Morning Joe fact-checks RNC 'sleazebags' pushing 'cheap fakes' to make Biden look feeble
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski hammered right-wing media for spreading misleading photos and video that falsely appear to show president Joe Biden wandering away from a group of world leaders.
A social media account managed by Donald Trump campaign shared a clip that appeared to show the president doddering off from the gathering at the G7 summit Thursday before the Italian prime minister alerts him to a group photo, and the New York Post and other outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch seized on the video to suggest Biden was too old and infirm to be re-elected.
"These photos and the clip you saw don't show the full context of what was happening," said "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski. "Here's a different angle from the event after a skydiver landed in front of the president and other leaders. President Biden turns to his left, where there are troops. The president appears to say something to them and give them the thumbs up before he's tapped on the arm by the Italian prime minister. So this is the kind of thing that gets amplified. You have an organization like the New York Post and many others that picked it up that way, delivered to them right from Trump's campaign with no context, no double-checking it, no looking at very widely available, different angles to tell the truth."
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The show's producers rolled video footage showing the president walking over to speak to the skydivers after watching them descend, and host Joe Scarborough said conservative outlets were knowingly pushing a misleading report about the incident.
"Come on, they know," Scarborough said. "Listen, they know exactly what they're doing, they are pushing disinformation. They are taking a page — look at him, talking to the guys that came in parachuting, and then being called over for a group shot. But they know exactly what they're doing. We've seen it now, these cheap fakes that the [Republican National Committee] keeps pushing. The RNC are pushing the cheap fakes while, you know, unfortunately, sadly, news organizations – look, gives a thumbs up to the troops. It's just like on D-Day, when they acted like he was just meandering off the stage and they cut out him shaking hands with members of the troops, just like what [French president Emmanuel] Macron was doing."
"You know, it's one thing if RNC does it and are sleazebags about lying about what's actually happening, it's quite another when the New York Post does it," Scarborough said. "The Wall Street Journal talked about the entire meeting yesterday with Trump and members of the Senate and House, [and] did not mention the fact that Donald Trump said that Milwaukee was a 'horrible city.' So here we go, it's election season, and it's disinformation in the mainstream media."
Co-host Willie Geist said the push to portray Biden as elderly and feeble possibly betrays the presumptive Republican nominee's worries about his chances of winning the November election.
"That's the definition of disinformation," Geist said. "They know, they know exactly what they're doing. They used an angle that told a different story than what actually happened to push a narrative. We're seeing it all over the place. It makes you, is Donald Trump worried? Is this all they have? Is the economy so strong, and inflation getting better? Is the abortion issue such a problem that they have to change the subject? We've said it before – yes, Joe Biden is old. He is old, and sometimes he talks slower and moves slower, as 81-year-olds do. Donald Trump is 78 today. If that's a concern of yours, that's totally fair, but play it straight. Show what's actually happening out there."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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