Fact check: Eric Trump posts video that falsely claims Joe Biden used teleprompter in Telemundo interview

Eric Trump, son of President Donald Trump, tweeted a video on Wednesday that falsely claimed to show Joe Biden being “caught-red handed using a teleprompter” in an interview with Telemundo anchor José Díaz-Balart.

“Unreal!” Eric Trump wrote above the video, which had been posted by another Trump supporter.

The clip shows Biden looking to his left while talking about his policy on deportations. Biden then pauses for a moment and says, “OK, I lost that line.” Díaz-Balart then tells him, “We can talk you and I on that.”

If you watch the full interview, the context for this moment is clear — and it’s not at all what Eric Trump claims.

Facts First: Biden was not using a teleprompter during the interview. Here’s what happened: Telemundo set up a screen, to Biden’s left, for viewers to ask Biden their own questions; Biden was looking to the left because he was addressing his answer directly to a woman who had asked him a question about deportations. Midway through the answer, the screen showing the woman went black, so Biden said, “I lost that line.” Díaz-Balart responded that Biden could just talk with him on the subject.

You can see the full exchange beginning at the 8:45 mark here. Below is an image of Biden looking at the woman on the screen:

Díaz-Balart told Politico reporter Marc Caputo on Wednesday that Eric Trump’s tweet about a teleprompter is not true.

“Of course not. He was asked to answer questions from Telemundo viewers — they were on a monitor. He would answer the monitor. In one moment the monitor went to black — he said ‘I lost the lady.’ I told him he could answer looking at me and that was that,” Díaz-Balart said, according to Caputo. (CNN has also asked Telemundo for comment.)

Eric Trump’s tweet is the latest in a series of dishonest video clips from the Trump campaign and its allies. In an effort to make Biden look confused or senile, they have repeatedly posted videos that have been snipped, edited, or inaccurately described. Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller promoted this Eric Trump tweet, adding himself that Biden was “not even pretending to look at the interviewer!”

Misleading allegations about Biden often bubble around the conservative social media ecosystem before they are amplified by the President and his sons. It’s useful to track how they spread.

In this case, Tom Elliott, founder of the news clip service Grabien, tweeted the clip with a caption that baselessly asked whether Biden was reading his answer. Then Ian Miles Cheong, a user with a history of pushing misinformation, quote-tweeted Elliott’s tweet and simply asserted, “Biden is reading from the teleprompter.”