Video of crowd chanting anti-Biden phrase at Army-Navy game is fake

On Dec. 9, the Army West Point Black Knights defeated the Navy Midshipmen, 17-11, in the 124th meeting between the two military academy football teams. 

A video clip that went viral appears to show the Army Corps of Cadets jumping up and down in celebration while yelling an anti-Joe Biden chant.

The video clip has been shared across X, TikTok and YouTube and has racked up millions of views. Some people claim the video was edited.

THE QUESTION

Is a video clip appearing to show people chanting an anti-Joe Biden phrase during the Army-Navy game real?

THE SOURCES

• Original video posted to X by New England Sports Network journalist Keagan Stiefel on Dec. 9, 2023
• Videos from a Staind reunion concert taken in September 2021

THE ANSWER

No, the video clip of people appearing to chant an anti-Joe Biden phrase during the Army-Navy game isn’t real. The audio was manipulated to include the anti-Biden chant.

WHAT WE FOUND

During the 2023 Army-Navy game, the Army Corps of Cadets were jumping up and down in celebration, but they weren’t chanting an anti-Joe Biden phrase. The video that recently went viral was manipulated to include audio lifted from a video taken during a concert in 2021.

VERIFY found the original video from the Army-Navy game posted by New England Sports Network journalist Keagan Stiefel. That video was retweeted by Barstool Sports and has more than a million views.

The audio from the manipulated video was edited in from a clip of a crowd chanting “F*** Joe Biden” at a Staind reunion concert in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 25, 2021. Country singer Aaron Lewis led the chants, according to reports.

You can tell the audio is the same by paying attention to details like the beat of the drum and the male voice heard shouting the chant in both videos. 

VERIFY found another video showing the crowd chanting with the drums beating at the Staind concert here, further confirming the audio was lifted from this event and the viral video from the Army-Navy game is indeed fake.

The actual song the Army Corps of Cadets are jumping to in the original video is called “Tsunami,” which was released in 2013 by Canadian group DVBBS and Borgeous. It has been a tradition for the crowd to sing and jump to the beat of the song for years, according to this post from Service Academy Forums, a message board dedicated to U.S. service academies. VERIFY found videos from 2014 and 2018 showing the crowd jumping to the song.

This isn’t the first time the same audio of the anti-Joe Biden slogan was used to make it appear as though a large crowd was chanting against Biden. 

In October 2022, a video went viral after Former President Barack Obama spoke before a large crowd during a rally hosted by Michigan Democrats in Detroit. That video was fake, too.