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Friday, May. 21, 2021

Was Joe Biden caught ‘fake driving’?

Dana Ford, Lead Stories
no

Footage from various news organizations show the president in control, behind the wheel, on May 18, 2021, when he test-drove Ford's electric F-150 Lightning pickup.

Claims that the wheels didn't move when Biden turned the steering wheel and that the passenger in the president's car had his hand on a second set of controls are based on snippets of video taken out of context.

"This rumor is badly misguided," a spokesperson for Ford told Lead Stories referring to the claims. "There was only one steering wheel in the vehicle the President drove on Tuesday."

Video from news organizations showed what happened from different angles. Footage from The Associated Press showed what the passenger likely grabbed when the president accelerated: a camera. Video published by CNN showed Biden moving the steering wheel both left and right, before straightening out and accelerating.

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

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