Fox News Blatantly Edits Speech Video To Frame Biden As Racist

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

During a Veteran's Day speech, President Joe Biden wished Ambassador Donald Blinken a happy birthday with an anecdote about the great African-American baseball pitcher Satchel Paige — who famously threw a winning pitch when he was 47 in the early 1950s. Biden mentioned that Paige was a member of what was called the Negro Leagues back then, but Fox News shamelessly edited a video of that speech to make it seem like the president casually called Paige a "Negro" — and the right-wing cable news outlet is drawing sharp criticism for editing the video in a way that was both deceptive and sloppy.

The edited video aired during Fox News' morning show, Fox and Friends, which competes with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and CNN's "New Day" in that time slot. Far-right pundits reflexively promoted that segment, claiming that Biden was a racist without bothering to vet the edited video.

But Mediaite's Tommy Christopher offered some context, noting that the Paige anecdote was Biden's way of telling Blinken that you're only as old as you feel and that mentioning baseball's Negro Leagues of the 1940s and 1950s isn't the same as casually using the term "Negro."

Christopher explained, "The president obviously began to say 'Great Negro League pitcher,' but then paused and shifted to saying 'at the time, pitcher in the Negro Leagues,' which was, in fact, the name of the league that Black players formed when they were shut out of Major League Baseball. That this needs to be explained is beyond absurd."

Christopher wasn't the only one who called out Fox and Friends for their outright deception and did some debunking. MSNBC's Chris Hayes noted how poorly the video was edited and the fact that Biden's hand mysteriously disappeared when he was speaking. This was because the clip removed the part of Biden's speech where he specifically referred to the "Negro League," in an attempt to make it look like Biden used an epithet.

Vox's Aaron Rupar tweeted:

Here are some more reactions to Fox News' blatantly deceptive editing: