An autocue did not tell U.S. President Joe Biden to leave after his speech on the Afghanistan crisis - the image was photoshopped.
The doctored image showed a teleprompter reading ‘leave now’ and was shared alongside a tweet that said: “Biden was literally told on the teleprompter to leave immediately after his speech… ‘LEAVE NOW’ #DementiaJoe” (here).
The photo soon bounced around Facebook with almost identical captions (here and bit.ly/3k2NheR).
However, the original image was taken from a Washington Post video (here) showing Biden’s speech on Aug. 16 in response to the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan (here).
A still from the video matches the doctored photo, except that the words ‘leave now’ do not feature on the autocue (youtu.be/ocupl4q7En4?t=4796). This proves the image was photoshopped.
Reuters has identified tampered footage of Biden before, including a manipulated video appearing to show the U.S. president falling asleep during a live interview (here) and a spliced clip making it appear that he stumbled over his words when asked about sexual misconduct allegations (here).
VERDICT
False. An image of a teleprompter telling Biden to ‘leave now’ was doctored.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.