On Thursday night, as Katie highlighted, the official White House Twitter account, tweeted out a falsehood about the timeline of the availability of the vaccines. Though it has since been corrected, the original tweet in question is still up.
When President Biden took office, millions were unemployed and there was no vaccine available.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 12, 2022
In the last 15 months, the economy has created 8.3M jobs and the unemployment rate stands at 3.6% — the fastest decline in unemployment to start a President's term ever recorded.
Glenn Kessler, the fact-checker for The Washington Post, also weighed in, demanding to know who was manning the account and calling for them to "Delete this false tweet."
Who’s manning the @WhiteHouse Twitter account? Delete this false tweet. Biden himself has said 8% of seniors had gotten the vaccine on the day he took office. Biden was one of them. —> https://t.co/ojDmn1DNIQ https://t.co/V7z07DHQ90
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) May 13, 2022
The original tweet also attempted to tout Biden's handling of the economy. According to data from RealClearPolitics (RCP) for April 7-May 10, the president has only a 37.1 percent approval rating on the issue, while 59.2 percent disapprove.
Further, a major takeaway of a poll last month from CBS News/YouGov, is that "In economic views, inflation outweighs jobs."
It took a little over 24 hours later, but the White House finally corrected the record, via a quoted retweet of the original.
We previously misstated that vaccines were unavailable in January 2021. We should have said that they were not widely available.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 13, 2022
Vaccines became available shortly before the President came into office. Since then, he’s responsible for fully vaccinating over 200 million people. https://t.co/rHJ0GZ63Dy
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As of Saturday afternoon, the original tweet has over 27,600 responses. Of the 9,214 retweets, 6,455 are quoted retweets.
The vaccines against the Wuhan coronavirus not only "became available shortly before the President came into office," they allowed Joe Biden, then president-elect, and Kamala Harris, vice president-elect, to become vaccinated. Katie included a tweet from the White House itself highlighting how Biden got his second dose, in fact, a week before he even took office.
President-elect Biden received his second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine because he trusts scientists.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 13, 2021
Our administration is committed to doing everything possible to ensure every American has all the information they need to get vaccinated. pic.twitter.com/9FzLEeqwOi
Even when issuing a correction, the White House still took the opportunity to tout the amount of people who have received vaccines under the Biden administration. As our friends at Twitchy highlighted, people weren't so quick to let the White House off too easily, especially since the White House got something else wrong.
The Washington Examiner's Andrew Kerr tweeted out a screenshot of an excerpt from a Bloomberg article updated January 22, 2021, shortly after Biden was inaugurated.
https://t.co/VHwdaLP2Bb pic.twitter.com/OCKhNIr8Yx
— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) May 13, 2022
Kerr wasn't the only one to call the White House out on such BS. As of Saturday afternoon, it has over 4,100 replies. Of the 1,302 retweets, 720 are quote tweets adding mockery.
Sorry, not good enough. You spread COVID related misinformation and now must be banned. Isn’t that how it still works?
— Nick Freitas (@NickForVA) May 14, 2022
Where is Scary Poppins when you really NEED her?! Where is a clever song to put this in context, @wiczipedia? pic.twitter.com/9TV4QtHzTp
— Ryan Schuiling (@RyanSchuiling) May 14, 2022
Many also suggested this would be a fitting time for the Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board, which has also been dubbed the "Ministry of Truth," to get involved.
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