White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre kind of lost it on Monday when she called videos of Joe Biden's recent senior moment that have gone viral "cheap fakes." It's a rather telling strategy, but a revealing one. Sure, the White House is always in the business of protecting the president, but when you read between the lines, it suggests something troubling is happening behind the scenes.
"There seems to be a sort of rash of videos that have been edited to make the president appear especially frail or mentally confused," a reporter stated. "I’m wondering if the — the White House is especially worried about the fact that this appears to be a pattern that we’re seeing more — more often?"
"Yeah, we — and I think you all have called this the 'cheap fakes' video," Jean-Pierre replied. "And that’s exactly what they are. They are cheap fakes video. They are done in bad faith. And — and some of your news organization have — have been very clear, have stressed that these right-wing — the right-wing critics of the President have a credibility problem because of — the fact-checkers have repeatedly caught them pushing misinformation, disinformation."
Jean-Pierre clearly had a response ready for this leading question, because she wasn't close to done.
"And so, we see this, and this is something coming from, from your — your part of the world, calling them cheap fakes and misinformation," she continued. "And I’ll quote the Washington Post, where they wrote — they wrote about this, and they said, 'How Republicans used misleading videos to attack Biden in a 24-hour period.' And to their credit, we have a conservative — Washington Examiner did call them out as well, calling out the New York Post."
The Washington Examiner didn't do that, by the way. They merely reported on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's explanation for Biden walking away from leaders at the G7 Summit. It was not a fact-check.
"Ironically, several — several recent cheap fakes actually attack the President for thanking troops. For thanking troops," KJP claimed. "That is what they’re attacking the President for, both in Normandy this happened and again in Italy."
Jean-Pierre then laughably concluded, "And instead of talking about the President’s performance in office — and what I mean by that is his legislative wins, what he’s been able to do for the American people across the country — we’re seeing these deep fakes, these manipulated videos. And it is, again, done in bad faith."
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This strategy of labeling videos exposing Biden's gaffes as "cheap fakes" appears to be a strategic move to not only control the narrative about the damning videos—of which there have been many recently—but also to preemptively discredit the inevitable future clips of his worsening cognitive decline that go viral. In other words, they know Biden is getting worse, and they've planted a seed to question every damning video to come.
So far, they've succeeded in bringing the term "cheap fakes" into the public consciousness.
The White House falsely dubbing videos of Joe Biden's senior moments as "cheap fakes" has successfully brought the term into the mainstream.
— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) June 19, 2024
Now, ask yourself why they're trying to convince the public the videos are manipulated. pic.twitter.com/9aI8qLMhdD
Will it convince the public that all the videos of Biden freezing, mumbling, slurring, and getting lost on stage are fake? I highly doubt it.
This strategy reeks of desperation, but let's face it, if Joe Biden isn't going to drop out of the race, it's pretty much all they have. They must push the narrative that we shouldn't believe our lying eyes. They figure if they keep saying that the clips (that are clearly not doctored) are misleading "cheap fakes," enough people will echo that narrative, and the media will have a built-in excuse not to cover the incidents — the same way they justified not covering the Hunter Biden laptop back in 2020.
