President Joe Biden isn’t dead, nor is his death why he withdrew from the 2024 presidential race

President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race July 21, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to be the new Democratic nominee. 

His age — 81 — and his June 27 debate performance were among the reasons some people, including Democrats, believed would hobble his efforts to defeat former President Donald Trump in November. 

But a recent Instagram post suggests no such criticism motivated Biden to step down — because he’s purportedly already dead.

"Could this be the reason why Joe Biden is stepping down?" a man says in a video shared July 24. 

The clip shows an Ancestry.com page that says Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. died in 2018 in Guantánamo, Cuba.

"So maybe this is the reason why he’s stepping down because he’s not living anymore," the man in the video says. 

He adds that a "majority of politicians" are at Guantánamo Bay, where the U.S. has a military prison. 

This Instagram post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Featured Fact-check

Facebook posts

stated on November 22, 2024 in a Facebook post

Celebrities including Bruce Springsteen, Robert De Niro, Robert Downey Jr., John Legend and Tom Hanks have announced they are leaving the U.S. following the 2024 election.

We previously fact-checked and rated Pants on Fire a claim that this Ancestry.com page proved Biden — who is alive and spoke to the nation from the Oval Office on July 24 — had died at the detention center in Cuba. 

The image of the Ancestry site is authentic. As Snopes reported, such a page did appear on Ancestry.com but appears to have since been deleted. But the page was archived May 28 and June 12. It says Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. — the president’s full name —  and includes other factual details about his life such as his birth place (Scranton, Pennsylvania) and birth date (Nov. 20, 1942).

It also says he died in 2018 in Guantánamo, Cuba, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. But U.S. Army records show there’s no grave for Biden at the cemetery, and a cemetery spokesperson confirmed it.

 Anyone can upload information to Ancestry, according to the site’s submission agreement page. 

"The decision to upload personal information to the Ancestry website is your responsibility," the page says. "All information that you post will be displayed and is available for others to search, view or hear."

The site also reserves the right to "remove any user provided content which comes to our attention and which we believe, in our sole discretion, is illegal, obscene, indecent, defamatory, incites racial or ethnic hatred, violates the rights of others or otherwise violates this agreement."

Other unfounded claims we’ve fact-checked include Biden being held in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and that the current president is a Biden impostor. Both received Pants on Fire ratings; such developments would draw intense, global news coverage – as would his death – but there is none. 

Biden made his first public appearance since withdrawing from the race and recovering from COVID-19 on July 23, the same day this post was published on Instagram. 

We rate the claim that he dropped out of the 2024 presidential campaign because he’s dead Pants on Fire!