Did Joe Biden Really Say ‘We Can Only Re-Elect Donald Trump’?
A deceptively edited video went viral thanks to Trump staffers and campaign accounts.
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Dan Scavino, the White House director of social media and presidential assistant, experienced Twitter virality after sharing a clip purportedly from Joe Biden’s campaign rally in St. Louis, Missouri. The clip, actually from a Biden rally in Kansas City, Missouri, shows Biden saying, “we can only re-elect Donald Trump.”
The tweet went viral and was shared by Trump campaign accounts.
Even President Trump jumped into the fray to share and comment on it.
Dan Scavino @DanScavino
Sleepy Joe💤in St. Louis, Missouri today: “We can only re-elect @realDonaldTrump.” #KAG2020LandslideVictory🇺🇸 https://t.co/FT4q2MWfcDThe moment also reached an audience outside the Twitterverse thanks to articles from popular Trump-friendly websites likeRedState, Townhall, and Gateway Pundit.
The Biden campaign has complained that Facebook allowed the video to circulate.
And indeed, reviewing the video of Biden’s speech at the rally shows that the clip was deceptively edited. Biden plainly stumbles over his words, as he has repeatedly throughout the campaign. But the video shared by Trump and his advocates is cut off before he finishes his sentence, leaving out important context. After criticizing negative attacks in the Democratic primary as being antithetical to unity, Biden said:
“We can only re-elect Donald Trump if, in fact, we get engaged in this circular firing squad.” (emphasis added).
And it fact, the full clip shows Biden making precisely the opposite point of the one attributed to him by Trump, his advocates and Trump-amplifying press. (Townhall later added an update to its original post that includes the full context of Biden’s remarks.)
If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com
The man is old, is in constant campaign mode and is tired. Stumbling over his words is to be expected, as is Trump's use of the video. Not sure what the point of this article was.
Thank you Dispatch for bringing this kind of fact-checking to conservative circles. It is the sort of thing that we’ve been seeing for years in other fact checking sources, but Republicans quickly labeled them “biased” and so the message was blunted.
It is also an antidote for the problem David French brought up yesterday.