Social media stunned after Snopes fact-check reversal on President Biden's backwards hardhat

Left-leaning fact-checker Snopes was swiftly criticized on social media Sunday after reversing its initial fact-check on a photo of President Biden wearing a hardhat backwards. 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., posted the photo of the president to X on Thursday. Biden can be seen wearing the hardhat backwards in the photo, which went viral on social media.

Snopes' initial fact-check, published Friday, attempted to explain the appearance.

"The photo is genuine. And it does look, at first glance, like Biden was wearing that hard hat backwards. But after comparing it to other photos and videos of the same event, we were forced to reach the opposite conclusion: The hat on Biden's head was facing forward, bill to the front, not backward," Snopes claimed.

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Snopes' reversed the fact-check after mounting social media backlash and offered an update. 

"The prevailing counter-argument is that if the suspension of the hat has been purposely configured by its owner such that the bill and tightening knob are worn to the back (as was the case of the hat Biden wore), to wear that hat with the bill facing forward is, practically speaking, to wear it backwards. Therefore, it's argued, it's actually true that, in the photo op discussed below, Biden was wearing it backwards. The strap and tightening knob, which should have been behind Biden's head, were on his forehead." 

The editors' note continued to say that they found the arguments sound. 

"We find these arguments sound. Therefore, the claim ‘President Joe Biden wore a hard hat backwards during a photo op with union construction workers in Superior, Wisconsin’ is true, and this fact check has been re-rated as such," it said.

"That Snopes article is a really good example of the overwhelming desire of ‘fact checkers’ to ride to the rescue of Democrats. That article simply doesn't get written if a Republican wears a hat backwards," Real Clear Politics senior writer Mark Hemingway wrote.

"What happened with Snopes today is probably the best ‘how it started vs. how its going’ of all time," Hans Mahncke wrote on X.

"As if we needed more reminders that the main function of Snopes and all other ‘fact-checking’ operations is to enforce their preferred interpretation and not to accurate determine whether something is factual," author and Outkick writer Ian Miller reacted. 

Elon Musk also weighed in on the change, writing, "'Snopes is a political psy-op' - Fact check true." 

Other posts on social media about the event showed other workers wearing hard hats, and one appeared similar to the hard hat the president was wearing. The president visited Superior, Wisconsin, on Thursday and introduced a $5 billion investment in infrastructure projects across the country. 

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Snopes has previously backtracked on other claims. 

Snopes adjusted a rating about a claim suggesting that billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink company was partially responsible for the disappearance of the OceanGate submersible in June 2023.

Initially, Snopes claimed the allegation of Musk’s company bearing some responsibility was "true," then updated the fact check to say it was "unproven," before finally adding necessary context and deeming the allegation "false."

Fox News' Anders Hagstrom and Gabriel Hays contributed to this report.