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Lyin' Biden's Biggest Debate Lies Debunked

Mia Cathell
Mia Cathell  |  June 28, 2024 3:00 PM

President Joe Biden's poor performance at the first presidential debate Thursday night perfectly encapsulated how he earned himself the nickname "Pinnochio-in-chief." Filled with falsehoods and flat-out lies, Biden's responses ranged from lying about his economic record to denying that American troops had died abroad during his presidency.

Biden lied about being the only U.S. president in the past decade who had no American troops die "anywhere in the world."

"Truth is: I'm the only president this century that doesn’t have any—this decade—that doesn't have any troops dying anywhere in the world, like [Trump] did," Biden said.

FACT-CHECK: False. On Biden's watch, 13 U.S. service members were killed during America's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Among the fallen who tragically died in a suicide bombing at Kabul's international airport: 11 Marines, a Navy hospital corpsman, and an Army special operations soldier.

Earlier this year, three American soldiers were also killed at a U.S. outpost in northeastern Jordan near the Syrian border during an overnight drone attack fired by Iran-backed militants. The aerial attack marked the first deadly strike on U.S. forces in the Middle East since the Israel-Hamas war broke out.

In January, during a mission off the coast of Somalia, two U.S. Navy SEALs died while conducting a nighttime interception of Iranian-made weapons that were being smuggled to Houthi rebels in Yemen.

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Biden lied about the U.S. Border Patrol union endorsing him.

"The border patrolmen endorsed me," Biden claimed.

FACT-CHECK: False. They did not, and they "never will," according to the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), the union that represents over 18,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents.

NBPC fact-checked Biden on X, formerly Twitter, minutes after he made the false claim.

Biden lied about Trump's position on Social Security.

"[Trump] wants to get rid of Social Security. He thinks that there's plenty to cut in Social Security. He's wanted to cut Social Security and Medicare both times," Biden baselessly claimed.

FACT-CHECK: False. Though he may have entertained trims to entitlements, Trump never said he wanted to terminate Social Security entirely. In fact, on the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to protect the old-age programs. Last year, Trump posted a video to his campaign website, in which he stated that not "a single penny" should be cut from Social Security. "DO NOT CUT the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives," Trump declared. "Save Social Security. Don't destroy it."

While he's frequently claimed that Trump wants to put both Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block, Biden himself had introduced legislation during his decades-long political career suggesting that they freeze these programs.

In 1975, the then-senator of Delaware pushed a bill requiring all federal programs to sunset after four years. "It requires every program to be looked at freshly at least once every four years," Biden said of the bill.

"The examination is not just of the increased cost of the program, but of the worthiness of the entire program," Biden argued back then, according to a copy of the congressional record. In the 1990s, Biden elucidated on the Senate floor: "When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well. I meant Medicare and Medicaid," plus benefits for veterans, too.

But hey, he "finally beat Medicare."

Biden lied about insulin costs.

Touting two measures that the Biden administration and congressional Democrats enacted, Biden claimed: "We brought down the price of prescription drugs, which is a major issue for many people, to $15 for an insulin shot, as opposed to $400. No senior has to pay more than $200 for any drug [...] beginning next year."

FACT-CHECK: False. Using false figures, Biden misrepresented key provisions of the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act, which purportedly reduces the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries.

Under the law, Medicare enrollees shouldn't pay more than $35 per month for each insulin prescription. Several pharmaceutical companies, such as Eli Lilly, the largest manufacturer of insulin in the United States, subsequently decided anyways to limit the monthly cost that patients pay out-of-pocket.

A cap has also been placed on Medicare's Part D drug plans so that seniors and Americans with disabilities won't pay more than $2,000 a year in out-of-pocket costs for medications bought at the pharmacy, starting in 2025.

As Ann Marie Buerkle, a former nurse and congresswoman who served as the commissioner and acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, explained in a Townhall column, it's a made-up story about lowering drug prices:

In Biden's telling of the story, since he's authorized the government to do more drug price-setting, seniors are saving thousands of dollars a month.

The problem for Biden, like many stories he’s told over the years, is this story is just not true. In fact, it's laughable. Let me explain.

One of the policies contained in the "Inflation Reduction Act" Biden is touting is a provision that empowers Medicare to negotiate drug costs with drug manufacturers. There's just one pesky little issue with that provision. It hasn't gone into effect yet. And it won't—until 2026.  Until then, we don't even know if this provision will work as well as the current model. Currently, we have a private market entity dedicated to negotiating with drug manufacturers: Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs). And they are really good at it, adding $192 billion in value to society annually compared to a manufacturer price-control regime.

Another one of the policies contained in the "Inflation Reduction Act" is a redesign of the Medicare Part D benefit so that it caps seniors' out-of-pocket drug at $2,000—starting in 2025. Limiting the amount that seniors have to pay for drugs sounds great but consider the consequences: In preparation for that new out-of-pocket cap, Part D plans are driving up premiums and offering fewer choices. In fact, premiums have skyrocketed 22% and there's been a 50% reduction in plans compared to the first year of the program. In effect, the Biden administration and their allies in Congress squeezed the balloon, deflating what some seniors pay out-of-pocket for drugs but inflating the premiums all seniors have to pay, resulting in a worse-functioning market.

The last piece of evidence Biden offers to explain how he's driving down drug costs for Americans is a $35 per month out-of-pocket cap on the cost of insulin. But the price of insulin was collapsing long before this cap went into effect. At the end of 2021, insulin biosimilars had begun to enter the market, and in a short time, due to enhanced competition, the cost of insulin for most patients fell dramatically—even below the $35 per month out-of-pocket cap. Even more ironically, this policy actually gave drug manufacturers the cover to raise their prices on insulin products, resulting in less cost savings than if the Biden administration had simply let the private market work.

In summary, Biden is parading around solutions to problems that are already actively being solved through the free market—without the government's help—which further proves how private industry can work far more effectively than the government.

Also, Biden is claiming credit for something Trump already implemented, in part. In May 2020, Trump announced that copays for insulin drugs would be voluntarily capped at $35 by participating Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage plans. According to a press release issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS):

Today, under President Trump's leadership, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that over 1,750 standalone Medicare Part D prescription drug plans and Medicare Advantage plans with prescription drug coverage have applied to offer lower insulin costs through the Part D Senior Savings Model for the 2021 plan year. Across the nation, participating enhanced Part D prescription drug plans will provide Medicare beneficiaries access to a broad set of insulins at a maximum $35 copay for a month's supply, from the beginning of the year through the Part D coverage gap. The model follows on the Trump Administration's previously announced 13.5 percent decline in the average monthly basic Part D premium since 2017 to the lowest level in seven years.

[...]

Under President Trump's leadership, for the first time, CMS is enabling and encouraging Part D plans to offer fixed, predictable copays for beneficiaries rather than leaving seniors paying 25 percent of the drug's cost in the coverage gap. Both manufacturers and Part D sponsors responded to this market-based solution in force and seniors that use insulin will reap the benefits.

Then, the Biden administration repealed a separate Trump-era regulation that sought to lower the cost of insulin at federally funded health centers. It would've required that Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) offer the discounted price they receive when they purchase insulin and injectable epinephrine (EpiPens) through a federal program called 340B.

Biden lied about the unemployment rate at the time he entered office.

When he took office, "the economy was flat on its back. Fifteen percent unemployment. [Trump] decimated the economy [...] There were no jobs," Biden claimed.

FACT-CHECK: False. In January 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.

Although the unemployment rate was near 15 percent during Trump's presidency, the spike happened in April 2020, when the COVID-19 lockdowns crushed the economy, not Trump. More than 20 million jobs were suddenly lost, causing unemployment to skyrocket from 4.4 percent in March of 2020 to 14.7 percent the following month, according to BLS data. After its peak, the unemployment rate naturally declined as the nation recovered those lost jobs and workers returned to the workforce, eventually reaching pre-pandemic levels in June 2022.

Biden didn't exactly inherit a broken economy. The jobs recovery process began under Trump, but because his tenure ended only eight months into the economic revival cycle, much of the job "gains" were accrued during Biden's time.

Economic experts say Biden benefited despite doing nothing. "This is literally evidence that Biden was handed something on a golden platter," Douglas Holtz-Eakin, head of American Action Forum, a think tank, told PolitiFact. "This recovery from a deep recession would have happened no matter who was president."

Biden continues to claim this victory, although the economy was actually in the midst of recovery, well underway when he was inaugurated, and jobs were beginning to bounce back at a relatively rapid rate.