Did President Joe Biden use "crisis actors" to portray U.S. Marines for a speech? No, that's not true: Real Marines were standing guard when Biden delivered a speech on September 1, 2022, that called out former President Donald Trump and his "Make America Great Again" ideology. The claim was made on a website known for fictitious content.
The claim originally appeared in an article (archived here) published by Real Raw News on September 3, 2022 and titled "Biden Hires Crisis Actors to Portray U.S. Marines." The claim was also repeated on social media in this video that appeared on Facebook and matched the article's claims. The article opened:
The criminal Biden regime employed actors to portray Marine guards during the illegitimate president's hellish speech Thursday night, a source in Gen. Berger's office told Real Raw News.
Users on social media saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Biden Hires Crisis Actors to Portray U.S. Marines | Real Raw News
The "source in Gen. Berger's office" was unnamed throughout the article: The general in question is Gen. David Berger, commandant of the Marines. The article also went on to state that "the entirety of the Corps renounced Biden as a fake president."
However, that does not appear to be the case, because the Marines who flanked Biden during the speech were real. In an email to Lead Stories sent on September 7, 2022, Ryan Bruce, a media officer for the communication directorate of the Marines headquarters, simply said of the claim that the Marines were fraudulent:
That's fake.
Lead Stories found no other credible reports supporting the claim that fake Marines were standing guard during Biden's speech. On the contrary, there were reports (here, here, here and here) about the criticism the Biden administration received for having Marines stand guard during the president's politically critical speech.
Real Raw News has a long history of publishing false claims in mock news stories, many of them about convictions and executions of various public figures at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. For example, the site reported former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was hanged (she wasn't); former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta was executed (he wasn't); and that "the military" convicted former Attorney General William Barr on charges of treason (it didn't).
The website for Real Raw News includes a disclaimer that warns readers not to take its content too seriously. Specifically, it says:
Information on this website is for informational and educational and entertainment purposes. This website contains humor, parody, and satire. We have included this disclaimer for our protection, on the advice on legal counsel.
(Source: RealRawNews.com screenshot taken Tue Aug 3 16:39:48 UTC 2021)
Lead Stories has covered claims published by Real Raw News in the past. Previous Lead Stories debunks of Real Raw News items are collected here.
