Edited footage, first tweeted by president’s social media director, makes it look like Biden inadvertently backed Trump’s re-election

This article is more than 6 months old

This article is more than 6 months old

The first video to be labelled by Twitter as “manipulated media” was tweeted by Donald Trump’s social media director and retweeted by the president himself.

Dan Scavino tweeted the footage on Saturday, mistakenly saying it came from a speech by Joe Biden in St Louis, Missouri. In fact, the former vice-president and Democratic frontrunner was speaking in Kansas City. It was also edited to make it look like Biden had inadvertently backed Trump’s re-election.

“Turn this primary from a campaign that is about negative attacks into one that’s about what we’re for,” Biden said in the footage attached to Scavino’s tweet, before faltering.

“Because we cannot re-elect … we cannot win this re-election … Excuse me, we can only re-elect Donald Trump.”

The footage ended there.

In fact, Biden said: “Excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It’s gotta be a positive campaign, so join us.”

Acting on Sunday under a new policy aimed at policing deep fakes and deceptively edited content, but only after the video had been live for close to 24 hours, Twitter labelled the clip as “manipulated media”.

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However, the label only appeared on tweets of the video in timelines – meaning users searching for the clip would not be shown the “manipulated media” label. The company said it was working to remedy the problem.

Scavino tweeted his own response, saying: “The video was NOT manipulated.” Trump retweeted him again. He also said on Facebook that labeling the video is an example of social media “trying to silence” Trump’s movement.

Trump’s former golf caddy also retweeted Benny Johnson, the chief creative officer at the Turning Point USA conservative not-for-profit, who claimed: “The video was clipped, not edited … This video was simply shortened. This means every single clip on Twitter is ‘Manipulated’.”

On Monday morning, after criticism from the Biden campaign, Facebook added its own note to the video.

“Fact-checkers rated this video as partly false, so we are reducing its distribution and showing warning labels with more context for people who see it, try to share it, or already have,” a spokeswoman said.

Since Biden, 77, surged back to lead the Democratic primary, the 73-year-old president and his campaign have relentlessly questioned and mocked the former senator and vice-president’s mental capability.

Scavino’s original tweet said: “Sleepy Joe in St Louis, Missouri today: ‘We can only re-elect Donald Trump.’ #KAG2020LandslideVictory.”

By Monday lunchtime, on Twitter alone, the video had around 6.3m views.