President Joe Biden has been on the campaign trail in recent days, though his performances at stops in important battleground states have only deepened concerns about his cognitive abilities.
The octogenarian incumbent left many viewers baffled with his incoherent remarks at a brewery in Superior, Wisconsin, last week.
During the same trip, he posed for a photo while wearing a construction hard hat that critics immediately began pointing out was backward.
Despite having access to the photograph and other evidence to support the claim, left-leaning fact-checking site Snopes nevertheless determined that assertions about the hat being on the wrong way were “false.”
“The photo is genuine,” an article published by Snopes on Friday confirmed. “And it does look, at first glance, like Biden was wearing that hard hat backwards. But after comparing it to other photos and videos of the same event, we were forced to reach the opposite conclusion: The hat on Biden’s head was facing forward, bill to the front, not backward.”
Snopes fact-check: "Biden wore a hard hat backwards" is misinformation
Who are you going to believe:
Snopes or your lying eyes? pic.twitter.com/p30Qu0uWlY— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 27, 2024
Shortly thereafter, Snopes was caught up in the debate, with a growing number of social media users offering their own analysis of the photo and the supposed fact-check.
By the following day, Snopes’ conclusion had been reversed and the article included an editor’s note explaining the reversal.
“We received a ton of comments in a very short time challenging our assumption that wearing a hard hat ‘backwards’ means wearing it with the brim facing to the rear, and ‘forwards’ means wearing it brim to the front,” the update began. “On the basis of that assumption, we originally rated the claim that Biden was wearing a hard hat backwards as false.”
Citing a “prevailing counter-argument” that the hat Biden wor had been “purposely configured by its owner such that the bill and tightening knob are worn to the back,” however, Snopes conceded that its initial judgment was wrong.
“Therefore, it’s argued, it’s actually true that, in the photo op discussed below, Biden was wearing it backwards,” the editor’s note continued. “The strap and tightening knob, which should have been behind Biden’s head, were on his forehead.”
Snopes determined that such an argument was “sound” and decided to change its rating from “false” to “true,” adding: “Thanks to all who argued on behalf of this correction.”
