President Joe Biden experienced a trademark “Biden moment” on Thursday, following a speech in North Carolina, miming a handshake when he was all alone on stage with nobody standing next to him.
Immediately after ending his speech with “God bless you all,” Biden turned to his right and said something to the empty space space behind him – where another person would presumably be if Biden was not all alone – and mimed a handshake.
The 79-year-old POTUS then looked around with a confused expression on his face, before beginning to amble aimlessly around the auditorium.
After Biden finished his speech, he turned around and tried to shake hands with thin air and then wandered around looking confused pic.twitter.com/ZN00TLdUUo
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) April 14, 2022
The speech itself was not nearly as eventful as the events that unfolded immediately after. Biden delivered boilerplate rhetoric about his Build Back Better agenda as his approval ratings floundered.
“Every action I’ve taken to rebuild our economy has been guided by one principle: made in America means using products, parts and materials built right here in the United States of America,” Biden said.
“It means bringing manufacturing jobs back, building supply chains here at home, not outsourcing from abroad,” he continued.
“Our economy has gone from being on the mend to being on the move,” Biden said. “I know that we’re still facing challenges of high prices, inflation. I grew up in a family where the price of gasoline went up at the pump.”
“We need to address these high prices, and urgently, for working folks out there,” concluded Biden. “When we build more in America we increase economic capacity. And ultimately it helps lower everyday prices for families. Look around. American manufacturing is coming back. Once again we’re seeing the pride that comes from stamping a product made in America.”
As Fox News reported, PolitiFact disputes that Biden was, in fact, shaking hands with the air. “But the so-called ‘fact-checkers’ at PolitiFact felt the urgency to defend the president from the tongue-in-cheek mockery,” noted Fox News:
“You might have seen a clip of President Joe Biden ‘shaking hands’ with thin air. It never happened. Here’s the truth, as well as how misinformers manufacture and embellish embarrassing presidential moments,” PolitiFact began a lengthy Twitter thread on Wednesday.
They later add, in a giant block of text:
“But videos show that Biden was actually pointing at the audience behind him with his whole hand. He acknowledges the right side, then the left, and begins to walk forward,” PolitiFact claimed. “Real, unscripted moments have often been counted among critics and late-night hosts as embarrassments, such as when former President Donald Trump slow-walked down a ramp, or when Biden stumbled on his way up the stairs of Air Force One. But an increasing share of the supposedly embarrassing presidential moments going viral online aren’t fully authentic or fake. Instead, real photos and videos have been edited in misleading ways — ways that will usually find a receptive audience.”
Many on the right disagree with the fact checkers’ claims.
This article has been updated to acknowledge the opinions of third party fact checkers.
