An Ex-Trump Official Made An Old Biden Photo Go Viral While Fake-Labeling Him As A Mask-Hypocrite

It’s not news that Joe Biden’s a staunch adherent to wearing masks in public. It’s also not surprising that Donald Trump still can’t stand wearing masks, nor can many of his followers, and the president has even shamed a reporter for doing so during a press conference. Now, an ex-Trump official, Richard Grenell (who acted as Trump’s acting director of national intelligence) is trying to do Biden dirty for tweeting a photo of the former VP (who is maskless) on an airplane alongside his traveling national press secretary, Remi Yamamoto. It’s all for the purpose of labeling Biden as a “phony” and fraud, but there’s one big problem: the photo dates back to 2019.

“Washington, DC phony! @JoeBiden doesn’t wear a mask on a plane – but wears one OUTSIDE!?” Grenell (who is an RNC senior advisor) happily tweeted to his 671,000+ followers. (You can see the photos below.)

CNN K-File editor Andrew Kaczynski screen-captured the moment for Twitter before that tweet gets deleted, which might eventually happen, given that Twitter has labeled Grenell’s claim with a “manipulated media” tag. “A combined 27K RTs on photo from 2019 before there was a pandemic,” Kaczynski declared. “These people tweet in all caps about fake news.”

As CNN details, the 2019 unmasked photo was taken by Adam Schultz (who’s Biden’s official campaign photographer) and is dated as follows: “Yamamoto and Biden huddle on a flight to South Carolina in November 2019.” The photo recently appeared in a Vogue profile of Yamamoto, and now, it’s gone viral on Twitter after Grenell fake-labeled it, and right-wing talk radio host Mark Levin added fuel by retweeting it.

CNN also reports word from a Twitter spokesperson that the tweets “do not violate Twitter rules and will not have any fact check labels affixed to them,” although that status appears to have changed, given that Twitter has now added that “manipulated media” tag onto Grenell’s tweet.

(Via CNN & Vogue)