FACT Check: Viral Video Of Joe Biden Falling Asleep During A Live TV Interview Is False!

The video of Joe Biden asleep during an interview went viral and people started making memes on the same. Though, upon fact-checking, the video turned out to be doctored.

A screenshot of the video

Ahead of US elections, a video of Joe Biden, Democratic presidential nominee falling asleep during a live TV interview went viral on social media on Wednesday. The posts, shared over 13,000 times said, “Joe Biden is asleep during live interview.” The video starts with a TV presenter saying, “joining us live this morning from New York”, and then moves to a shot of Joe Biden who appears to have his eyes shut, and the TV presenter saying “wake up,” with a snoring noise in the background.

Mr. President, your opponent Joe Biden fell asleep during the interview. He dreams of winning the presidential throne.???????????? pic.twitter.com/1XDWHzOdGL

— 水镜先生 (@gmmj0709) August 30, 2020

The Joe Biden video is completely doctored! The video combines Hilary Clinton’s endorsement video from August 28, in which Joe Biden is seen looking down for several seconds, with a video of the singer Harry Belafonte appearing to fall asleep on live TV in 2011. The sound of snoring has been added to the edited video, as has the text reading, “On air: Joe Biden, The importance of this election.” Twitter user @damonimani (twitter.com/damonimani) confirmed to Reuters he created the edited video. In a tweet, he explains that he added the sound effects and mixed the two videos and told Reuters, “I’m an artist with a wild imagination that I put into my parodies,” confirming the creation was intended as a joke. However, the video is a montage. The Democratic Party's nominee did not fall asleep on live TV. The footage of the journalist is from October 2011, when TV station KBAK from Bakersfield, California attempted to interview Belafonte, who was in New York City. Then aged 84, Belafonte seemed to have fallen asleep before talking to the morning show "Eyewitness News," although the singer blamed a lost connection that made him unable to hear the host talking to him. "They keep stooping lower and lower," Belafonte said of the manipulated video in a statement to Deadline."A technical glitch in an interview I did nine years ago now becomes another one of their lies, more of their fake news." John Malkovich, a CBS journalist who was co-anchor in the studio that day, labeled the video as "fake" on Twitter after White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Dan Scavino shared it on the platform on August 30, 2020.