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  • 2021-05-20 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Biden 'Fake' Drive a Ford Truck? (de)
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  • On May 19, 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden stopped by the Ford River Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Michigan, to tour the company's production facility for the new all-electric F-150 Lightning. At the end of the visit, Biden said that he was a car guy and that he would like to test drive the new vehicle. Ford obliged, and the president took a spin in the new electric vehicle, saying at the end of the ride that this sucker's quick. Here's a video of Biden's test drive from The Associated Press: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZE4_YXGBiI&t=50s While this moment was largely uneventful (although some took issue with a joke Biden made about hitting a reporter), hyperpartisan news outlets and social media personalities claimed that this video actually documented a deepening conspiracy about Biden's health. The website Gateway Pundit published a slow-motion clip taken from C-SPAN's footage and claimed that it showed how Biden was faking this test drive, and that the truck was actually being controlled by the person in the passenger seat via a second steering wheel. The Gateway Pundit wrote: Biden did not fake drive this truck, and this all-electric vehicle was not equipped with two steering wheels. Mike Levine, Ford North America product communications manager, confirmed to the automative news website Jalopnik that there was no other set of controls in the vehicle Biden drove. The object the Gateway Pundit claims the passenger is holding in this video is not a steering wheel. It's a camera. It appears that the secret service agent was simply reaching out to make sure that this camera didn't fall off the dashboard. Here's an enlarged image showing this moment. The Gateway Pundit's main piece of evidence for the double-driver conspiracy theory is superimposed in the top left: Furthermore, other images exist showing other angles of the drive that make it clear this vehicle didn't have two steering wheels. At the end of the above-displayed video from The Associated Press, for instance, you can get a glimpse through the windshield that shows Biden's hands on the steering wheel and no steering wheel visible on the passenger side. At another moment, we get a view through the passenger side windows which, again, shows Biden with his hands on the wheel and the passenger without a steering wheel. This moment is more clearly visible in the original video from from C-SPAN. https://www.c-span.org/video/?511860-101/president-biden-test-drives-ford-electric-vehicle The claim that Biden fake drove this vehicle can also be disproven by the fact that this drive wasn't entirely scheduled. If you noticed in these videos, there is some odd material hanging on the side of this all-electric F-150 Lightning. This is not part of the design of the vehicle that will be available for purchase. This is a sort of camouflage that the company uses to obscure the public's view of vehicles before they are officially released. The Detroit Free Press reported that Ford had to scramble a little after Biden asked to test drive one of their vehicles. (en)
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