Biden motorcade video manipulated to add 'Let's go Brandon' chant
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 21, 2022 at 19:40
- 2 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"Joe Biden was heckled in 10 Downing Street, London with 'Let's Go Brandon,'" says one September 19, 2022 tweet sharing a video viewed more than 656,000 times.
"A warm UK welcome!!!" says another, which drew 579,000 views.
The clip appears to show a London crowd shouting an anti-Biden chant as the US president's limousine drives in traffic toward Westminster Abbey for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on September 19, 2022. The monarch died September 8 at Balmoral, her Scottish Highland retreat, at age 96.
Other posts sharing the video circulated on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The clip also spread on fringe platforms such as Gab, Rumble and Telegram, where some accounts associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory shared it.
The slogan "Let's go Brandon" became popular with US conservatives in October 2021 after an NBC Sports reporter interviewing NASCAR driver Brandon Brown misheard the crowd's chants of "Fuck Joe Biden" as "Let's go Brandon."
But the video of Biden in London has been altered; the original footage does not include a "Let's go Brandon" chant.
Joe Armitage, lead UK political analyst at Global Counsel, a strategic advisory business, tweeted the original clip September 19, 2022. In another tweet, Armitage said "absolutely nobody heckled."
American President comes to a standstill in London traffic near Marble Arch. Might as well have taken the bus. pic.twitter.com/lJ2nNE5kC9
— Joe Armitage (@joe_armitage) September 19, 2022
Armitage confirmed in an email to AFP that he filmed the video, and that the version circulating online has "audio manipulation."
"It's a total fabrication," Armitage said.
Several news outlets, including the Evening Standard and Daily Mail, have published the unedited clip. It is unclear where the "Let's go Brandon" audio originated.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the slogan here.
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