Crowd did not heckle Biden with 'We need Trump' chant at 2021 rally | Fact check

Gabrielle Settles, USA TODAY
·2 min read
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The claim: Crowd shouted 'We need Trump' at 2021 McAuliffe rally

A Dec. 2 Instagram video (direct link, archive link) shows President Joe Biden standing behind a lectern as former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe sits behind him. A crowd can be heard chanting as Biden tries to speak.

“People yelling, ‘We need Trump,’” the onscreen text reads.

The video shows Biden talking to the crowd: “That’s okay. Look – it’s not a Trump rally. Let ‘em holler. No one’s paying attention to ‘em.”

The video was liked more than 100,000 times in two weeks.

More from the USA TODAY Fact-Check Team:

Our rating: False

This video is miscaptioned, as the crowd was not yelling for Trump. A group of hecklers opposed to a pipeline project interrupted Biden’s speech at McAuliffe’s 2021 campaign event.

C-SPAN recording shows Biden’s hecklers getting heckled

On July 23, 2021, Biden was in Virginia to help McAuliffe, a Democrat, with his ultimately unsuccessful campaign for governor.

C-SPAN coverage shows Biden was in the middle of talking about vaccination rates in the country when members of the crowd began shouting, “Stop line three!” That's a reference to a controversial pipeline project that stretches from Canada to Wisconsin.

Others in the crowd booed and shouted, “Let’s go Joe!” over the pipeline hecklers.

The nature of the chants became unclear after that point as multiple groups attempted different chants simultaneously. But no point in the video shows a pro-Trump chant, and none of the media coverage from the event reflected observations of such a chant.

The C-SPAN video showed angles of the crowd as the ruckus arose. A White House transcript of Biden’s speech also included the interruption.

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USA TODAY has fact-checked similar claims about Biden being heckled by crowds, including altered videos that add audio of profane chants.

USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

The Associated Press fact-checked a similar claim about Biden’s speech.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Crowd at Biden speech chanted about pipeline, not Trump | Fact check