Democratic candidate Joe Biden has been struck down 11 times by fact-checkers over claims he has made during this coronavirus crisis.
Between the three weeks of March 13 and April 3rd, Biden was caught 5 separate times for false and misleading claims regarding Trump’s administration of the current pandemic response.
Is there no issue serious enough that politicians won’t make false claims about it for political benefit? https://t.co/4mBov3MkGE
— Brit Hume (@brithume) February 27, 2020
Due to these claims, Biden has earned himself four Pinocchios from the Washington Post’s fact-checking team. If you’re not familiar with the Washington Post’s ratings, this is considered their most harsh rating. This was the direct result of two highly manipulated videos that stemmed from the Bidens campaign.
The first manipulating video was making it appear as if Trump was calling the coronavirus a fallacy. The video clip was taken out of its original context as the video’s original context refers to the Democrats attempt to blame him for the virus rather than the virus itself.
The second video from Biden’s campaign that was fact-checked by the Washington Post was about Trump saying the phrase “the American Dream is dead.” The sound bite was removed from the second half of his statement, where he promised to “bring it back bigger and stronger than ever before.”
Biden earned another four Pinocchios after his advisor, Ron Klain, blamed Trump for silencing Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Despite the fake news of Trump claiming the silencing of “government scientists,” Messonnier routinely holds phone briefings with reporters after raising concerns about the virus at Trump’s press conference.
Washington Post Fact-checker Glenn Kessler states that the idea Messonnier was silenced is a “false narrative.”
Biden gained 3 more Pinocchios from the incorrect language used during the CNN town hall on March 27. He claims Trump had eliminated the White House Pandemic office, did not try to put pressure on the Chinese president Xi Jinping during the outbreak, and cut back on CDC staff in China before the outbreak. Biden went as far as to add that he had attempted to have China allow in medical experts from the United States. This was while the outbreak was in its early stages.
Fact-checkers from the Washington Post corrected Biden as the Trump and Pence administration actually did seek access for the CDC experts to enter China. They even offered help to slow the spread of the outbreak during the early stages. Biden did call for experts, but it was not until late February, far later than claimed.
Biden has been fact-checked for the attempts to use expressive and persuasive speech.
Biden also corrected the Democratic presidential debate that happened on March 15th. He claims that Trump refused coronavirus testing kits from the World Health Organization. However, that could not be true as the coronavirus testing kits were never offered to begin with. Ironically, CNN originally claimed this to be factual but soon retracted after the Washington Free Beacon released a report.
Lastly, Biden gets fact-checked by the Washington Post fact-checking team to have overstated a tweet released on March 19, where he states that Trump “eliminated” the pandemic response team. The fact-checking team found this claim to be false. What really happened was that the global health directorate was merged into another office under the direction of John Bolton, a former national security advisor. The fact-checking team cited it as a “dueling narrative” without a punishing rating to Biden’s claim.
As the Democratic candidates strive to win the Presidency, it is helpful to add some highlights to the fact-checked claims over the course of Joe Biden’s campaign so far.
