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Ciara O'Rourke
By Ciara O'Rourke March 9, 2023

That White House Visitors Center photo looks like Joe Biden, because it is of Joe Biden

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  • The photo in the post shows President Joe Biden’s official presidential portrait. 
 

President Joe Biden has served as commander in chief since January 2021, but a recent Facebook post claims that an impersonator’s photo is displayed among portraits of other presidents at the White House Visitor Center. 

"There have been multiple Sleepys shown along the way," the March 6 post says, referring to Biden. "The eyes go from blue to brown, the ears change, the faces change, everything, and yet many people do not see these very different faces. The fact that they put a ‘face’ on the Presidents Wall at the WH visitor center that is not really Joe Bidens, shows this."

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

It features multiple images of Biden making different facial expressions at different points in his life, seemingly leaning into an unfounded "body double" conspiracy theory that he is dead or incarcerated and impersonators disguised as Biden have been acting as president in his stead. 

One set of photos in the post, for example, shows Biden in 2008 and in 2019. "Not. the. same. guy," reads text above the pictures. But it is the same guy, just 11 years apart.

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Another image in the post shows a photo of Biden below a portrait of former Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. It appears to come from the White House Visitor Center’s display of presidential portraits, though the White House Historical Association didn’t respond to PolitiFact’s questions about this post. 

The photo in question is Biden’s official presidential portrait.

We rate claims that the White House Visitor Center is displaying a photo of a fake Biden

Pants on Fire! 

 

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That White House Visitors Center photo looks like Joe Biden, because it is of Joe Biden

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