An awkward and apparently accidental showing of a photo of President Joe Biden with a report about an accused child molester went viral ahead of the president’s first State of the Union speech.
The report from WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh showed a news anchor transitioning from a report of a robbery to that of serious accusations against an elderly man.
“A 71-year-old man was accused of inappropriately touching a 12-year-old girl at the Walmart in West Mifflin Sunday afternoon,” she said.
But the photograph showed instead a smiling Biden with a reference to the State of the Union speech scheduled for Tuesday evening.
Video of the report was widely circulated on social media:
At the end of the video, the camera cuts to another person at the news stations who appears to be very befuddled before cutting back to the female anchor without the Biden graphic.
The video garnered more than 915k views in just a few hours before the beginning of Biden’s speech.
Many critics of the president used the video to drudge up accusations made against Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign of acting inappropriately around women and girls.
Biden was also accused of sexual assault by a woman who had worked for him as a staff assistant. Tara Reade claimed that he had forcibly kissed her at a gym in 1993 when he was a U.S. Senator. Biden denied the claims and went on to win the 2020 presidential election.
The president will address the nation from the U.S. Congress at about 9 p.m.
Here’s more about Reade’s accusations against Biden:
“It Shattered My Life”: Former Joe Biden Staffer Tara Reade Says He Sexually Assaulted Her in 1993
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