Does a video circulating on TikTok show the U.S. President Joe Biden wearing a mask at an event in Ireland, thus revealing him to be an impostor? No, that's not true: President Biden did recently meet in public with U.S Embassy staff and firefighters in Dublin, Ireland, on Apr 12, 2023, but he was not wearing a silicone mask.
The claim originated in a video (archived here) shared on TikTok by several accounts such as @sofyff7 and @yasermehany, allegedly showing Biden wearing a mask.
This is what the video looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Apr 21 14:35:11 2023 UTC)
On the video, the text in Arabic, translated by Lead Stories, says:
"The Silicone mask is very obvious, and President Biden is fake"
In the video, you can also hear a voice in English (likely the person who recorded it) saying:
"Oh my Gosh, that's a mask, holy cow"
The 12-second clip shows President Biden at the Dublin International airport on April, 12, 2023, being greeted by U.S Embassy staff and firefighters upon arriving after visiting Northern Ireland.
During this event, President Biden scratches his neck while addressing the crowd, and the skin on the back of his neck wrinkles. The TikTok video appears to be a recording of a news program from a TV screen. It is blurry and the images are of poor quality. Confronting it with C-Span's footage of the event (here at the 5:22 mark) it is clear that the clip just shows a skin wrinkle in Biden's neck. There is no element or evidence to corroborate the claim that the person in the video is wearing a silicone mask and is an impostor or "fake", as some comment on TikTok.
Lead Stories previously debunked a claim that President Biden did not recognize and snubbed U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak when Biden arrived in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on April, 11, 2023.
