CNN Fact Checker Calls Out Trump Campaign for Using Altered Photos to Portray Joe Biden as 'Hiding in His Basement'

With the November election only months away, President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign is ramping up attacks that Democratic nominee Joe Biden is cowering in his basement as Trump leads the nation.

In compliance with pandemic guidelines put forth by health experts, many of Biden's campaign events have gone digital, with the exception of a few socially distant press conferences.

Nevertheless, the Trump campaign released an ad, called Delaware, claiming that Biden "sits alone in his basement hiding, diminished."

Watch below.

Delawarewww.youtube.com

But CNN fact checkers Daniel Dale and Andrew Kaczynski saw right through it.

Ironically enough, CNN—which Trump's allies often claim embodies the so-called "fake news media"—fact checked the fake news put forth by the Trump campaign.

At least three photos in the ad have been deceptively altered, beginning with one showing Biden mournfully touching his head in an empty room.

According to CNN:

"This image was edited in two important ways. The real photo, taken by Mark Peterson, shows Biden holding a microphone at an outdoor town hall event at a nature preserve in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in September 2019, during the Democratic primary. The microphone is gone in the ad's version of the photo. So are the trees in the background of the shot, which the ad replaces with an indoor setting more suggestive of a basement."

Another photo shows Biden sitting on the floor alone in a room implied to be his basement.

Once again, CNN said that wasn't true.

Biden was not alone or at his Delaware home. Rather, this photo is from a party Biden attended in December 2019 at the home of Coralville, Iowa, Mayor John Lundell to watch the Holiday Bowl college football game. There were a bunch of other people in the room -- both party guests and journalists, including CNN reporter Sarah Mucha.

The final doctored photo shows Biden supposedly with his head down in defeat, but yet again, this was not the case:

"As Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel noted, this photo is of Biden praying at an African Methodist Episcopal church in Delaware on June 1 following the death of George Floyd."

The discrepancies were clear.

The deceptive images reinforced for many just how dependent the Trump campaign is on disinformation.

But the campaign's efforts to deceive, for some, were fraught with desperation.

The deceitful photos were aired as the Trump campaign pursues a lawsuit against the super PAC Priorities USA for using Trump's own words in a pro-Biden ad.