Trump Shares Post Accusing Joe Biden of Being a Pedophile
President Donald Trump on Tuesday shared a post that labeled former Vice President Joe Biden a pedophile. The tweet featured a 2015 image of Biden comforting the wife of then-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.
Trump retweeted the post from Twitter user "Conservative Girl" Tuesday morning which features the baseless accusation. Its caption reads, "We can beat them at their game #PedoBiden." The GIF depicted in the tweet shows then-Vice President Biden leaning in and rubbing the shoulders of Stephanie Carter, who is the adult wife of former Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
The image of Biden and the Carter couple at the February 2015 swearing-in ceremony at the podium prompted "#MeToo" accusations among conservatives at the time. But Carter herself penned an essay in March 2019 in which she defended Biden's behavior and praised him for offering her comfort as she was "uncharacteristically nervous" during the ceremony. Carter said the manipulated images of her and Biden "didn't dignify a response," but critics of Biden have nonetheless used it to slander his character.
Trump and his supporters have used baseless accusations in the past to try to tie Biden to allegations of pedophilia. But as Politifact noted in response to such accusations in August, "there is no credible evidence that supports this claim" despite Biden's presence in the public eye for four decades.
The president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has posted several edited videos and images accusing Biden—and Democrats at large—of pedophilia. In tweets and Instagram posts earlier this month, Trump Jr. accused Democrats of "normalizing pedophilia."
Carter, who appears alongside her husband in Tuesday's post shared by the president, blasted critics for using screenshots of the image to accuse Biden of sexual misconduct and otherwise "creepy" behavior. In her 2019 essay looking to reclaim the narrative of the image, Carter wrote, "A still shot taken from the video—misleadingly extracted from what was a longer moment between close friends—sent out in a snarky tweet—came to be the lasting image of the day."
Although Trump's "PedoBiden" retweet still appears live as of Tuesday morning, Twitter has taken down similar posts by the president in the past. One of the social media platform's tweet-reporting features allows users to flag posts deemed "misleading about a political election or other civic event." This includes any post which users say "misrepresents its affiliation with or impersonates a candidate, elected official, political party, or government entity."
Newsweek reached out to both the Biden and Trump campaigns for additional remarks Tuesday morning.
