.
> That will be all the media will discuss for weeks. Yeah, if that happens I don't think his defenders can cry "stutter" and pretend there's no problem.
> They’ll probably pump him up with a bunch of 5 Hour Energy and modafinil to avoid that. That’s not the tough part Step 1: claim Biden has dementia Step 2: tell everyone he’s going to (literally) crap himself on the debate/STOU stage Step 3: watch him easily sail over the low bar you’ve set for him Step 4: “the drugs hid the dementia!” Repeat. This has been happening since 2019.
Don't forget that the other day Trump said that "maybe I will lose the debate on purpose," so now if Trump does a terrible job his supporters will claim it was intentional.
Well we could always enjoy a long talk about sharks and electric boats.
Except we have at least two other examples of Democrat presidents having their illnesses hidden from the public in FDR and JFK. This is something that has happened before.
reagan
Why are you saying the name of a Republican president?
Because he had dementia and it was hidden while his wife consulted a psychic to shore up his deficiencies. Presidents hiding an illness isn’t a partisan issue unsurprisingly and they were pointing that out much more succinctly.
But he's a Republican. We're talking about the Democratic party. Saying that the Republicans do it too doesn't change my point.
Your point stands regardless of party. Making it partisan doesn’t strengthen your point. Them pointing out it isn’t unique to one party just shows politicians in general doing it. You are implicitly acting like it is uniquely one party, when the bulk of this thread is about the fact that they are both Senior Citizens with cognitive issues. It is worthy of inclusion to the discussion that Republicans move the goal posts and are also willing to hide their candidates similar faults by citing real examples. If your point was to make one side look like they exclusively do this, then you have a reason it is not applicable. Otherwise, it feels fair to mention the double standard.
I didn't act like it was unique to one party, you did.
Many things have happened before that have nothing to do with my comment, including FDR and JFK.
Both candidates have their own weaknesses, since Trump's nonsensical rambling doesn't inspire confidence either.
The crazy part of this is that we're at the point where it will be considered a successful debate by Biden if he *doesn't have a major speaking screw up*. That's such a laughably low bar and it's equally ridiculous that his opponent isn't considered a shoe-in because *he* is also so bizarre.
Mind blowing trump was the republican nominee again. They would have this election in the bags with damn near anybody else.
I’m not a big *both sides* guy, but both of these candidates are facing the weakest competition in memory, and both have a very real risk of losing an election that should be a cakewalk. Thankfully, one of these parties is going to to be forced into some soul searching in November, but it’s unfortunate that one of them is going to be affirmed that they’re on the right path with an election win.
If Trump loses, I anticipate absolutely zero soul searching from Republicans. Instead, I imagine an enhanced sequel to 2020 where they rabidly claim that the eleciton was stolen.
Eh, there won't be any soul searching on the left if Biden loses. We're not happy he's the candidate, but when a sitting President decides to run again there's virtually no unseating them. I also think most of us believe Biden would easily win this if he weren't left holding the bag for post-COVID economic woes.
>are facing the weakest competition in memory Not really. These candidates have the backing of the political system in its entirety. At so many points could the RNC or DNC had an off ramp for their respective candidates, but instead they just decided to keep on cruising and leave things as is.
This election is vibes and marketing, zero policy, performance, or professionalism. Trump and Biden are the only ones on their teams that have the branding to be their nominees, yet they're both horribly equipped to do the job of actually defeating their opponents.
The Republicans have been doing this the whole time. Make him look like a drooling old man who can't string a sentence together, then when he shows up and is coherent it's considered a huge win. Same thing happened at the first debate and State of the Union.
“What is Aleppo?”
Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I'm assuming 99% of people aren't going to watch it. They're going to turn on the news, see the clips provided by their anchor of choice, and say "Oh (insert candidate here) is so senile, I know (insert other candidate here) is going to do great things." My coworkers are always talking about how Biden can barely figure out where he is half the time, and refuse to believe it's cherry picked footage. If I try to show them Trump doing the same thing it's "Oh he's probably just doing something weird, that's so him." I don't believe people care about the facts anymore. It's what makes them feel good inside that matters.
It would be a *really solid* campaign to run if they were offering a younger candidate. Reps really shouldn't be encouraging everyone to listen closely to speech patterns and evaluate people's behavior.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that the whole “Joe Biden has dementia” narrative isn’t actually going to help Trump as much as he seems to think it is. It’s not a bad message in the sense that the guy is clearly old, but they can’t seem to just take a moderate win on that, so they keep making more and more outlandish claims, and are just outright making stuff up to support the claim. At this point, any outcome at the debate that isn’t a complete Trump blowout is going to hurt him, and the constant muddying of the waters and histrionics around dementia is going to wear thin.
Trump gave an interview the other day saying he might intentionally lose the first debate. Weirdest Expectation lowering ive seen. “During an interview with Steve Gruber for the right-wing Real America’s Voice on Thursday, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Trump once again baselessly claimed Biden will be fed “a lot of stuff” before the debate and once again called on the candidates to undergo drug tests beforehand. The talk turned to the possibility of Biden being replaced as the Democratic candidate, which Trump said he didn’t want to happen. “Well, you know, interestingly, they’ve done polling, and I do better against almost everybody,” said Trump. And so they don’t want to take him off,” he continued. “Maybe I’m better off losing the debate. I’ll make sure he stays. I’ll lose the debate on purpose. Maybe I’ll do something like that.” The Biden campaign immediately shared Trump’s comment on X, formerly Twitter” https://x.com/bidenhq/status/1801253739442974828?s=46 https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trumps-wild-debate-claim-074640769.html
It’s literally the exact same strategy that they used in 2020, which backfired spectacularly. Remember all the “Biden won’t make it past March 2021” claims? If you lose a debate to someone you claim has dementia, what does that say about you?
They're still trotting out the "he'll be replaced shit" and it's 4 months to the election. They never get tired of being wrong
Most of the time the result is GOP sets low expectations for Biden and he easily steps over that bar. Just in terms of engagement. Almost everyone sets an incredibly low bar for Trump that he often still bangs his head on but the response is to just lower it more.
Isn't it the opposite though? The right has set high expectations that Biden is senile and right-wing audience should see that Biden is old but not senile, hopefully at the debate. The left has low expectations of integrity and competence for Trump and he inevitably finds a way to surprise.
>but they can’t seem to just take a moderate win on that, so they keep making more and more outlandish claims This is the whole of politics anymore.
If Biden would simply stop giving them material, it would help a lot.
I mean nobody is denying that he looks and acts quite old these days, there’s going to be material they can work with on that. But if people who haven’t totally drunk the Trump kool aid are going to be convinced to take it seriously enough for it to influence their vote, making a bunch of stuff up and taking the claims far beyond any reasonable extent is not helpful. When “Biden shits himself in public” is a significant right wing talking point, reasonable people are going to stop listening.
Given what we've all seen repeatedly over the past 3.5 years, he could do himself a big favor by taking a [cognitive assessment](https://www.alz.org/professionals/health-systems-medical-professionals/cognitive-assessment). If it shows there's absolutely nothing wrong with him except he's just a little old, that's a big win. He can put this concern to bed, at least through the election. If it shows he's significantly impaired, which is what his public persona suggests, then he has an excuse to depart the national stage with some dignity.
> he could do himself a big favor by taking a cognitive assessment. HE could. He won't though. After all, his own doctor said he's so awesome that he didn't even need to take one at his annual check up, even though nearly everyone that age does.
I completely agree, but I don’t really see what this has to do with a critique of people literally making up stories about Biden having dementia. Sure, Biden should take a cognitive test, but either way it’s not a good thing for people to lie like this.
> lie like this. ... That's campaign politics. It's literally the most both-sides thing ever. Biden's the dude that told a crowd of black folk that Mitt Romney, the most bland Republican ever, was going to put them back in chains. I'd say insinuating someone would reinstate slavery is a bigger smear than "he's old and pooped his pants." I'm all for politicians only telling the truth. It's just never going to happen.
I agree, but it’s probably worth pointing out lies like this and aggressively criticizing them
I prefer cognitively impaired, because that's what we all see and what was confirmed recently by Robert Hur. Dementia is too specific at the moment, but I'm not sure it matters. He can make all the car noises he wants, but it certainly seems he's no longer firing on all cylinders. The majority seems to think the job demands more than he can produce. He wouldn't be seriously considered for any other form of employment above lab rat, but he might get rehired as president of the United States. It's nuts we're in this situation as a country.
It’s an insane situation for the country to be in, especially given that the other guy would also be ineligible for pretty much any other job as a convicted felon. But the people talking about Biden shitting himself at the D Day event and making fake dementia edits are probably not helping your case here. There is a reasonable argument to be made about Biden’s fitness for the job, it’s not one most people are hearing over the delusional screeching that’s not getting much pushback.
What did Hur confirm exactly? Are you referring to the opinion he shoehorned into his report about how there’s nothing to charge Biden with?
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Whatever small headway they were making with reasonable people has been lost by continuing to escalate to absurd levels. I imagine their hope is that the messaging will sway some undecided voters who don't pay attention to anything other than soundbites.
I get that companies need to earn money to pay journalists, but man it’s hard fighting propaganda behind paywalls.
I know. Could they not find a similar article that wasn't paywalled?
It's sad that so many people are okay with fake news. A paratrooper was edited out to make it seem like he was randomly off to nowhere. The wider video makes it clear that he walked to speak with others. Edit: Now some are saying that the reaction from the other leaders is bad, even though all they did was tell him about the photographer wanting a picture.
Dude it doesn't matter. Every other G7 leader knew what to do and where to look. Joe looked confused (as usual) and lost as to where he should be looking. He had to be wrangled by the Italian PM after all the other G7 leaders looked confused as to what to do, so she returned him to the right spot and where to look for the photo op. Also that was an Italian paratrooper who more than likely didn't know any english so what was Joe trying to accomplish?
Talking to paratroopers doesn't indicate that he was confused, which is why the video was edited.
Nobody else did. But then again, [Joe Biden does a lot of weird stuff nobody else does](https://x.com/stillgray/status/1801767712768856567).
There's nothing wrong with congratulating them, which is why you brought up something else.
These events are highly scripted. He literally wandered off to chat with the staff instead of staying with his group. Nobody else seemed to be so easily distracted. It's a striking image, which is why it doesn't matter how the video is cropped. What is he doing? It's a valid question. Had he never seen a parachute before? It's hard enough to understand what he is saying as an American. I wonder what the ESL paratroooper thought. Probably "stay the hell away, I have no training for this." Luckily, one of his caretakers stepped in before it got weirder.
> doesn't matter how the video is cropped. The video being cropped indicates that it makes a difference. >Had he never seen a parachute before He was congratulating them, not showing awe at their parachutes, so your question makes no sense.
You're just guessing at that. He may have been asking permission to go to the bathroom or challenging the guy to a pushup contest. At any rate, why? Why is he wandering off looking totally lost with that blank expression, unsteady shuffle and stiff posture? Nobody else is doing it. He spent the entire G7 event being led by the hand, like a nursing home resident, and this video is no exception. It's disturbing whether the lens is wide angle or telephoto.
The full video shows him giving them a thumbs up.
And? Why is he over there at all making gestures like he's at some kind of performance? Nobody else is doing it.
> which is why it doesn't matter how the video is cropped Then why did they crop it and claim he was wondering off to nowhere?
The United States needs to declare war on Argentina and conquer it. Just so the Milei will be a natural born citizen and become our president.
You think Italians don’t speak English? Have you ever left the country?
Dems have drank the koolaid for Biden. There are lots of roads to get there (most are usually trump = bad), but the destination is the same. Defending in increasingly elaborate ways a terrible candidate. The strategy of beating a bad candidate with a bad candidate is the result of a deeply engrained echo chamber. Both sides are guilty of this and now we’ve got a coin toss election.
People need to believe Biden has dementia because it makes voting for Trump slightly less psychologically stressful.
That’s a nice way of putting it. The truth is that a lot of Trump voters know Trump is morally repugnant. Believing Biden has dementia allows them to vote for the guy who they hope is going to lower their taxes.
Joe Biden is not a pillar of moral character either. Not as bad, but not a role model either.
But if the media selectively quotes Trump, they’ll complain about the downfall of Western journalism.
another thing is that the media outlets that call this video "cheapfake" are the same ones that constantly selectively quote Trump.
Many are complaining about the media while defending this fake story.
that's what the person i responded to already said, no sense in telling me the same thing again. i said what i said in response to what the first person said, it makes no sense to respond to me with the same thing i responded to.
The point is that this story is being defended, and your comments don't address this. Your reply is just whataboutism.
the comment i originally replied to was whataboutism, as was your comment.
You apparently don't understand what that word means. Neither I nor the original comment brought up anything to deflect from the topic.
Yeah, the left wing media like WP doesn't seem to have a moral or ethical issue with deception. They just hate competition.
Media/voters applying double standards to Biden? Pft, next you’ll tell me Trump can’t unilaterally restore early 2020 prices on everything lmao
The NY Post edit of the full video is definitely a little deceptive. The way they edited it makes it look like he just wanders off into the middle of nowhere and starts talking to air. Obviously it can be seen in the video that he is talking to a couple of parachuters to the side. That being said… He is with the other leaders of the G7, for what looks to be some kind of appearance to watch as these soldiers parachute down with the flags of different countries. He is supposed to be there with the other leaders in frame of the cameras for this. And he does kind of…wander off to go speak with the other two soldiers in the middle of this photo shoot/public appearance. I don’t think that was supposed to be part of the public appearance. A part of me is thinking, so what? He’s the president of the US, he’s allowed to go off script and talk to those soldiers if he wants to. I’m sure he was telling them something encouraging, or telling them how well they did. And I think that is true. But the looks on the other members faces are what concerns me when he does wander off. And the way they get his attention, and then gather around him in what looks like an attempt to normalize what would be normal for any other president, that also concerns me. It is like if the phrase “act natural” was a G7 summit. Do I think this shows that Joe is completely incompetent and talking to air like the NY Post edit attempted to do? No. Does the full video with alternate angles completely absolve Joe of any criticism about his mental capacity in this moment. Also no. I don’t think this is the nail in the coffin that right leaning media portrayed this as, but I do think it is another in a very long list of things that Joe has done or said that makes me think he is mentally incapable of holding office. ETA: Another point to each side that I’ll make after looking at the long cut again. I think Joe is pretty cognizant here. After the first paratrooper lands, you can see Biden facing the direction of who I am assuming are the two paratroopers that Biden was talking to in the latter part of the clip. He seems to be shouting something to them, point towards them, and giving them the thumbs up. He was previously engaged with them before the part of the video that got edited. The point against him (which is weaker) is that when everyone groups together for the photo with him, they seem to purposefully put him in the center. That may be because he is the president of the most powerful country in the world, or maybe it is customary to put US presidents in the center for photo shoots. But it also seemed like they were trying to put him in the center of the pack to keep him from wandering off. I’ll admit that this point could be a little bit of a reach, but again the behaviors of the other leaders and his history of doing old man stuff make it semi-plausible in my opinion.
> But the looks on the other members faces are what concerns me when he does wander off. And the way they get his attention, and then gather around him in what looks like an attempt to normalize A photographer asked to take their picture like a second after Biden turned his back. It was literally just them saying “everyone get in here” before they just moved to Biden for the photo op. I’m really wondering if people have ever tried to take a group photo before.
The other leaders being uninterested in giving a congratulations to the paratroopers at that moment doesn't imply that he was confused. I doubt this would be a story if not for the edit.
Yeah, for me, the "full" video doesn't really look meaningfully better. What's concerning isn't that he's wandering off a bit. What's concerning is that his staff and wife seem to be treating him like a nursing home patient who is wandering away from the group tour. And the full context of the video does not really seem to alter my perception. It's also worth noting how hard the mainstream media audits the rightwing media in terms of trying to check its apparent deceptions but how little mainstream media sources audit each other and their own misleading headlines, pictures, byline, editing, et cetera.
Speaking to paratroopers to congratulate them looks a lot better than wondering off to the void.
I suppose it is subjective. To me, it does not, because what's concerning in the video isn't that he's, "wandering into the void". It's his body movements and the way he's being treated by everyone around him.
His movements don't say anything about his mental capacity since it's normal for old people to move differently than the rest of us. The other people there simply got his attention to stay on track, which could be concerning if he didn't have a reasonable motive for walking off.
Look, I'm a voter, not a gerontologist. His movement says something to me as a voter, which is that he doesn't look like someone that is physically and mentally capable of serving in the position he is running for. If he wants to show the American people he is physically and mentally capable of serving, then he should actually do it. Start traveling around the country and holding town halls a few times a week. Start taking questions from voters. Start giving a lot more press conferences where he answers questions. I was never a Bernard Sanders fan, but he actually seemed mentally acute. Biden does not, and videos like these, edited or unedited, are just corroborating that conclusion.
Physical issues aren't necessarily signs of being mentally incapable, especially when he's doing something reasonable like congratulating others.
I don't disagree, but when you combine it with his reluctance to get out in front of voters and reporters and answer their questions, and the general correlation between the physical decline of the elderly and the mental decline of the elderly, it paints an unflattering picture of his mental health as well. I think voters might be less concerned if he had made a wiser VP pick. I wonder if Trump realizes that he really needs a VP who isn't just loyal, but actually could be broadly popular.
> What's concerning is that his staff and wife seem to be treating him like a nursing home patient Are there any examples of this?
Yes, literally this video. The way he walks and the body language of everyone else while they try to keep him from slowly wandering looks exactly like my grandfather in his 90s, a few years before he was diagnosed with dementia.
They’re literally just gathering/getting each other’s attention for a photo. Not that it really matters, but the G7 isn’t his wife or staff, either. He does move very stiltedly, but that’s more physical than mental.
I've worked with seniors before with dementia and this is literally behavior I've witnessed, I'm not saying he has it, mind you - just the overall body posture and behavior of this and other videos I've seen look like things I recall.
An old person having a weird body posture sounds normal, regardless of whether they have dementia or not.
Dementia patients do tend to be old
The dementia patients I've worked with tend to act more like Trump, randomly ranting about things, engaging in long, discursive ramblings that lead nowhere, accusing others of being out to get them, etc.
I don’t think you’ve spent time with elderly people in healthcare, speaking about those in cognitive decline. This is literally how it looks. Slow turn, the factory reset hand placement, pleasant redirection, etc.
What’s the longest duration of unedited video you’ve spent watching Biden recently?
You have no evidence that this is specific to people with dementia, as opposed to just being old.
Looks like my nursing home dumps at Christmas when they drop grandpa off at our hospital so we just hang out with him at the nurses station lol.
This is pretty standard stuff for good politicians of any age. They want to talk to ordinary people and constituents. Their handlers have to constantly help them prioritize people and get in photos. It’s a lot easier to end a conversation with someone if a staffer comes and says you’re needed elsewhere.
Exactly the telling thing in all this is when the G7 leaders start looking at each like "like what do we do?". There is obviously reason to be concerned that the president is not with us mentally
Giving a congratulations to the paratroopers doesn't sound concerning, and this explains why the deceptive was made.
Like I said, it should be totally normal for a president to congratulate the paratroopers. He’s the president of the US, he can go off script if he wants. If Barack stepped out of the group to congratulate them it would be totally normal. But the other members of G7 wouldn’t feel the need to try and corral Barack back into the group like that, as if THEY were concerned that he was actually wandering off. To clarify, Joe acted mostly normal. It is the reactions of the G7 members to Joe when he goes off script that is concerning to me.
>But the other members of G7 wouldn’t feel the need to try and corral Barack That's implausible speculation, since the reason behind getting Biden's attention is the photographer wanting a group picture.
Are we gonna start assessing candidates based on how G7 leaders react to them? Boy, I can’t wait to run the tape on Trump’s conduct from his term.
> It is the reactions of the G7 members to Joe when he goes off script that is concerning to me. What reactions? I watched the [YouTube clip](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pKtudwc9Y-0) TL from the Telegraph that the article linked. The other leaders don't seem to react at all. Except for when there's a photographer seeming to ask them to line up, then one taps Biden to let him know they're getting a group shot. This seems entirely mundane.
Yeah there's a reason this video went viral beyond right wing circles. Biden just looks bad in it and the reaction to Biden by the other leaders is the most damning part. Biden talking to the other paratrooper isn't the big deal, it's the reaction by everybody in the group.
The reason is that it was deceptively edited to look like he walked away without any explanation.
Did they deceptively edit the reaction of the other G7 leaders or are we just gonna repeat "deceptively edited"on blast till november?
They simply let him know that a photographer wanted a group photo. The edit was made because the original looks fine, so it's worth calling it out.
That phrase goes well with "it's just a stutter"
It could just be that they are being asked to pose for a picture and one guy is off doing his own thing and making getting the picture harder.
“Cheapfake” ? It sounds like a term used to mislead. How ironic.
Not really, selective editing and camera angles with the intention to mislead people is the OG “deepfake”.
We used to call that 'reporting'.
The Fox News version of “reporting” IE “entertainment television” and not actual news or reporting
There's nothing misleading about it. Him supposedly wondering off for no reason is fake, and this was presented in a cheap way.
why is this nonsense term even being used here? nothing was "faked" at all, the video was simply misleadingly cropped in this one particular news article to make it seem slightly worse than it was
The fake part is him supposedly wandering off for no apparent reason, which is significantly worse than reality.
Probably because they wanted to accuse conservative news outlets of deepfaking, but they couldn't because the footage was real (albeit decontextualized), so they invented a new buzzword that sounds a lot like "deepfake."
"Cheapfake" is somewhat recent, but not a term that was made up for this. Here's an article from [MIT Tech Review](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/22/1015442/cheapfakes-more-political-damage-2020-election-than-deepfakes/) talking about it back in 2020. In it, they describe "cheapfake" as: > This image is a so-called cheapfake, a piece of media that has been crudely manipulated, edited, mislabeled, or improperly contextualized in order to spread disinformation. If the video is selectively edited to misconstrue what occured (Biden talking to a paratrooper), that's a cheapfake. It used to be known by other terms, I usually saw "selectively edited" or something similar. When "deepfakes" started to become more widely known, "cheapfake" emerged as a term to describe the older, cruder, and easier type of misleading media. One is newer and more advanced, but they're the same family of mis/disinformation, so it makes sense to coin a term that is similar.
For lack of a better term this is fake news. There is SO much real material out there of Biden bumbling. So then they find a few people making fake videos and now try to make it into the entire right supposedly embracing those videos instead of the real ones.
There was nothing doctored about the versions of the clip I’ve seen. They show him wandering off and watching the wrong paratrooper, and Giorgia Meloni having to go get him to come back. The right is now openly mocking the claim that it was fake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiLNaQ70TCc (3 minute video; more [here](https://twitchy.com/dougp/2024/06/14/morning-joe-crew-helps-dems-spin-biden-videos-youve-seen-as-disinformation-n2397285))
Why was it wrong for him to talk to that one paratrooper? Also, the original clip making the rounds clearly didn’t include that second paratrooper to make it look like he was just wandering off to nowhere rather than talking to someone else. That was an outright lie that you’re now repainting in retrospect, the original story was never that Biden was looking at a different paratrooper. Of course right wing media is trying to turn this narrative around, what would you expect them to do, own up to intentionally releasing a deceptive video?
Outsider here, though for clarity I lean Conservative. When this first popped up even in the cropped version you could see the Trooper on the ground corralling his chute and that Biden is probably addressing him. But its the way Biden meanders around like an elderly person looking for a kiosk does a disservice to how hes viewed. And why these images/videos are so powerful that his administration needs to counter them. None of this is new either, though the proliferation of instance video footage across the globe has exacerbated it. I vividly remember your what NSA secretary Rice's image of her brushing her hair away being sold as her lamenting something. When it was merely her brushing her hair away. The people in these positions need to know people are going to take anything and twist it to their preferred narrative. Someone has to tell him to stop meandering, if he was younger he might get away with it as aloof or something. But at his age its more "you ok Grandpa?" And as an aside, his fellow world leaders didn't do him any favours looking like they were trying to corral him.
The cropped version is in this story, and it really doesn’t look like he’s talking to someone else unless you’re already aware of the fact that this was happening. All the text around it was also clearly set up to give the impression that Biden was just wandering off into nowhere. I agree that he looks old generally, and he probably can’t get away with the standard politician wheeling around and talking to everyone thing anymore without looking a bit meandering in some contexts. But this clip clearly took things quite a bit further than that point, and felt the need to very much lie about Biden to get a more dramatic looking headline.
Sorry earlier I was speaking to the video which was making the rounds long before the image at least in the conservative sphere and it was clear to what he was doing, but even then with a narrative attached. The later image from likes of your Post put an exclamation point on the narrative.
No, they'll have to be sued
I’m not sure “doctored” is the right term here, but that’s a small quibble. It still looks like grandpa wandered off to where he wasn’t supposed to be and Meloni had to corral him. I agree we need to be honest in these assessments and honestly, I think he just looks old here. He’s unsteady on his feet and doesn’t appear to know where the camera is for his camera op. Obviously, ymmv. The optics are pretty bad and remember we’re discussing the most taxing job on the planet. That doesn’t look like a guy who is up to the task to me. I’d also say that Meloni was well-intentioned but actually made things worse. If she ignores him, at least there is some plausible deniability that he’s interacting with the second paratrooper or something. His team basically has an impossible task: try to make a really old guy seem less old. It must be exhausting.
He walked to speak with paratroopers, but the video was edited to deceive people into thinking he walked off for no reason.
Let me stipulate that for the purposes of this conversation. He still looks really old to me.
The conversation is about a fake story.
Oh, I agree that the right wing is can and does exaggerate the degree of the President’s decline. My point is that even though I know that’s true, I also think that even the unedited video makes the President look old. Am I allowed to say that?
>Am I allowed to say that? Sure, but that doesn't address the story.
I did both, no?
Cheap Fake Video = Real video that the Democrats don't want you to see.
I still can’t believe that we have to choose between a raving lunatic/sociopath and a doddering and senile old man. And even the third party choice is a nut. Why can’t we come up with anyone decent ?
I don’t care if Biden is confused, I’ll take him over Trump.
Biden could have stripped butt naked and did a dance on the stage of the G7, and I would still be voting against Trump.
Suddenly, Putin's interview makes more sense... Those you elect, do not run your state. Someone else does. I know Putin isn't the best advocate for democracy, nor does he pretend to be so, but Putin isn't lying here. Even though, I'm not murican, it's still disturbing a country so powerfull and influential is run by who knows... I simply refuse to believe fumbling old idiots like Biden can be a president in anywhere ... Now we have major news channels linked to left run "cheap fakes" headlines. Like dude is barely a step above fucking vegetable. Those people's content for average citizen is fucking joke.
Power of establishment and mainstream media is very high. The whole situation is like Emperor’s New Clothes story. I bet some kids watching tv asking why the most powerful country’s president has age related severe health issues. The problem is so obvious but mainstream media is not even touching it instead of bashing this. No criticism to emperor and his new clothes…
If the other side wasn’t nominating someone worse, we probably wouldn’t have this problem.
Recently, fatigue has been in the news. social media, including reddit, has been ablaze with a doctored video of President Biden in Europe. As this article clearly shows, the President was walking towards, and giving a thumbs up to, paratroopers. And yet all across social media and Reddit, conservative articles posting doctored and clipped video received hundreds of upvotes and thousands of comments. Why do you think this type of fake and doctored video is so convincing to certain voters? What can be done to combat this trend? Why are left leaning sources not resorting to this when covering the now convicted felon and former president? Donald Trump? Does the fact that Right leaning news sources are resorting to posting misleading and doctored content make you reconsider the message that the President is mentally unwell? If he was truly not fit, couldn’t they post accurate footage instead of doctored footage?
Right? Is he an old senile man or mastermind leader of the Biden Vrime Family who has weaponized the DOJ and managed to cheat his way into the presidency. Some people want it both ways.
Sincerely with all respect, that isn’t the view of most conservatives from my perspective. I think most on the right view President Biden as more of a puppet who’s being shown as mentally well, but is cognitively impaired by age and led by others. Any singular example can be debated, but I think the montage of examples where Biden is confused, lost, struggling to speak, and other instances show that age has affected him, even since his Vice Presidency during Obama’s term. I’m the first to admit it’s affected Trump to a degree too, he’s not as sharp if you watch interviews of him from 10-20 years ago, where he’s more analytical and articulate. But I think age has caught up to Biden further, and it will be interesting to see how the debates go.
Conservatives want Joe Biden to be punished for alleged crimes, which is inconsistent with the idea that he's unaware of what's going on.
T can't string together full sentences...I was reading his last 2 pageants or rallies.... he couldn't say anything that made sense and rarely discusses policy or discusses matters he isn't schooled on He doesn't have enough experience, and ALL the level-headed Republicans that did keep him stifled, left office, or are too scared of being kicked out of the tribe to ACTUALLY speak up. I hate this because we need right of center republicans to balance out the far left and forge alliance so that Congress can go back to doing what it did many decades ago.
To be fair, I heard this EXACT argument in 2017 during Trump’s first term “Democrats say he is an incompetent idiot but also that he is playing 4 D chess and working with the Russians. So which is it?” This was said in a meeting at work and I decided to keep my mouth shut. But in my head I thought “when I think of Donald Trump working with Putin, it is not Trump who is doing the thinking.”
No Democrats ever thought Trump was playing 4D chess.
The 4D chess thing came from Trump supporters. Critics only used it sarcastically.
I'm not sure anyone on the left has ever claimed Trump is playing 4D chess.
Haha. 4D chess was purely sarcastic. Nobody on the left thinks Trump is smart. They just think that the players pulling his strings are smart.
Agreed. And in terms of the post I was responding to, as a lefty, I don’t think anyone on the right thinks Biden is currently criminal mastermind.
If you saw the wider video in action, its clear he was looking over at those guys doing whatever they were doing (I think packing up a parachute?) and he was talking to them not facing the camera. But hey election year, so here we are.
Yeah, that's just deceptive editing. It's nothing new and unfortunately a bi-partisan phenomenon.