Artist depicted in Joe Biden’s ‘America’ campaign video is actually Danish

An ad released by Joe Biden to kick off his 2020 run for the White House contains a seriously misleading representation.

An artist featured in an America-themed campaign spot for the Biden campaign is actually Danish. The ad itself is titled, “America: Anything Is Possible.”

Biden releases misleading ad

The Danish man appears briefly in the advertisement, published by the Biden campaign on Tuesday. The ad interpolates audio of former president Barack Obama praising Biden’s record with a monologue from Biden about the American dream.

The Danish artist is shown working while Biden says, “I’m more optimistic about America’s chances in the world today than I have been in my whole career.”

Not only is the artist not from America, but according to the Daily Caller, the Biden campaign purchased the video rights from a stock film company. The footage is entitled: “Medium shot of a man painting in a workshop.”

Biden bought the video rights from Dissolve Ltd., which bought the video from a company called Scandinavian Images Exclusive. The Daily Caller said it confirmed the artist’s identity with Dissolve, but the company would not release his name, as he had no dealings or involvement with Biden’s campaign.

The video clip used in the spot was filmed in Zealand, Denmmark sometime in 2018.

Watch:

Clintonesque clichés

The video has about as much substance and authenticity as the rest of Biden’s cliche’-saddled campaign. Biden is running the kind of airbrushed, establishment-friendly, big donor-funded campaign one would expect from a holdover of the Clinton-Bush era.

His campaign message has so far been lean on policy, relying mostly on the promise that only he can beat Donald Trump. But to Biden’s critics on the left, he is a dinosaur of the past. Biden’s campaign launch was hobbled even before it started as the Democrat struggled to reckon with his past interactions with women, his handling of Anita Hill’s allegations of misconduct against Clarence Thomas, and his history of crafting tough crime policies.

Beyond the broadsides he levels against Wall Street and rhetoric he spouts about restoring the middle class, Biden’s campaign has been heavy on platitudes and light on policy. In “America: Anything Is Possible,” Biden riffs on well-worn, sappy clichés about American greatness, but doesn’t put forward any policy ideas to solve the country’s woes.

Biden’s campaign launch video exemplified this safe approach, boldly staking out the controversial claim that the deadly rally in Charlottesville was bad. In his video, which is almost entirely focused on attacking Trump, the former vice president repeated the debunked claim that Trump praised white nationalists who appeared at the rally.

The entire opening salvo of Biden’s campaign was based on a lie. Since entering the race last Thursday, Biden, the frontrunner in the race, has largely ignored his primary competitors to focus his attacks on Donald Trump and rally in the Rust Belt. While he publicly spits fire at the rich and powerful, he is simultaneously tapping into Obama’s big donor network.

For a candidate who cultivates an image of being folksy and down to earth, Biden’s campaign is shaping up to be roughly as sincere as Hillary Clinton’s was.