A cropped video from a meeting between United States President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is being shared with a false claim that it shows the former falling asleep in the midst of the interaction.
The viral video circulating with the false claim, shows Biden with his eyes closed as Bennett can be heard speaking about US - Israel ties. However, BOOM found that the video was cropped and a longer version shows Biden responding to Bennett.
US President Biden met Israeli PM Bennett on August 27, 2021, at the White House, and discussed a range of global and regional challenges facing the two countries.
Former US President Donald Trump used to mock then presidential candidate Biden calling him 'Sleepy Joe', during the 2020 US election campaign.
The 22 seconds video was tweeted by Republican activist JT Lewis with the caption, "Joe Biden appears to have fallen asleep during a meeting with the Prime Minister of Israel."
The cropped video was also shared by several US right-wing commentators including Fox News host Sean Hannity and far-right Republican leader Marjorie Taylor Greene with the false claim
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral video is cropped and in the original video, we can spot US President Joe Biden responding and interacting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, which has been edited out.
Several Twitter users also pointed out in the replies to Republican activist JT Lewis that the video was cropped out and Biden was indeed awake.
In this 13.08 minutes original video uploaded by The White House on August 28, 2021, at the 12.19 minutes timestamp we can spot Bennett speaking to Biden as in the viral video. However, at the 12.51 minutes timestamp, we can spot that Biden responds to him and thanks the Israeli PM which has been edited out of the viral video.
Additionally, even in the viral video, we can spot that Biden is not asleep and was sitting with his head bent down and moving his fingers while Bennett was speaking to him.
The same interaction was also tweeted by PM of Israel's official account, where we can spot the same sequence of events.