Joe Biden has claimed that he’d love for there to be live fact-checking during his upcoming debates with Trump, and has even claimed that he himself would be a “fact-checker on the floor” during the debates.
But, Biden’s self-proclaimed affinity for the facts repeatedly fails to materialize as he consistently lies on the stump. His CNN town hall event from Thursday evening was no exception.
Here are the seven biggest whoppers Joe Biden told during his CNN town hall that, had there been a “fact-checker on the floor” he would have been called out on.
7.Who owns stock?
Biden accused President Trump of only caring about the stock market, and suggested that Trump only cares about rich people on Wall Street. “How many of you all own stock?” Biden asked rhetorically. “In my neighborhood in Scranton, not a whole lot of people own stock.”
The problem? According to Gallup, a majority of Americans, 55 percent, say they have money invested in individual stocks, a stock mutual fund, or in a self-directed 401(k) or IRA. The fact is, investment are not exclusive to the rich. Many people, who are not rich, have retirement funds invested in the stock market. A bad market could devastate a retirement account, as it did after the 2008 financial crisis. Thanks to President Trump, a higher stock market means those planning for retirement have bigger retirement account balances.
6. His phony college story
For some reason, Joe Biden decided that the old lie about being the first in his family to go to college was worth resurrecting during the town hall. “I’m not joking, like guys like me, with the first in my family to go to college,” he said.
But he wasn’t the first in his family to go college, and he’s already admitted to lying about this back in 1987. In fact, he admitted so thirty-three years ago today. During a campaign speech at the Iowa State Fair in 1987 Biden lifted passages from a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock, in which he presented Kinnock’s humble beginning as his own.
The New York Times reported on September 18, 1987:
In addition, Mr. Biden said that in his talks invoking that speech, by Neil Kinnock, the Labor Party leader, he had miscast some of his own forebears, painting them as having rather more humble origins than they in fact did. For example, borrowing Mr. Kinnock’s sentiments, Mr. Biden had said he was ”the first in his family ever to go to university.” In fact, Mr. Biden said today, ”there are Finnegans, my mother’s family, that went to college.”
Really Joe, why?
5. State of the Union
Joe Biden claimed evidence that President Trump failed to deal with the virus was that he hadn’t mentioned it during his State of the Union address. “And it’s been the failure of this president to deal, to deal with this virus,” Biden said. “Imagine had he at the State of Union stood up and said, when back in January … Imagine if he had said something.”
The problem with this allegation is that Trump did talk about the coronavirus during his State of the Union address on February 4. “Protecting Americans’ health also means fighting infectious diseases. We are coordinating with the Chinese government and working closely together on the Coronavirus outbreak in China,” Trump said. “My Administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.”
That’s the same speech that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up.
4. Biden’s alleged coronavirus warning
Joe Biden’s primary campaign strategy has been to attack Trump’s response to the coronavirus, and claim that “it didn’t have to be this way.” Biden has also dabbled with claims that he was warning the country about the virus long before Trump was. His go-to “evidence” for this is his January 27 op-ed in USA Today.
“Back in January, I wrote an article for USA Today saying we’ve got a real problem,” Biden claimed at the CNN town hall.
But, no, not really. Even Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler noted back in April that Biden’s op-ed “was more of an attack on President Trump and a recollection of Obama administration steps taken against the 2014 Ebola outbreak than a detailed plan for action against a possible pandemic.”
Not only did the op-ed not contain any specific policies for combating the coronavirus, but it also panned “reactionary travel bans.” Trump would announce the travel ban with China three days after the op-ed ran, and Biden decried it as “hysterical xenophobia” before flip-flopping months later.
3. Supporting fracking
Sleepy Joe debunked himself during the town hall by first claiming to support fracking, then later admitting he would get rid of it.
Biden was asked, “With the abundance of natural gas in northeast Pennsylvania, do you support the continuation of fracking safely and with proper guidelines of course and growing the industry to add additional jobs to our region?”
To which, Biden replied: “Yes, I do. I do.”
But, during the same event, when called out by Anderson Cooper for his trying to have it both ways on fracking, Biden admitted that he would end fracking, just not right away.
“Well, fracking has to continue because we need a transition,” Biden explained to Anderson Cooper. “There’s no rationale to eliminate, right now, fracking.”
RELATED: Biden Flip-Flops (Again) to Support Banning Fracking Again
2. Trump’s coronavirus response
“Columbia Medical School pointed out if [Trump] acted one week earlier, he would have saved 37,000 lives,” Biden said.”All the way back, and I was on one of your shows, all the way back in March, I was calling for the need for us to have masks, have the president’s staff tell us what’s going on.”
But this claim by Biden contradicts his own actions. Biden was holding in-person rallies and events through March 10, the day before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic. There was no social distancing at the event, and no masks. Biden himself didn’t say he would wear a mask until after the White House Coronavirus Task Force recommended doing so.
Biden has repeatedly claimed he “sounded the alarm” and has been ahead of the curve when it comes to the coronavirus, but in reality, he’s lagged behind.
