Trump’s campaign runs doctored Facebook ads that make Biden look older

The Trump campaign has been running near identical images of Biden, but one has been doctored (Picture: Facebook)

The Trump campaign has been doctoring images used in its adverts that make presidential rival Joe Biden look older than he is.

A filter was applied to a picture of the Democrat candidate that many said made him look more elderly and infirm. 

The Facebook ad, which calls Biden ‘Sleepy Joe’, plays into one of Trump’s favourite attack lines – that at 77, Biden is too old to run for president. 

When questioned by HuffPost, the Trump campaign admitted that it had used a filter on the photo but declined to explain why. 

It’s one of several examples of the campaign using doctored or out-of-context photos and footage in recent weeks. 

Last weekend, the White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino tweeted a fake video that appeared to show Biden sleeping through a TV interview.

It was, in fact, footage of an old interview with singer Harry Belafonte, 93, from 2011. An image of Biden had been superimposed over the top of the real footage of Belafonte who had been experiencing technical issues and couldn’t hear the presenter had gone live. 

Another example saw the Trump War Room Twitter account tweet a video that showed Biden saying: ‘You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.’ 

U.S. President Donald Trump during a news conference at the White House on Friday (Picture: Reuters)

The video was labelled ‘manipulated media’ by Twitter because it was actually a clip of Biden quoting the Trump campaign.

In the original speech, Biden said: ‘Trump and Pence are running on this and I find it fascinating: Quote, “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.” And what’s their proof? The violence we’re seeing in Donald Trump’s America.’

It comes as Facebook promised to ban new political ads in the final week of campaigning in the 2020 election. 

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: ‘In the week before the election, we won’t accept new political or issue ads. Advertisers will be able to continue running ads they started running before the final week and adjust the targeting for those ads, but those ads will already be published transparently in our Ads Library so anyone, including fact-checkers… can scrutinize them.’

Facebook does not routinely fact-check political ads and many of Trump’s have been shown to contain claims that are false, including that Biden plans to de-fund the police. 

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