U.S. President Joe Biden has been plagued with rumors of using a body double many times over the years. In August 2023, a claim went viral arguing that actor Arthur Roberts had really been Biden's body double.
Numerous videos and posts on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter show Roberts, who bears a slight resemblance to the president, alongside Biden.
A TikTok video from late August 2023 shows clips from a 2020 presidential debate and claims "Arthur Roberts playing Biden." The video transposes the actor's face over Biden's to show the purported similarities.
But this is not a new claim. An Instagram post from December 2021 shows Biden pulling at his lip. The post nonsensically claims that Biden was pulling "the [flesh] mask down so you can see his real lip. The real Joe Biden is dead this joe is being played by Arthur Roberts."
Meanwhile, an August 2023 Twitter post showed Roberts' IMDb page, which says the actor purportedly played Joe Biden in 2021 at his swearing-in ceremony as president:
Have you guys seen this???
Actor Arthur Roberts aka Joe Biden..
I usually never believe this shit but it's on IMDb…They even attribute him for playing the role of Joe Biden being sworn in as US President in January 2021.
How about that? ?https://t.co/3CdDGpbydj… pic.twitter.com/C6PXD0DTke
— Teresa (@pepedownunder) August 21, 2023
A 2021 story on Real Raw News also claimed that Roberts "blew his cover" when posing as Biden. According to the article:
Arthur Roberts, the 83-year-old C-List actor who portrays Joseph Biden on television and in person, blew his cover during a televised press conference with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier this week. In a stunning scene seen by many, Biden's (RRN uses the term 'Biden' to stand for either Biden or his body doubles) handlers abruptly and seemingly without cause ushered the press pool from the White House Briefing Room while Johnson tried to field questions from British journalists in attendance.
However, there is no evidence that Roberts is Biden's body double. Even looking at the so-called evidence presented in numerous posts above, we noticed they follow similar patterns of conjecture, as well as reliance on edited photographs, screenshots, and videos that we have encountered in our many fact checks about body doubles.
Looking at Roberts' IMDb page, we found nothing in his on-screen credits to suggest he had posed as Biden at the 2021 inauguration ceremony. The page shows he appeared in a television movie in 2020, and then a short film in 2022, with no 2021 credits. The link to the so-called inauguration film also led us to a page that stated, "The requested URL was not found on our server."
Even in footage of Biden and former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson meeting in 2021, in which they both wear face masks and their mouths are covered, it is obvious that Biden is speaking in the video:
Roberts and Biden are both close in age. Roberts is 85 years old, according to his IMDb page, while Biden is 80, an age that is a cause for concern among voters as he launches his 2024 reelection bid. Biden's aging appearance in various photographs and videos added fuel to rumors that he relies on body doubles for public appearances.
While Roberts and Biden do have similar looks on the surface— they are both octogenarian white men, with white hair and blue eyes— it is obvious that Roberts looks rather different than Biden. Even in the above posts that compare the two, Roberts' nose is longer than Biden's. A 2022 interview with Roberts on YouTube shows that he even has a different face shape to Biden:
Roberts' IMDb profile also lists him as being 6 feet 2, while Biden is 6-feet tall, according to an official health summary from February 2023.
We have covered conspiracy theories involving body doubles not just for Biden, but for numerous prominent personalities before. The theory usually crops up when famous individuals face health issues, or when photographs and videos show them looking different, whether it is through aging or the angle at which they were captured.
Passing off a man with considerable physical differences to Biden as his body double at public appearances is a fairly impossible feat, even with the resources of the U.S. government behind the effort. As such, we rate this claim as "False."