John McCabe, the Editorial Director for Ogden Newspapers and the Managing Editor of Ogden’s Wheeling newspapers, recently retweeted the following post:

At 1:37 "The reason I was able to stay sequestered at home was because some black woman was able to stock the grocery shelf"
Why does Biden think that it's only black people who stock grocery shelves? https://t.co/osYcQhG9Tl

— Rising serpent 🇺🇸 (@rising_serpent) September 19, 2020

The tweet asks us to watch “What Happens When Joe Biden Takes Questions Without A Teleprompter.” In the included video, Biden slurs his words and looks spaced-out or on medication; he then appears to be rescued by a teleprompter. Apparently, Facebook and Twitter users were exposed to a number of these compilations.

I was curious and so I decided to do some investigating of the circumstances surrounding the video.

Some background

On September 15, Joe Biden hosted a Veterans Roundtable in Tampa, Florida. Here is C-Span’s description of the event:

2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden hosted a roundtable discussion with veterans in Tampa, Florida. Mr. Biden and the attendees discussed many issues affecting veterans such as mental health treatment and educational opportunities.

If you look at the C-Span video of the event, it appears to have lasted for an hour and 36 minutes.

96 minutes becomes slightly more than 2 minutes

That’s some major editing and if you watch the video closely, you can see numerous “jumps” in the video. So, this two-minute video proved to be an easy-to-create compilation of whatever the video editor wants us to see and hear. The seeing part is easy – we see shots of Biden looking bewildered and confused. The hearing part is even easier – since Biden’s mask hides his mouth and some of his facial expression, the soundtrack can include anything because the viewer cannot match the mouth with the actual words. And thus, we get two minutes of Biden that meets the Trump campaign’s “old and losin’ it” version of him.

What about the Biden quote?

The tweet calls our attention to a Joe Biden quote in which he appears to be saying that he stayed home because some black woman was working. If you watch or read the quote within the context of the speech, however, Biden is not talking about himself but rather all of us. He appears to be using the “I” collectively – the “I” standing for the “American public.” (If you want to see and here the context for the actual quote rather than the one sentence that is quoted, it comes one hour and 21 minutes into the program.) Biden says:

Because for the American Public, the blinders have been taken off. They’ve all of a sudden seen a helluva lot clearer. The reason I was able to stay sequestered in my home is because some black woman was able to stock the grocery shelf, or a young Hispanic out there, 60,000 of them acting as first responders and nurses and doctors, or all of a sudden people are realizing, my lord, these people have done so much, not just black, white, across-the-board, have done so much for me. We can get things done.

Reading or watching the context would also explain why there was no outrage expressed to what Biden said – unlike this tweet, it was put in its proper context.

So why is the Editorial Director of Ogden Newspaper tweeting this crap?

Maybe I’m assuming too much, but I would think that a managing editor/editorial director of a newspaper chain can spot an untruthful and bogus video whenever he/she see one.* Yeah, McCabe probably knows better but Ogden is about supporting Trump even if it means endorsing fake videos.
*The “facts” in the Biden video were readily verifiable but McCabe chose to ignore them in favor of retweeting a questionable video whose sole purpose is to make Biden look bad.

*On sources: I've learned in blogging that posting a tweet is often a much more efficient use of time than trying to rewrite the writer's points. The key, it seems to me, is to use credible and transparent sources -- a reputable journalist or someone who has some expertise in what is being discussed. (You want your reader to trust your sources.) Were McCabe's retweets the best sources he could find to prove the point? Or were they the only ones?