Biden, Trump debate fact-checked over false claims, disinformation
7 Min Read
A CNN staffer even attempted to fact-check a key Biden claim but did so only very briefly by stating that it was false and did not even bother to go into details.
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President Joe Biden, right, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, left, participate in a presidential debate hosted by CNN, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP)
Trump said that the United States has become uncivilized and is no longer respected in the world, blaming Biden for it. This was in today's heated presidential debate that a lot criticized for lacking any fact-checking.
On his part, Biden asserted that the economy was in disarray under Trump's administration, while Trump blamed Biden for the red-hot inflation rates. "He has not done a good job. He's done a poor job, and inflation is killing our country. It is absolutely killing us," Trump stressed.
These are just a few highlights of the much-awaited debate that ended with Democrats panicking and demanding new candidates to replace the incumbent President.
In response to the lack of fact-checking during the presidential debate on Thursday, AFP and CNN provided a list of facts that the contenders deliberately tried to spin.
No US troops dying on Biden's watch
Biden falsely claimed that no US troops had died abroad during his presidency.
"Truth is, I'm the only president… that doesn't have any, this decade, troops dying anywhere in the world," Biden said.
However, this statement overlooked the deaths of 13 US military service members during the withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 26, 2021, and three US troops killed by a drone attack in Jordan on January 28, 2024.
With that being said, a CNN staffer fact-checked this issue only very briefly by stating that it was false and did not even bother to go into details.
Prepare to watch the most brutal CNN fact check of crooked Joe you’ll ever see.
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 28, 2024
Has the call already gone out to take out Joe Biden? pic.twitter.com/YRqE9nNmDi
Two of CNN's top anchors who moderated the presidential debate on Thursday night are already being criticized for failing to provide real-time fact-checks of comments made by Biden and Trump.
Migrant crisis
Trump falsely claimed that under Biden, "we don't have borders anymore," adding, "Because of his ridiculous, insane and very stupid policies, people are coming in and they're killing our citizens at a level that we've never seen. We call it 'migrant crime.' I call it 'Biden migrant crime.'"
In response to criticism regarding unprecedented border crossings and a bipartisan immigration bill that was not approved by Congress, Biden issued an executive order at the beginning of this month that will temporarily close the border to asylum seekers once specific daily thresholds are reached.
Nicole Hallett, director of the University of Chicago Law School's Immigrants' Rights Clinic, commented that this amounted to "increased enforcement at the border," noting that besides rare incidents, there is "no evidence" of the migrant crime wave Trump is portraying.
"Crime is down across the country, even as migration has increased," she said.
Even FBI data from 2022 shows that violent crimes and property crimes are almost at the lowest in decades, and a June 2023 study further showed a plunge in incarceration rates among immigrants since 1960.
Columbia Law School professor Jeffrey Fagan added, "The overwhelming majority of violent crimes are committed by citizens," that is, US citizens.
Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications at the Migration Policy Institute, verified this by saying that no evidence exists to prove Trump's claims that inmates in mental institutions are from across the southern US border.
Economic downfall
As for the economy, both candidates pointed fingers at each other for rising prices and inflation in the nation.
"He causes inflation. I gave him a country with essentially no inflation," Trump said, after calling it the "greatest economy in US history."
Biden refuted this by saying that Trump "decimated the economy" and that there were "no jobs" during his time.
Meanwhile, both candidates were misleading by undermining the effect of the COVID-19 virus as inflation hit 1.4% while fighting it.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics also showed that unemployment was at about 6.4% down from its peak of 14.8% in April 2020 following the virus' outbreak.
When he was in office, Biden claimed, unemployment was at 15% but the CNN staffer debunked that by saying that it was in fact at 6.4% – as confirmed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Inflation continued to increase under Biden's presidency, hitting a peak of around 9% in June 2022 before falling to its current level of about 3%.
Finally, Biden's claim that billionaires pay 8.2% in taxes is false as they pay much higher, according to the CNN staffer.
Medicare and medication
In the analysis by the CNN staffer, he debunked Biden's claim that it is a $15 per shot cap on insulin in Medicare while, in fact, it is $35. The staffer added that Biden argued there was a $200 cap on overall drug spending in Medicare when it was really a whopping $2000.
On Trump's claim that some democratic states allow the execution of babies after birth, he maintained that this is, in fact, illegal everywhere. As for the claim of Biden getting paid by China, there is not any evidence of it anywhere.
While Trump maintained that Iran, under his time, did not fund Hamas or the Lebanese Resistance, the CNN staffer claimed it did.
On the claim that the US has paid aid to Ukraine more than Europe did, the staffer claimed it was "the opposite", maintaining that when Trump said the US paid $200 billion to Ukraine, it was more like $110 billion instead.
In addition, the US was paying 100% of the defense budget of NATO, according to Trump before he came into office, but it was actually 71%.
Trump further noted that every legal scholar wanted the Roe v. Wade landmark case overturned, but the staffer claimed legal scholars denied that claim personally to him.
CNN provides their fact check of Trump pic.twitter.com/Ic2MfmF4Kh
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 28, 2024
January 6 riots
Trump spared no time to bring up the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, known as the Capitol Riots, and blamed ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for it.
"I offered her 10,000 soldiers, or National Guard, and she turned them down," he stated, but according to AFP, Pelosi's team denied knowing any request for National Guard assistance until the Capitol was raided by Trump supporters.
Pelosi would not have even had the authority to reject the National Guard's activation had Trump authorized it.
The District of Columbia National Guard "reports only to the president," as per its website.
Former acting defense secretary Christopher Miller revealed to a reporter at the time that he recalled Trump talking about the reinforcements' idea but that "there was no order from the president."
Moreover, the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack wrote in its final report that Trump "never gave any order to deploy the National Guard."
