State political leaders face criticism for sharing altered video of Biden speaking at campaign rally

In the final hours before Election Day, some political leaders in Minnesota are being criticized for sharing a video that was manipulated to make it look like former Vice President Joe Biden said "Hello, Minnesota," to a crowd in Florida.

But Biden wasn’t confused – he was, in fact, at the state fairgrounds in St. Paul and the viral video had been altered to include signs with the words "Tampa, Florida" that weren’t there.

Twitter eventually tagged the video as "manipulated" and later took it down completely, but not before it had been viewed more than a million times and shared by many, including Republican House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt.

Daudt did not respond to requests for comment, but Director of Public Affairs for the Minnesota House Republican Caucus Andrew Wagner told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that the House Minority Leader’s retweet was not one of the "worst offenders" because he "offered no commentary" other than an eye roll emoji.

Video altered to make it look like Biden greeted wrong state

Others, including experts on misinformation such as Claire Wardle, insist political leaders should take matters like this one more seriously.

"What we need people to realize is you sharing misleading information is as bad as creating it," said Wardle, who is the co-founder of the nonprofit First Draft News.

"Some people might say, ‘Well, whatever. It was just a little Photoshopped sign, it was kind of funny, it said Biden was confused,’ but actually, unless we take every one of these examples seriously, that’s why we’re in the mess that we’re in," Wardle added.

Vaccinating Misinformation: Past outbreak highlights dangers of current ‘info-demic’

Minnesota Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan also shared the altered Biden video on Twitter but later deleted her tweet and replaced it with an explanation that she did not originally know the video was a "fake."

"If we had (more) leaders saying that, it would make us all realize we’re humans," Wardle said. "We can make mistakes but we have to own up to those mistakes because sharing misleading information, especially now so close to an election, is really problematic."

In June, 5 INVESTIGATES found political leaders from both the GOP and the DFL shared misinformation about events in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.

Now, experts warn that everyone will have to be on guard more than ever for misinformation in the hours immediately before and after Election Day.

"Over the next several days, be really careful about who you’re listening to. Everybody’s on edge, everybody is going to be desperate for an answer," Wardle said. "We all – left, right, it doesn’t matter who you are – everybody needs to take this really seriously."