Fact Check: President-Elect Biden Is NOT Stepping Down
by: Victoria Eavis
Is Joe Biden stepping down as president-elect because of health issues? No, that's not true: This is a fabricated claim. Biden is not stepping down.
The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) where it was published by @UndergroundPatriot on January 1, 2021, with the caption "Here we go !!!" The Facebook post, which came in the form of a fake screenshot, read:
BREAKING NEWS President Elect Biden steps down as President Elect FOX (Atlanta) 5:35 pm 01-01-21 Newly President Elect Joe Biden has resigned as President elect after consulting with his family & legal team due to an unspecified health issue. President elect Biden's advisors and legal team will make an official announcement tonight at 9pmn ET. FOX will be following any new information and will keep you inform for the latest.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
Neither the FOX News Network nor FOX 5 Atlanta reported the falsehood the fake screenshot of a Facebook page implies they did.
The phrasing, "Newly President Elect" does not follow standard newswriting style guidelines FOX and other outlets use.
At the time of writing, neither the Biden-Harris transition team nor the Biden campaign had made any such announcement about the president-elect's health. As of this writing on January 4, 2021 -- three days after the false meme claimed Biden would make an "official announcement" that night -- neither the predicted announcement, nor anything even remotely close to it, had occurred.
Lead Stories reached out to the Biden-Harris transition team for comment and will update this article, as necessary, when they respond.