While former President Donald Trump spent much of his week in court, President Joe Biden visited the swing state of Pennsylvania for three days and gave speeches in Scranton, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. We flagged some false and misleading claims, including several common talking points.
As a primer for the 2024 election, here’s our guide to the top 10 falsehoods and distortions — so far — in terms of Trump’s and Biden’s propensity to repeat them.
In a video statement outlining his position on abortion, former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that “all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and in fact demanded” that Roe v. Wade “be ended.” Legal scholars told us that was “utter nonsense” and “patently absurd.”
In announcing his choice for vice president, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, made statements that were false or misleading.
His speech included misleading claims on inflation, crime, clean energy investments, wages and other subjects.
Encounters on the southern border of those trying to enter the U.S. without authorization have gone up significantly under President Joe Biden. Government statistics show that in the initial processing of millions of encounters, 2.5 million people have been released into the U.S. and 2.8 million have been removed or expelled.
In a Feb. 20 town hall in South Carolina that aired on Fox News, days before the state’s Republican primary, former President Donald Trump repeated several false and misleading claims we’ve fact-checked before.
Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on his investigation of President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter.” But in a press conference, Biden made several false or misleading claims concerning other details in that report.
Since President Joe Biden took office, the economy has added nearly 14.8 million jobs, 5.4 million more than the pre-pandemic peak in early 2020. All told, it’s an average monthly job growth of more than 400,000. But Biden misleadingly contrasts that with a loss of jobs under former President Donald Trump — a loss that occurred because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our latest quarterly look at various statistical measures during Biden’s presidency.