Some social media users are sharing a collage of photos of US President Joe Biden that show clear differences between the images: the color of his eyes and his handwriting. ‘Blue eyes versus brown eyes. Right hand versus left hand ”, reads the meme. Some users claim that these ‘differences’ are proof that the photos show an ‘actor’ or ‘a body double’, not Biden himself. This claim, which speaks to the baseless QAnon belief that Biden is not really president, is false.
Examples of these posts can be seen here, here, here, here.
Comments include: “Do you enjoy the movie? All movies have an end. Patience. You are going to hold the end! And ‘He has a double play that Hollywood made. He was probably arrested. They just did not announce it because they do not want our streets on fire again. Probably a lot of them Dems have doubles. ”
Some proponents of the widespread QAnon conspiracy theory, who argue that former President Donald Trump secretly includes a cabal of child sex predators that include prominent Democrats, Hollywood elites and ‘deep-state’ allies (here), claim that Biden does not really president and that the military is in power until Trump returns to office.
Reuters has downplayed a number of social media posts that look like this narrative, claiming that TV interviews have a “physical double” instead of Biden or that he used CGI (computer-generated images) (here, here). Other unsubstantiated allegations suggest that the White House is a ‘movie set’ (here, here, here)
HANDWRITING
Reuters previously discussed the two images of Biden signing documents here.
Biden is right-handed, as he explains here: youtu.be/nGrB-5ieeMU?t=75. The photo on the left is flipped vertically to mislead the viewers. The original photo taken here by the AP shows him drawing as usual with his right hand.
EYES
The image at the top right of this meme is a silent grip, visible in this Reuters report here, from a video from April 25, 2019, when Biden announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential candidate. The footage is available on its YouTube channel (here) and C-SPAN (here). A similar frame can be seen here: youtu.be/VbOU2fTg6cI?t=25.
Throughout the video, Biden’s eyes appear clearly blue, narrow angle visible here: youtube / VbOU2fTg6cI? T = 92. The much “darker” eyes visible in the meme are probably the result of the low-quality images.
The image at the top left can be seen on an archived version of Biden’s senator website here. According to Wikimedia Commons’ description, the image was captured on September 26, 2005 (here).
The image does show Biden with lighter blue eyes, but it appears to be a result of the lighting where the photo was taken. Photos of Biden from the same year, captured in different settings, show similar apparent variations of tone, see ‘lighter’ blue (here, here) and ‘darker’ blue (here, here)
Reuters had earlier unleashed social media messages claiming his eyes looked black during the first presidential campaign debate in 2020 (here).
VERDICT
Untrue. Alleged differences in the color of Biden’s eyes and writing hand are the result of lighting and a digitally inverted image.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.