President Joe Biden’s age has long been the subject of conservative attacks, even more so now that at age 81, he’s seeking a second term.
According to claims using edited or out-of-context videos, Biden once left in the middle of a news interview (False), “turned around and shook hands with thin air” (False), and sat in an imaginary chair at a D-Day event (he didn’t).
A new video emerged at the Group of Seven Summit in Italy that people claimed showed Biden “wandering off” during a June 13 skydiving demonstration.
Conservative media outlets and others on social media seized on a shortened video clip from the event that appeared to show Biden slowly walking away from the other world leaders before being pulled back by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for a group photo.
“WHAT IS BIDEN DOING?” RNC Research, an X account managed by former President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, asked in a June 13 post sharing the video.
The RNC video had nearly 3 million views as of June 14 and soon began to spread across social media with conservative media outlets and influencers citing RNC’s video and adding claims that Biden had wandered off.
A Daily Mail TikTok video’s caption said Biden “strangely wandered away” and had to be “guided” back to the group.
The “Jesse Watters Primetime” Instagram account shared the video and wrote, “Biden wandered off into an Italian field at the G7 summit.”
The New York Post took it a step further, altering the video’s frame to make it more narrow, cutting out a skydiver seen in the RNC video.
“President Biden appeared to wander off at the G7 summit in Italy, with officials needing to pull him back to focus,” the New York post wrote in an X post, linking to an article that credited RNC Research’s video. The claim also made the Post’s print edition front page, with a headline calling Biden the “Meander in Chief.”
But a longer video of the event, shared on YouTube by the G7 Italy account, tells a different story. At various points in the G7 video, you can see parachutists off to the right of the frame, to Biden’s left.
In the video below, parachutists to Biden’s left can be seen on the grass as another lands with a G7 Summit flag, shortly before Biden turns to speak with them.
Cable news network MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” broadcast showed video from a different angle, where you can clearly see several parachutists behind Biden’ to his left. He turns and speaks to them and gives a thumbs up sign, before Meloni came over to get his attention for the group photo.
The New York Post’s X post was tagged with a community note that said, “The video has been cropped.” We reached out to the New York Post and its editor, Keith Poole, for comment, but didn’t immediately hear back.
RNC spokesperson Anna Kelly didn’t speak to the intent of the video the group shared on X, but emailed links to posts, including an Italian news outlet’s coverage of Biden’s visit that described his voice as “weak.” Another link Kelly shared is a Trump War Room post that featured the misleading cover of the New York Post.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the British publication The Telegraph that Biden had turned to greet the parachutists and hadn’t wandered off.
“He went to go and talk to the pilot, one of the parachute jumpers. He went to go and shake all their hands,” an archived version of The Telegraph story said. The article has since been updated to remove Sunak’s quotes.
Andrew Bates, White House senior deputy press secretary, confirmed that Biden was giving a thumbs up to skydivers and thanking veterans. He pointed out conservatives such as Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican member of Congress from Illinois, and the conservative outlet The Washington Examiner called out the misleading claims.
Our ruling
Social media posts, including from The New York Post, The Daily Mail and “Jesse Watters Primetime,” claimed that video showed Biden wandering away from other world leaders at the G7 Summit in Italy at an event in which skydivers landed carrying flags of each country in attendance.
But longer video and video from other angles clearly shows Biden was speaking to skydivers on the ground before the Italian prime minister tapped him for a group photo. The New York Post edited a video from RNC Research to cut one skydiver out of the frame. The claim is False.
