Cheap fakes! Cheap fakes as far as the eye can see!
What’s a “cheap fake,” you may ask? Clearly, you haven’t been paying attention to the latest newspeak from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
A “cheap fake” is like a “deep fake” that makes President Joe Biden look bad. Except unlike a deep fake, which is fake, a “cheap fake” is real. It just makes him look senile and incompetent and is therefore deceptively edited to show … what really happened.
It’s unclear where the phrase originated, although it was popularized by a Washington Post article that highlighted how conservatives pounced on Biden’s scary-bad performance during D-Day commemorations in France. CBS News caught wind of the term, too, and we were off to the races.
Lo and behold, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre just so happened to echo this phrase on Monday — a little less than a week after the Post’s article put the term into currency — using it to answer a softball question about “a sort of rash of videos that have been edited to make the president appear especially frail or mentally confused.”
Trending:
“Yeah, we — and I think you all have called this the ‘cheap fakes’ video,” she said, according to a White House transcript.
“And that’s exactly what they are. They are cheap fakes video,” Jean-Pierre said. “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.”
Right. And just like “misinformation” and “disinformation” have been abused beyond the point of meaning because of the White House’s promiscuous misuse of the terms (see: laptop, Hunter Biden’s), it didn’t take long for “cheap fakes” to become farcical, too.
As radio host Clay Travis noted in an X post, a video of Biden trying to get in his presidential SUV after a Virginia fundraiser Tuesday night was so painful that it looked like “elder abuse.”
Joe Biden can’t even get in his presidential SUV. Where is DOCTOR Jill Biden? This is elder abuse. Imagine how bad he actually is behind closed doors. We only see him in public for an hour a day, at most. pic.twitter.com/uhIqDodXio
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) June 19, 2024
And where’s “DOCTOR Jill Biden” in all of this? Well, actually, that’s a real “cheap fake,” given her “doctor” honorific comes from an education doctorate from the University of Delaware, which she received for the thesis, “Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students’ Needs.”
Whatever skills gleaned from her research did not meet the needs of her husband trying to get into a regular SUV after a Tuesday night fundraiser, according to Sky News.
So, is this another “cheap fake?” It certainly looks like it, since this is a greatest-hits compilation of the clips from France that spurred the Post to make the term “cheap fake” newspeak linguistic vogue:
Joe Biden highlights in Normandy on the 80th anniversary of D-Day:
– Sits in an invisible chair
– Forgets where his seat is
– Talks about how many Russians died in Ukraine
– Gets pulled away by Docta Jill as Macron greets D-Day veterans. pic.twitter.com/sWFsYpt1o5— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 6, 2024
“In edited videos, Republican officials and allies of former president Donald Trump repeatedly tried to turn Biden’s Normandy visit into a highlight reel of senior moments and missteps, aimed at showing the president as infirm, addled or out of his depth,” the Post’s June 11 story said.
“Trump, who turns 78 on Friday, has also repeatedly attacked Biden over his age and fitness, and regularly shares videos of the president looking frail,” it said.
Are “cheap fakes” a problem?
“But an examination of video feeds from the events in Normandy, France, makes clear that the selected clips had been edited to present a particularly damaging — and often misleading — picture.”
And, just a week and change after that piece of campaign agitprop, we have the president struggling to get into a Chevy.
This came, by the way, after another “cheap fake” — this one in which he couldn’t remember the name of his homeland security secretary.
BIDEN (malfunctioning): “…homeland security secretary, uhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhhuhuhuh” 😳 pic.twitter.com/7ubWXbDqrf
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 18, 2024
Just selective editing, people. Who are you going to believe — the wholly nonpartisan, objective Karine Jean-Pierre and The Washington Post, or your repeatedly lying eyes?
Reality, alas, presents “a particularly damaging” — if not at all misleading — picture of what this president’s diminishing capabilities are.
The White House and media can cover for these deficiencies all they want, but don’t insult us with asinine neologisms like “cheap fakes” when the only cheap fakery going on is from the podium in the White House press room.
