Sanders campaign responds to Biden doctored video claims: Biden should ‘stop trying to doctor’ public record

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) campaign responded on Saturday to former Vice President Joe Biden after Biden falsely accused the campaign of doctoring a video of him talking about Social Security cuts.

“Joe Biden should be honest with voters and stop trying to doctor his own public record of consistently and repeatedly trying to cut Social Security,” Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir said Saturday in a statement.

“The facts are very clear: Biden not only pushed to cut Social Security — he is on tape proudly bragging about it on multiple occasions.”

Shakir’s comments come after Biden, earlier on Saturday, told a crowd at Simpson College in Iowa that the Sanders campaign had “doctored the piece and it’s acknowledged that it’s a fake.” 

However, the video that Biden is referencing – in which a clip of Biden’s 2018 remarks to the Brookings Institution is played – was not doctored, Politico reports.

PolitiFact confirmed that a recent campaign email sent by Sanders’ campaign that said, “Biden lauded Paul Ryan for proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare” was false, but said nothing about the video being falsified.

However, Biden still referenced PolitiFact Saturday, saying “PolitiFact looked at it and they doctored the photo, they doctored the piece and it’s acknowledged that it’s a fake.”

After Biden’s comments, Sanders’ speechwriter David Sirota tweeted out a video from Biden’s time in the Senate.

The video depicts the then-Senator appearing animated about freezing federal spending on programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. 

“When I argued if we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well. I meant Medicare and Medicaid…I meant every single solitary thing in the government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time” he said, at the time. 

Here’s the video @JoeBiden is desperate to hide. He’s trying to mislead voters and now Politico is calling him out for wildly lying: https://t.co/daC7sAKRA4

Don’t let him get away with it. Retweet this: #BidenSocialSecurityCuts ✂️pic.twitter.com/MIAx4nO9Qa

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) January 19, 2020