President Joe Biden has signed a flurry of executive orders in the first week of his administration. While some are aimed at bolstering the nation's coronavirus response, others are intended to dismantle many of former President Donald Trump's policies.
In the wake of the executive actions, Trump supporters and right-leaning users started sowing doubt on the legitimacy of these orders on social media. Last month, pro-Trump Twitter users circulated a video showing Biden claiming he "didn't know" what he was signing as he put pen to paper on an executive order, along with the claim that Biden was not fit to run the country.
'These People are Faking This'
Now, MAGA supporters are pushing the claim that Biden did not actually sign real executive orders, but blank pieces of paper. The claim was accompanied with a cellphone recorded video of what appears to be a television broadcast of Biden signing the executive orders.
In the clip, the camera zooms in on the pages and a woman can be heard claiming no writing is visible on the pages. "These people are faking this!," the woman says.
Fact-Check
Not only was the video of low quality, it was also overexposed, making any writing on the white pages illegible. However, fact-checking website Snopes did manage to find higher quality images from the same event, which can be substantiated by the outfits worn by Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and the location of the signing ceremony, which took place in the State Dining Room of the White House January 21, 2021.
A close-up of the photo on the right clearly shows Biden signing pages with words printed on them. Once the colors of the photo are adjusted to reduce exposure, the print on white paper becomes more visible, something that is not apparent in images that may have been digitally altered.
The video footage in the post is overexposed, and details in the photo appear lighter, including Biden's tie and the executive order he signed. Therefore, the claim made in the video showing Biden signing blank executive orders is flagged as "false."
Executive Orders Signed by Biden
In the first days since assuming office Biden has signed as many as 30 executive orders. These include commitments to rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change, halting funding for the construction of Trump's border wall, repealing Trump's travel ban targeting Muslim countries, reversing the former president's military transgender ban, allowing transgender women to compete in women's sports, imposing a mask mandate on federal property, ramping up vaccination supplies and requiring international travelers to provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test prior to traveling to the US, among others.
