It is not breaking news to state the media has clearly taken sides in this election, but it really devolves into the realm of comedy to see the way they perform following a debate. Following the first debate CNN brought on their in-house fact-sleuth Daniel Dale to give his grades of the two performances, and while he expectantly declared Trump delivered an ‘’avalanche of lies’’ he declared that Joe Biden had been ‘’mostly truthful’’ in the debate. You had to know just how wrong this assessment proved to be, from the network that routinely declares riots and arson scenes to be “mostly peaceful.”
For last night’s measurement Dale was no less obtuse. He of course saw widespread falsehoods delivered by the president once again, yet when it came to looking over Joe Biden’s fictional performance it was completely softened by euphemisms. ‘’Biden was imperfect,’’ explains Dale in neutered fashion. ‘’There were at least a few false, misleading, or lacking in context claims from him.’’ This mewling effort to soft-peddle Joe’s laundry list of prevarications was as weak as decaffeinated herbal tea, so to help out CNN’s fact-avoider here is a by-no-means-comprehensive list of Joe Biden’s fables from last night.
BIDEN - “He is xenophobic, but not because he shut down travel to China.”
Joe tried to wriggle free of a charge he made about Trump cutting off air travel to China. Immediately after the travel ban announced on January 30, Biden tweeted out: ‘’We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering.’’
BIDEN - He criticized Trump’s slow reaction to ban European travel.
More revisionist history, as Joe attempts to suggest he favored action before Trump. Trump announced his European travel ban on March 11, yet days later Biden was still deriding the travel ban, and Joe’s campaign did not endorse the travel ban until April.
BIDEN - “I never said I opposed fracking.”
This is the dodge Biden has adopted since he realized what a problem he created, specifically in regards to fracking-rich Pennsylvania. Joe has attempted to reinterpret his position by saying he always said no new fracking on federal lands, and other massaged messaging. The problem: He has definitively said recently he wants to eliminate fracking. At the Democratic debates Joe was asked by CNN moderators if there was any place for fossil fuels and fracking in a Biden Administration? ‘’No,’’ he said definitively. ‘’We would work it out. We would make sure it’s eliminated, and no more subsidies for either one of those.’’ His running mate Kamala Harris has also said, ‘’There's no question that I’m in favor of banning fracking.’’
BIDEN - Defended his Hunter Biden scandal saying, ‘’There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant.’’
Joe referenced the letter sent out recently where these IC individuals attested that the story felt ‘’suspicious’’ like a Russian-planted story. There has been zero evidence of any Russian involvement, and days prior the FBI confirmed they actually possessed the laptop computer, and John Ratcliffe from the Department of National Intelligence declared there was no Russian involvement in the reports.
BIDEN - “There is no evidence that when you raise the minimum wage, businesses go out of business. That is simply not true.”
Tell that to Seattle, where the MW-15 law led to a rise in unemployment and lowered wages for low-income workers who saw hours cut. Tell it to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who saw the bar where she famously worked before her election closed due to New York’s minimum wage hike. It is a commonly reported effect.
BIDEN - ‘’If in fact, he continues his plan to withhold the tax on Social Security, Social Security will be bankrupt by 2023’’
This is a long touted claim by Biden in his campaign ads regarding the Trump tax cuts, and it only holds if the Social Security payroll tax were entirely eliminated and never replaced, something that is not in place. Trump’s plan is to possibly bring out another SS cut in his second term, and that would be covered by using money from the General Fund.
BIDEN - “We have a higher deficit with China now than we did before.”
In 2019 the trade deficit with China fell by over $70 billion, and that number continued to drop during the 2020 fiscal trade year.
BIDEN - “Not one single person with private insurance would lose their insurance under my plan, nor did they under ‘Obamacare.’ They did not lose their insurance unless they chose they wanted to go to something else.”
This one is so laughable it does not need much exploring. The promise of keeping the plans they held that led to millions who lost their healthcare and private doctors was such a harsh reality that even Time Magazine had listed it as its ‘Lie Of The Year.’
BIDEN - ‘’I don't think the president has said anything to Putin about [election meddling]. I don't think he's talking to him a lot. I don't think he said a word. I don't know why he hasn't said a word to Putin about it."
Glossing over the inherent way this contradicts the steady claim from Democrats and the media that Trump is a Putin puppet who constantly takes his orders, it is wholly incorrect. During the 2018 summit in Helsinki the president spoke directly to Vladimir Putin on the very issue.
BIDEN - "The expectation is we'll have another 200,000 Americans dead in the time between now and the end of the year. If we just wore these masks, the president's own advisers have told him, we could save 100,000 lives."
There are rampant claims made about the promise of deaths before year’s end. Biden here is suggesting that after it took 10 months to reach the 200,000 mark in Covid deaths we are poised to double that figure before New Years, despite a wealth of knowledge and precautions in place now - including the wearing of masks. The only place you find the 100K-mask claim is from A modeling study by the University of Washington. (Related- Trump is being fact-checked for referencing previous modeling studies which mentioned 2-million+ deaths from Covid. These were in fact declaring 1 million were assured, and 2 million possible -- numbers we are well below at this time.)
BIDEN - “I stopped giving the oil industry federal subsidies. He won’t give federal subsidies to solar and wind.’’
This was perhaps part of the most damaging portion of the night for Biden. During the discussion of climate change and renewable energy Biden made the declaration he wants to transition away from the oil industry. But his accusation towards the president is bogus. Billions of dollars are paid out annually to renewable energy concerns, including solar and wind power. Lost in the discussion, as Joe Biden claimed explosive job growth would be realized in his green power program, is how dozens of renewable energy companies all failed during his 8 years in the White House, with the aid of huge government subsidies.
- Hopefully this can serve as a jumping-off point for the professional fact-checkers, like Daniel Dale.