Last week, I noted that it appeared that Joe Biden had dozed off during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. In the clip that went viral, Biden appears to slump down with his eyes closed toward the end of Bennett’s remarks.
Note the “manipulated media” tag that Twitter added to this tweet to help their good friends in the Biden administration. The clip, however, is not manipulated in any way; it is merely the relevant part in which Biden appears to be taking an impromptu nap while meeting with another world leader.
If you watch the video of the entire meeting (below), you will see that Biden begins the meeting relatively alert, eyes open, leaning into the conversation, gesturing, speaking animatedly.
He spends a good part of Bennett’s portion with one hand on his face and the other on his knee, in a listening posture. He nods his head from time to time (not in that old man nodding off way, but appearing to be responding to Bennett’s comments).
As he’s losing steam, he crosses his arms and sits upright in an apparent attempt to keep from dozing off. It is only toward the end when he clasps his hands in his lap, slumps his shoulders, lowers his head, and shuts his eyes that he appears to be asleep.
You will also note that Biden’s early comments, if somewhat word-soupish, are spoken with strength and some engagement, though it’s clear he loses his train of thought several times.
By contrast, when he finally wakes up, after Bennett says, “Thank you, Mr. President. I look forward to working with you now and for many years forward. Thank you.”, Biden keeps his head down and eyes closed through this concluding comment and only kind of jerks his leg and shifts in his chair on hearing the second “thank you.” Then, in a markedly different tone of voice than earlier in the meeting, Biden kind of whispers his final comments, still seeming groggy from his little nap.
Of course he dozed off. It’s even more clear in the full video when you consider how he began the not-quite-twelve-minute meeting and how he concluded it muttering some garbled nonsense about Obama in a barely-discernible whisper. It’s only when he is wrapping it up that he seems to be fully awake again; his “thank you very much, folks,” to the assembled media is again strong and clear.
As the “manipulated media” (!?) clip made the rounds, the leftstream media began issuing the most bizarre “because we said so” fact checks in an attempt to gaslight people into not believing what they can plainly see with their own eyes.
The garbage “fact checks” range from “it’s just one still image when he happened to be looking down” from the AP to “but he was alert in the beginning of the meeting.” The first is ridiculous on its face since it was a video clip that circulated, not a still. And the second is a weak attempt to suggest that his being alert early on (and even responding after Bennett finishes speaking) somehow negates the part where he visibly fades out and dozes off . . . which he clearly did.
The Reuters fact-check explains that the clip is a “debunked altered clip” when in fact it is neither debunked nor altered.
The videos on social media, however, have been misleadingly cropped: seconds later, longer footage shows that Biden responds to Bennett.Biden can be seen talking and engaging with Bennett throughout the clip.The short segment isolated in the posts begins at the 12:42 minute mark. At the 13:14 minute mark, Biden continues speaking, but this has been cut out of the clips in the posts being shared online.
All of which is true, but no one claimed that Biden slept through the whole meeting, and an alert person would have opened his eyes and lifted his head upon hearing “Thank you Mr. President” and would likely have leaned forward to shake hands after Bennett concluded, “I look forward to working with you now and for many years forward. Thank you.” Just as they shook hands when Biden finished his rambling remarks at the beginning of the meeting.
Reuters also ignores that when Biden finally rouses from his slumber, he’s not “talking and engaging” with Bennett in the same way. In fact, and as you can see in the complete C-SPAN video above, you can barely hear what he’s mumble- whispering about Obama, though again credit to Bennett for being gracious here, as he says, “thank him [Obama] as well,” even though he has to know what Biden said made no sense as a response to Bennett’s remarks.
USA Today draws the same conclusion as Reuters (big surprise), but they apparently think that just declaring “Biden was in fact awake” is “fact check” enough.
But the full video of the meeting shows Biden was in fact awake. The viral clip selectively captures the few seconds Biden dropped his head during the press conference and misrepresents Biden’s silence to support the claim that Biden is mentally unfit for office.
You have to scroll way down the article to find their “evidence”: Biden twitches his hands while he’s taking his little snooze.
Closer inspection of Biden’s hands shows he moves his thumbs as Bennett spoke, indicating he is not sleeping when his head was down.
No snoozing person, particularly those sitting upright, ever moves their hands? Has anyone been on a red-eye flight? Or one to Europe, Asia, etc.? The whole cabin is full of twitching, snoozing people. Heck, has anyone seen Grandpa doze off in the living room? Lots of twitching while snoozing going on, and he will also just start talking when you rouse him as he pretends he had not been asleep (and was just “resting his eyes”).
We’ve seen Biden for forty-odd years, and he is not known to “listen” with his eyes closed, let alone slumped over with his hands folded in front of him. This is not a “listening” posture for Biden, it’s a dozing posture seen in nursing homes the world over.
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