Joe Biden dead conspiracy theory after video shows White House body bag

A video purporting to show a “body bag” being wheeled out of the front of the White House has sparked conspiracy theories that U.S. President Joe Biden is dead.

The footage at one point features a timestamp dating it to 12:41 p.m. ET on June 23, 2023. The clip first emerged online shortly after it was recorded, but has since been reposted to Twitter. After being published by a prominent conspiracy theory account on Sunday, as of 3 a.m. ET on Monday it had been viewed 8.5 million times.

Despite the timestamp within the video itself and Biden’s numerous public appearances since, several users republished it. People have posted that the sitting president was the one in the so-called body bag, after having a “heart attack” or “aneurism.” It follows the emergence of other conspiracy theories concerning Biden, including that he has secretly been replaced by a clone or an alleged twin brother.

The president was last seen in public, very much alive, on Friday when he gave remarks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn his student-debt forgiveness program.

The earlier footage is a screen recording of a CCTV camera pointed at the front of Biden’s official residence. It appears to show a black shape being wheeled out of the front entrance and to the right. This is then followed by another, smaller black shape being wheeled in the same direction.

Why a president who is supposedly dead would be secretly wheeled out of the front entrance, and who might be on the second gurney, are not explained by the conspiracy theorists.

“Nothing to see here. Just a body bag getting wheeled out of the White House,” Dan Collins, a Twitter user, wrote. “That’s Joe Biden,” another tweeted on the social-media site.

“Rumors last night Biden had a heart attack,” Hannah Bree tweeted. “Another was it was an aneurism. Now what looks like a body bag out the front door. Someone better start talking.”

Meanwhile, another user wrote on Twitter that the video showed the “routine replacement of the Biden clone.” This references another conspiracy theory, which has been circulating since at least 2021, that the president had been replaced by a counterfeit because he was already dead.

More recently, claims have emerged that Biden, 80, had been secretly replaced by a twin. While the commander in chief has two younger brothers, including one, Jim, who looks similar to him, he has no twins.

Newsweek contacted the White House via email for comment on Monday.

Biden, who is already the oldest president in U.S. history, has faced questions about his age and mental acuity after a series of public stumbles, but has brushed off concerns about his physical and mental health.

In February, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the president’s physician, said Biden “remains fit for duty, and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations.”

Many other users dismissed the body bag claims as outlandish. They wrote that what conspiracy theorists saw as a body bag “could be practically anything” and that whatever it was had been “taken out the front door.”

“If I wanted to move a body around without anybody seeing it I would move it out the front door of one of the most photographed buildings in the world,” one user wrote sarcastically.

At the time the video was taken, Biden would have been receiving his daily briefing, according to the president’s public schedule. At 3:15 p.m. that day—a little over two-and-a-half hours after his body was supposedly wheeled out of the White House—he appeared on camera in the Roosevelt Room during a meeting about offshore wind, and it was open to the press.