President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are campaigning, despite online claims

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump face off again in November, but a recent Facebook post said no one is campaigning for 2024 votes.

"Something seems off and different about this election cycle, have you noticed what it is???" the May 4 post said. "I've been following elections for years very closely, but I've noticed something extremely odd, the first thing I've noticed is we are well into the season, we are very close and there is no campaigning going on, none whatsoever. I've also noticed that the news cycle is not dominated by the story of this year's election, which begs the question, do they anticipate that they need to campaign for it???"

The post went on to say there may be a reason for this: "It almost seems as if they already know the end before the beginning, it's almost as if they're not even concerned at all about the outcome because they already know what the outcome is going to be."

This 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.)

As a quick online search shows, the notion that the two candidates are not campaigning is verifiably false.

The Federal Election Commission shows the amount of money Biden, Trump and other official presidential candidates have raised and spent in the 2024 race. There’s also broad news coverage reflecting that these candidates are campaigning. 

In 2023, Biden and his allies spent more than $45 million in advertisements, a record amount for an incumbent in the off-year before the general election, NBC News reported.

In March, Biden’s campaign launched a $30 million ad buy, Politico said, and announced the President, Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff would stump "in every battleground state" that month. C-SPAN has cataloged these televised rallies, most recently showing Harris campaigning in Pennsylvania while Biden was in Wisconsin. 

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stated on September 9, 2018 in a website post

Says Barack Obama "referred to the carnage that took place in Benghazi as a conspiracy theory."  

 In May, Biden debuted "a new-seven figure ad buy … centered around abortion, a centerpiece issue for his campaign," according to CBS News.

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, announced with the Republican National Committee in March that the campaign had raised more than $65 million. Trump has likewise rallied in battleground states and coverage of these campaign events has been robust."The former president's campaign events are surreal to experience," one NPR report said. "All-day affairs that are equal parts religious revival and massive pep rallies, powered by an infamous musical playlist that runs for hours before he speaks."

Biden had "a big edge" in recent ad spending as "Trump has had to devote millions of campaign funds to legal expenses," CNN said, but this does not corroborate the claim in the Facebook post. 

It’s False.