No, U.S. President Joe Biden’s car did not display the Italian flag during his visit to Dublin

By: Rajini KG
April 19 2023

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Context

An image is circulating on social media falsely claiming that U.S. President Joe Biden’s car displayed the Italian flag during his visit to the Republic of Ireland. A Facebook user wrote, "On its way to the State Banquet in Dublin, Joe Biden's car proudly flew the flag of Italy." However, this claim is false.

In Fact

The flags of Italy and the Republic of Ireland are similar but have one main difference - the Irish flag is green, white, and orange, while Italy's flag is green, white, and red.

Logically Facts found that the image in the post is a screengrab from a video shared by Sky News on April 14, 2023. We can see the exact image at the timestamp of 18:46 minutes in the Sky News broadcast uploaded to their YouTube channel.

Seana Davis, a journalist from Reuters, tweeted that the flag appears darker due to the lighting in the video. Logically Facts has confirmed this in footage from the RTE broadcast that Sky News aired on April 14, 2023. At 30:22 in the original video, two limousines in Biden’s motorcade can be seen with two flags — an American flag and an Irish flag. In a video from Yahoo News, we can see that Biden’s car has the Irish flag and not the Italian flag at the 00:32 timestamp. A video shared by The Independent on its YouTube channel also shows the Irish flag at the 42:00 timestamp.

Reuters also aired a live video from the Irish parliament where Joe Biden addressed Irish lawmakers on April 13, 2023. At 13:26 minutes, we can see the Irish flag on Joe Biden’s car. 

The Verdict

Multiple video sources show that Biden’s car displayed the Irish flag during his visit to the Republic of Ireland, which has been misinterpreted as the Italian flag due to lighting in some parts of the video. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.