Biden Has Earned 11 Pinocchios From Fact-Checkers During Coronavirus Crisis

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has been dinged several 
times by fact-checkers over claims he has made during the 
coronavirus crisis, including a total of 11 "Pinocchios" from the 
Washington Post.

Over the course of three weeks between March 13 and April 3, Biden 
was fact-checked five separate times for making false or misleading 
claims concerning the Trump administration's handling of the 
pandemic.

A Washington Post fact check on March 13 awarded Biden four 
Pinocchios, the fact-checker's most severe rating, for two 
manipulated videos the Biden campaign circulated.

The first video claimed to show Trump at a Feb. 28 rally saying 
Democrats were turning the coronavirus into "their new hoax" after 
they failed to bring Trump down through impeachment. Biden's video 
was edited to make it appear that Trump was calling the coronavirus 
a hoax. Trump, however, was referring to the Democrats' attempts to 
blame him for the virus, not the virus itself.

The second Biden campaign video showed Trump saying the phrase "the 
American Dream is dead," which the Post found was taken out of 
context and missing the second part of Trump's statement where he 
promised to "bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever 
before."

Another Post fact check on March 24 gave the campaign four 
Pinocchios after adviser Ron Klain accused Trump of silencing Dr. 
Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The president and the White House sent a clear message to 
scientists in the government—there would be a price for speaking out 
and speaking up," he said in a campaign video released on March 21.

Messonnier continued to hold routine phone briefings with reporters 
in the weeks after she raised the alarm about the virus at a press 
conference with Trump.

Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote that Klain's framing was 
"simply wrong." Messonnier's alarming rhetoric did irritate Trump, 
but the idea that she was silenced was a "false narrative," Kessler 
added.

At a CNN town hall on March 27, Biden repeated an earlier claim that 
Trump had eliminated the White House pandemic office. He also 
claimed Trump made "no effort" to put any pressure on Chinese 
president Xi Jinping and reduced the CDC's staff in China prior to 
the outbreak. Biden added he called for China to admit medical 
experts from the United States when the outbreak in China was still 
in its early stages.

The Post‘s fact check gave Biden three Pinocchios due to his 
imprecise language. The Trump administration sought access for CDC 
experts, and the administration told the Post that Trump offered to 
send experts to China to help with the outbreak. Biden also did not 
specifically call for experts to be sent until late February.

Those weren't the only times Biden has been fact-checked for 
rhetoric during the crisis.

On March 15, during the Democratic presidential debate, Biden 
falsely claimed that Trump refused coronavirus testing kits from the 
World Health Organization. The kits were never offered in the first 
place. PolitiFact rated his statement "Mostly False." CNN, after 
initially deeming his statement factual, retracted its rating after 
a report by the Washington Free Beacon.

On March 19, Biden first tweeted that Trump "eliminated" the 
pandemic response team. The Washington Post fact check found this 
claim "overstated" due to the fact that the global health 
directorate was folded into another office under the guidance of 
former national security adviser John Bolton. Citing "dueling 
narratives," however, it didn't give a rating to Biden's claim.


https://freebeacon.com/elections/biden-has-earned-11-pinocchios-
from-fact-checkers-during-coronavirus-crisis/