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Fact check: Video purporting to show child swearing at Jill Biden is manipulated

McKenzie Sadeghi, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: A video shows a child shouting profanity at Jill Biden while she reads to students

After Jill Biden unveiled the White House’s annual Christmas decorations and hosted a story time event with a group of students from Maryland, a video purporting to show a child shouting profanity at the first lady went viral online.

“Kid Yells ‘Shut the F up!’ at Jill Biden’s Book Reading,” reads the headline of a Nov. 29 YouTube video that accumulated more than 18,000 views in less than a week.

The 18-second video shows Biden delivering remarks about her children’s book: “Don’t Forget, God Bless our Troops,” to a group of students who are sitting on the floor wearing masks.

A child is heard in the background yelling an expletive as Biden says, "When my son was away, my granddaughter, just like you kids, really, really missed her daddy. So I wrote this book to tell other kids, 'cause there's lots of kids who don't know what it's like."

The claim has been shared widely across social media platforms, making its way to Rumble, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok, where one post generated more than 269,000 likes.

But the footage has been manipulated using years-old audio and has been debunked by fact-checking organizations. The original video shows Biden was not interrupted by a child yelling a profanity.

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The social media users who shared the video did not return requests for comment. The YouTube channel does not have a way to be contacted.

Video is altered

The audio that was added to the clip of Biden reading originates from a June 2019 video titled, “Kid tells teacher to shut up,” in which a boy in a classroom shouts profanity during a graduation party.

The original, full-length Biden video, which was posted by news outlets and C-SPAN, shows Biden was not interrupted by any of the kids when she was introducing and reading her children's book.

“I wrote this book to tell other kids, 'cause there’s lots of kids who don’t know what it’s like to be a military kid,” Biden says in the authentic clip. The altered version cuts her off mid-sentence and plays the audio of the boy yelling.

The doctored video appears to have originated in a Nov. 29 post from the Twitter account @PapiTrumpo, a page that regularly shares altered content and memes, Reuters reported.

Fact check: An altered video splices two clips together to show Biden making toddlers cry

Our rating: Altered

Based on our research, we rate ALTERED a video claiming to show a child shouting profanity at Biden while she reads to students. The audio comes from a 2019 clip of a boy yelling at a teacher in a classroom during a graduation ceremony. The full-length video shows no such interaction took place while Biden read her children's book to students at the White House.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Clip of child shouting profanity at Jill Biden is altered