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In July 2021, we received several inquiries from Snopes readers regarding remarks that U.S. President Joe Biden made about baseless QAnon-related conspiracy theories which posit that Democrats and political progressives, as a group, suck the blood of children. During a CNN townhall event in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 21, host Don Lemon asked Biden about the partisan rancor surrounding efforts by congressional Democrats to set up an inquiry into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, and struck a pessimistic note about the broader prospects of bipartisan collaboration, asking Biden: If Republicans and Democrats can’t come together — right? — to investigate the biggest attack on our Capitol in 200 years, what makes you think that they can come together on anything? In response, Biden spoke about misinformation around the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and the role of misinformation and conspiracy theories in deepening mutual misunderstanding and conflict between Democrats and Republicans in the United States. A video of the exchange can be watched below, but the following is an edited transcript of Biden's response: Biden was referring to a set of false claims, linked to the QAnon cluster of conspiracy theories, that globalist elites including Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and other prominent figures in progressive politics, the news media, and the Democratic party, engage in mass satanic ritual child abuse, including drinking the blood of children. Such claims are utterly false. During the 2020 presidential election campaign, followers of those theories predominantly supported outgoing President Donald Trump, whom they largely viewed as a tacit supporter or even leader of their (QAnon's) movement, and vehemently opposed Biden, whom they viewed as either complicit, or an active participant in, the nonexistent liberal conspiracy of child sacrifice. In context, then, the sense of Biden's remarks at the CNN townhall in July 2021 was clear, and he was making the perfectly uncontroversial point that while he strongly supports bipartisan collaboration on important matters of policy and procedure, such collaboration is made much more difficult in light of what he regards as misinformation and disagreement about basic facts — for example, in relation to the events of Jan. 6 — and the fact that a non-trivial cohort of those who typically vote for Republican House and Senate candidates, believe Biden and other Democrats are engaged in the worst kind of ritual child abuse imaginable. Biden made another reference to the drinking children's blood theory, while speaking to reporters upon his return to the White House after the CNN townhall on July 21. Shelby Talcott, from the right-wing Daily Caller website, asked Biden about the Democratic position on police reform and the defund the police movement. It's important to note that Biden has long since repeatedly clarified that he opposes efforts to defund the police, and prominent congressional Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have also pushed back against that movement, popular among some left-wing activists within the Democratic coalition. A video of the brief exchange between Talcott and Biden can be viewed here. Below is a transcript: In context, the sense of Biden's remarks was again clear in this second instance. After Biden made it clear that he and other leaders within the Democratic Party are opposed to defunding the police, Talcott again asked whether some people within the party favored that policy. Biden retorted by asking whether some people within the Republican Party supported the belief that Biden and other Democrats were engaged in child blood harvesting, making the point that controversial views among some party members was not the sole province of the Democrats, and also that those prevalent on the fringes of the GOP were much more destructive and outrageous. One can dispute the accuracy of that argument, but the point being made by Biden was clear and, in itself, coherent. Despite this context, and despite the fact that child sacrifice, ritual child abuse, and blood harvesting theories were a highly publicized and widely reported fringe feature of the 2020 presidential election (Trump himself even promoted the false claim that Biden was a pedophile), several right-wing commentators expressed apparent bafflement at Biden's references to sucking the blood of children, and some described the president as being obsessed with the subject, thus passively promoting the underlying conspiracy theory of Biden's personal involvement in child sacrifice. For example, on July 23 the right-wing, pro-Trump commentator Benny Johnson, a known source of politically-motivated disinformation, posted a video to Facebook with the headline Biden rants about sucking children's blood at the White House, a formulation of words which could quite foreseeably promote the outrageous conspiracy itself, because it conspicuously did not make clear that Biden was referring critically to the belief in the conspiracy theory, among some Republicans, rather than ranting about sucking children's blood itself. The video was also accompanied by a mocked-up photograph of Biden with vampire fangs: Johnson said the president's exchange with Talcott was evidence that he is clinically unwell, but speculated he may have been referring to some fringe QAnon conspiracy theory that no one's ever heard of, even though it was widely reported during the 2020 presidential election campaign, and evidently well known enough for Johnson himself to quickly make the obvious connection, which was made even more obvious by the fact that, earlier that same evening, Biden had already explicitly referred to it as a QAnon theory. Similarly, former Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis tweeted out a video clip from the exchange with Talcott, along with the text: Anyone else concerned how obsessed Joe Biden is with sucking blood out of kids? Again, this characterization grossly misrepresented the fact that Biden was, for the second time in one evening, citing the existence of a right-wing conspiracy theory about child sacrifice to make a broader point about the difficulties of bipartisan consensus, rather than articulating a personal fixation on the fictional practice of blood harvesting itself. By reframing Biden's remarks in this way, and describing him as obsessed, Ellis' tweet likely served to further promulgate the underlying conspiracy theory, namely that Biden himself is personally involved in drinking children's blood. Likewise, the conservative website Red State called Biden's remarks creepy and speculated: Perhaps his answer is part of some weird fantasy he’s been suppressing... If, at first glance, Biden's remarks appeared odd, that's because the conspiracy theory to which he was referring is, itself, exceedingly weird. In bringing it up on July 21, Biden was highlighting a real, widely known and highly publicized conspiracy theory, popular among a vocal cohort of right-wing Americans and supporters of Trump, as an example of the kind of rhetorical excesses that have taken root among sections of the right in recent years, as well as an inflammatory set of allegations that, for obvious reasons, has the potential to constitute a two-way obstacle to bipartisan cooperation. Any response or commentary that expresses bafflement or concern about the sense of Biden's remarks must therefore be indicative of either blatant intellectual dishonesty, or an unfortunate lack of basic knowledge about political rhetoric in the United States in the past few years. Finally, Snopes itself was caught up in the wave of reactions to Biden's remarks. On July 23, Kyle Mann, editor-in-chief of the self-described satirical website the Babylon Bee, tweeted out what appeared to be a screenshot from a Snopes fact check of the claim Do Democrats suck the blood of children? along with the rating Mostly False. Mann added: Well that's a relief, with the point being that any rating other than False would seem to imply there was, rather worryingly, an element of truth to the claim that Democrats suck the blood of children: Of course, the screenshot was entirely bogus, and there is not an iota of truth to that claim. Snopes had not published any such fact check at the time Mann posted his tweet, and this fact check carries an unequivocal rating of False.
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