By Fact check: Trump campaign runs Facebook ads featuring fake image of Biden wearing earpiece
The Trump campaign is now running yet another series of inaccurate ads.
Some of the ads feature a white circle around that part of the image, as if showing people where to look to see that Biden has been caught.
Facts First: The Trump ads’ image of Biden wearing an earpiece is not authentic. The image was manipulated to add the earpiece to a real photo that shows Biden without an earpiece.
The Trump campaign, in fact, is also running some anti-Biden ads that use that same Biden photo without the earpiece edited in.
The Trump campaign’s communications director, Tim Murtaugh, said in a Thursday email in response to CNN’s request for comment that the ads featuring the earpiece are “obvious satire” of what he claimed was the Biden campaign’s decision to agree to a pre-debate earpiece inspection and then changing its mind.
There is no proof this happened. Regardless, it is not at all obvious that the ads are meant to be satirical. Some of the ads say things like “Joe’s BEGGING for breaks during the debate! CHECK JOE’S EARS! He REFUSED drug test & DECLINED an earpiece inspection!” Others say, “WHO IS IN JOE’S EAR?”
The earpiece ads — some of which were still active as of Friday, three days after the debate — have collectively been seen millions of times, according to statistics from Facebook’s publicly accessible ad database. Facebook does not fact check politicians’ ads.
It’s not clear whether the Trump campaign did its own photoshop job or took the altered image from elsewhere.
