Videos from Zoom calls following the 2020 election reveal that Biden-Harris staffers manipulated “disinformation” to obscure then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s cognitive decline from voters.
Former Biden-Harris campaign Digital Director Rob Flaherty, now Kamala Harris’s deputy campaign manager, disclosed that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) established a program to detect, track, and flag “misinformation narratives” on social media, including discussions about Biden’s mental fitness. These details came from videos obtained by journalist Matt Orfalea, showing a Zoom call between Flaherty and HOPE not hate, a U.K.-based activist group focused on combating “far-right extremism.” The call occurred on November 18, 2020, according to a HOPE not hate Twitter post.
Flaherty described the program as “one of the smartest things” orchestrated by the Democratic Party and was joined on the call by Timothy Durigan, recently appointed as the lead analyst for the DNC’s Counter-Disinformation Program, and Rebecca Rinkevich, then Director of Rapid Response for Biden For President and later the White House deputy director of digital strategy.
Rinkevich noted a significant amount of “disinformation” regarding Biden’s mental fitness, explaining that posts related to this topic were targeted in real-time based on users’ online behaviors, such as their searches and visited websites.
Durigan led the program, with his reports reaching the highest levels of the Biden campaign. The program is still listed on the DNC’s website, and Durigan remains with the DNC, according to his LinkedIn profile. He previously worked briefly as a Data Visualization Analyst on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Rinkevich credited the program with helping Biden secure at least 200,000 votes in 2020. Biden won key states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by fewer votes combined than this figure, according to NPR data.
“The concern about mental acuity decreased by eight points over the course of our campaign,” Rinkevich said.
Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 election on July 21 after a campaign by top Democrats following concerns about his cognitive abilities, exacerbated by a poor debate performance on June 27. This followed White House claims that videos showing Biden freezing during a Juneteenth celebration and wandering off at the G7 Summit were “cheap fakes.”
