Joe Biden Buries Dogs

About

"Joe Biden Buries Dogs" or similar statements refer to memes originating on Tumblr which refer to the satirical claim that former Vice President of the United States and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden ordered his campaign staff to bury a dog alive after it walked onto his stage during a rally.

Origin

On September 26th, 2015, the YouTube channel for RT, a Russian international television network, uploaded a video titled "Pregnant dog entombed alive under pavement, rescued by local residents in Russia". The description of this video credited the original video to the channel "МОЁ! Online | Все новости Воронежа".

The video shows a man, accompanied by several neighbors, removing bricks from a street and digging to rescue a dog trapped underground. The woman filming explains that the dog was pregnant and had been left without food or water for two days after being sealed in by workers.

On March 4th, 2020, Twitch streamer wayneradiotv posted a set of gifs of the video on Tumblr; these gifs were played in reverse, appearing to instead show a person placing a dog into a hole in a street, covering it with dirt, and sealing the hole with bricks.^[1] In the caption, the poster claims that the dog had wandered onto the stage of a rally for United States presidential candidate Joe Biden, and that Biden "had his campaign team bury and seal the dog underground with bricks." A similar post was made on wayneradiotv's Twitter account.^[2]

Spread

Reactions to the posts varied, with some commenters believing it to be true and condemning Biden, some identifying it as satire and feigning shock, and others identifying it as false but unhumorous and accusing posters of spreading deliberate misinformation about a candidate in an upcoming political election. Many, regardless of how they perceived the intent of the post, expressed concern for the wellbeing of the actual animal pictured. User sexhaver declared that they wanted to make the post big enough that Biden would have to respond to it, which would further make the story appear true.^[3]

Snopes Response

On March 9th, 2020, fact-checking website Snopes published an article declaring that the story was false^[4] after the spread of edited images showing a non-existant Snopes article claiming the story was true:

…Tumblr pages “Wayne Radio TV” and “Piss Vortex” started spreading a rumor that 2020 presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden had his staff bury a dog after it wandered on stage during a campaign event. While this crude rumor was unbelievable, it was accompanied by a set of manipulated images which appeared to show a Snopes article had rated the claim as “True.”

Biden’s campaign did not bury a dog on stage during a rally and Snopes did not publish an article verifying that he did. This rumor and fact check were made up out of whole cloth.

This was met by further satirical posts claiming that Snopes were the ones responsible for spreading misinformation.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References