I was struck by the number of dubious statements and flat-out lies at the DNC.
It appears the mainstream media isn’t much interested in them, amid their jubilant, joy-full coverage. So I decided to do some fact-checking, focused on Biden’s speech.
There’s a lot. ⤵️
1. The first thing that jumped out to me was Trump’s alleged “very fine people on both sides” description of Charlottesville.
Haven’t we been over this, time and again? The context makes clear Trump didn’t mean the neo-Nazis. Even @snopes admitted it!
Yet Biden trotted it out.
2. Biden claimed he and his admin “demonizes no one.”
What, then, about Biden’s remarks about Trump supporters? That they are “determined to destroy democracy,” practitioners of “semi-fascism,” and “a threat to the very soul of this nation.”
Is that not demonizing?
3. Biden said he rebuilt “the middle class.”
He should take that claim up with the middle class, who aren’t exactly thrilled about Bidenomics and its corresponding inflation.
4. One quote really stopped me cold. Biden said he had created “60 million new jobs.”
Even assuming (charitably) that he meant 16, his numbers are off by a couple million after the Labor Dept corrected their numbers.
And those figures are dubious, @zhalaschak explains:
5. Biden claimed inflation was “down, way down.”
Put simply, this is a bald-faced lie. Inflation may be down since the 40-year record Biden increase it to. But it’s still higher than when Trump left office.
6. Biden claimed seniors would go from paying “$400 a month” for insulin down to $35 a month.
His first number is how much seniors currently pay *per year.* But saying “they’ll save a couple bucks” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
The @nytimes said the claim “needs context”
6. Cont. Apparently that “context” was just “the actual numbers” which Biden had instead made up.
What are we doing here, guys?
This was one of only 5 Biden claims the Times deigned to revisit.
Needless to say, I’ve got more.
7. Biden claimed he was providing high speed internet for everyone, no matter where they lived.
He isn’t. One in five Americans still lack reliable internet access. Promising to do something—it should go without saying—doesn’t mean doing it.
8. Biden said the U.S. is “cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030.”
Again, you can’t simply say something and have that declaration make it true.
The U.S. is meaningfully off-track from Biden’s goal, before accounting for uptick of EVs and renewable energy lagging.
9. Speaking of EVs, Biden said the U.S. is “installing 500,000 charging stations.”
After 2 years and $7 billion, you know how many are operational?
7. Not 700. Or 7,000.
7. Total.
Again, saying you’re going to do something doesn’t mean it’s done. (H/t @washingtonpost)
10. Biden said his admin “kept our commitment” on student loan debt relief.
Perhaps he forgot what he had promised as a candidate, but the internet is forever. He said he’d deliver $10,000 in debt relief.
That didn’t survive contact with the Constitution.
11. Biden said “I’m so damn old.”
My review of the evidence found that to be true.
12. Biden said Americans “are safer today than under Donald Trump.”
But the U.S. and our allies are involved in more conflicts than ever, as war rages in the Middle East and in Europe. I wrote about this back in February for @FreeBeacon
13. Biden called Trump a “convicted felon.”
Seriously? The President of the United States took the stage to undermine the presumption of innocence for his party’s opponent. Trump, of course, isn’t a convicted anything.
But this is how lawfare works: as a political sound bite.
14. Biden said there are “fewer border crossings today than when Donald Trump left office.”
Biden’s right that there was a surge of crossings after he was elected in 2020. But backing those numbers up to before the election, he’s still wrong.
And the bigger point of course…
14. Cont. …the bigger point is that Biden has been a disaster on the border, allowing in a record number of illegal crossers, setting new monthly records repeatedly, and fast tracking thousands more.
15. Biden trotted out the “suckers” and “losers” comment that Trump allegedly made.
Again, for what feels like the hundredth time, there’s no meaningful evidence supporting this. Just anonymous sources. Even @nytimes took issue (again, one of their five).
16. Biden said “when Trump left office, Europe and NATO were in tatters.”
This is a bit preposterous, in my humble opinion. Remember that Ukraine was invaded not under Trump, but under Biden. Trump had forced NATO countries to actually invest in their own defense. @dankochis
17. Biden said his proposed peace deal “brought us closer” to peace between Israel and Gaza.
That peace deal has already fallen apart.
I’ll close with a couple of barn burners.
18. Biden said “Trump wants to cut Social Security and Medicare.”
What? Trump has repeatedly said he will do no such thing. This is how he won the 2016 nomination!
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
19. Biden claimed Trump “will do everything he can to ban abortion.”
Again. Trump has said *the opposite* repeatedly. Vance said Trump would veto such a measure.
This is just a lie by Biden. Plain and simple.
19. Cont. @bungarsargon makes the point far more eloquently than I can here, on The Commons at American Compass: americancompass.org/let-them-eat-j…
Is it too much to ask the press to bother to do a little fact checking for their favored candidates, after fact-checking Trump’s every word for eight years?
If Dems know they can lie heading into the election unbridled by the media, they will.
I think they’ve already started.
As is often the case, I couldn’t fit everything in a tweet thread. More at my newsletter, @Holden_Court, which you should subscribe to to support me if you like this kind of stuff. open.substack.com/pub/drewholden…
@Holden_Court If you’d like to toss me a couple bucks to fund the beer required to go through this stuff with a chipper spirit, you can do that, too. paypal.com/donate/?busine…
Whatever happened to Harris and Biden’s “strongest economy ever” that the media spent so much time hyping up in the lead up to the election?
I revisit the claims, and explain why they were off the mark about the economy all along, in my latest @AmerCompass.
Quick🧵thread🧵⤵️
It can be easy, in the wake of an election, to forget just how dominant a media narrative was.
One that’s already fading from view was how “great” the economy was, and why it would benefit Harris on Election Day. americancompass.org/its-still-the-…
As a refresher, check out this headline from @axios about the data.
@YahooFinance upgraded Biden’s economic grade to an A. That captures the press sentiment at the time quite well.
In recent days, the mainstream media has taken nakedly ridiculous claims about the tattoos of @PeteHegseth, Trump’s SecDef nominee, to spin up a story alleging he’s an extremist.
It’s an egregious example of politically driven “journalism.” I unpack why. ⤵️
The story really started with @AP, who ran an article claiming that two tattoos that @PeteHegseth has have ties to extremism, citing an extremely thin (and downright suspect) report.
They used that to label him a potential “insider threat” in their headline.
It wasn’t until 3 paragraphs in that a reader was told what that claim rested on: a tattoo of a Latin phrase. They’d go on to mention “concerns” about a cross tattoo as well.
Would be great if Trump’s unconventional picks for his cabinet inspire the media to consider a nominee’s credentials.
They might want to look at the current HHS Secretary, Xavier Becerra, who brings to the table the medical experience of being in Congress for 12 terms.
Or perhaps Obama’s former HHS Secretary, Sylvia Matthews Burwell, who had just finished her stint lobbying for Walmart.
Or Donna Shalala, Clinton’s former head of HHS, whose credentials were as a university administrator and feminist.
I know it seems silly, but the media meltdown about Trump working at a McDonald’s is clarifying about why trust in the press has cratered.
Before we get to that, let’s revisit some of the most deranged takes. ⤵️
The press’s response to Trump deciding to troll Harris for her unsupported claims that she worked at McDonald’s by working at the chain himself sent the media into a tizzy.
Here’s @CNN, suddenly apologetic about a corporation in the political limelight.
My favorite take came from @nytimes, who appeared outraged that…Trump didn’t wear a hairnet.
The media is already trying to memory-hole the (first) attempted assassination of former President Trump.
I suspect many of you have felt it happening, but I walked through the details for The Spectator, and wanted to share some of them here.
Follow along ⤵️
First, I just want to level-set to make sure I’m not crazy.
Someone tried to kill the former POTUS, who, according to a variety of polls, is the odds-on favorite to return to that office. Tons of details didn’t make sense.
Seems like the press story of the year, right?
Well…
So far, the press doesn’t seem to think so.
It started as soon as the shots rang out. Do you remember how bad & unhelpful the headlines were?
I’ve got screenshots. @USATODAY @NBCNews (“popping noises”) @CNN (“injured in incident”) @latimes (“loud noises want through the crowd”)