Does a C-SPAN Video Show Joe Biden ‘Confessing to Bribery’?
The U.S. may have pushed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor, but not for the reasons implied in a video clip.
Bethania Palma Published 9 October 2019
As an impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions commenced in October 2019, so did partisan invocations of whataboutism — a logical fallacy that involves “a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse than what the original party was accused of doing, however unconnected the offenses may be.”
One example of such was a video clip posted to C-SPAN’s website on Sept. 21, 2019 under the title “Joe Biden Confesses to Bribery.” The video was accompanied by a caption reading “Former Vice President Joe Biden confesses to being in charge of Ukraine for the Obama Administration, and withholding $1 billion in loan guarantees from the USA to force Ukraine to fire prosecutor who was looking into the company that Hunter Biden was receiving $83,000+ PER MONTH from”:
The user-created clip fostered a false impression by pairing a misleading caption with an excerpt from a much longer video with no context. (The video carries a statement from C-SPAN noting that “This clip, title, and description were not created by C-SPAN.”)
President Trump has been accused by a whistleblower, and is under a House-led impeachment inquiry, for allegedly attempting to coerce Ukraine into provide damaging information on Trump political rival Joe Biden by withholding crucial military aid from that country. The video on C-SPAN’s website attempted to show Biden, a potential political rival for the presidency in 2020, admitting to a parallel wrongdoing during a trip to Ukraine in 2016:
The U.S. may have pushed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor, but not for the reasons implied in a video clip.
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