Biden is no stranger to stretching the truth, but the past week was especially egregious — even for him.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact-Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we recap President Biden’s particularly deceptive week, question the New York Times’ priorities, and hit more media misses.
(Another) Bad Week for Biden
President Biden is no stranger to stretching the truth, but the past week was especially egregious — even for him.
First, he claimed during an event in Florida on Tuesday that he had spoken with the man who “invented” insulin despite the doctor having died before Biden was born.
“Do you know how much it costs to make that insulin drug for diabetes? . . . It was invented by a man who did not patent it because he wanted it available for everyone. I spoke to him, okay?” Biden said while discussing his administration’s work to lower health care costs.
Joe Biden claims that he spoke to the man who invented insulin. pic.twitter.com/FLjIZ1jPdE
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) November 1, 2022
However, Dr. Frederick Banting and professor John James Richard Macleod discovered insulin in 1921. Macleod died in 1935, and Banting died six years later, in 1941. Biden wasn’t born until the next year.
Both declined to put their names on the insulin patent. While Biden could have been referring to one of two other doctors who were involved in the discovery of insulin, both of those doctors were in fact named on the patent.
At the same event in Florida, Biden also falsely said that his son Beau died while serving in Iraq.
“They talk about inflation . . . inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what Russia’s doing . . . excuse me, the war in Ukraine,” the president said. “I’m thinking about Iraq because that’s where my son died.”
Joe Biden just said that his son Beau only lived for 19 months after he came home from Iraq.
Beau Biden died six years after his deployment to Iraq ended. pic.twitter.com/iyvbTfFUdb
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 2, 2022
Biden just said that his son Beau lived for only 19 months after he came home from Iraq. Biden previously made a similar claim during an event in Colorado on October 12. He said at the time: “I say this as a father of a man who won the Bronze Star, the Conspicuous Service Medal, and lost his life in Iraq. Imagine the courage, the daring, and the genuine sacrifice — genuine sacrifice they all made.”
However, Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015, almost six years after he left Iraq. President Biden has previously suggested that Beau’s exposure to burn pits during his time in Iraq is connected with his brain cancer.
Biden also falsely claimed this week, during the speech on Tuesday, that the U.S. has the “lowest inflation rate of almost any country in the world.” In fact, 15 other developed countries currently have lower inflation rates than the U.S.
That same day, the White House tweeted: “Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership.”
The following day, the White House quietly deleted the tweet after an “added context” disclaimer appeared on the post, pointing out that the increase wasn’t an intentional decision made by the president..
“Seniors will receive a large Social Security benefit increase due to the annual cost of living adjustment, which is based on the inflation rate,” the fact check said. A 1972 law requires automatic benefit adjustments tied to the Consumer Price Index.
Biden, who frequently talks about uniting the country, then wrapped up his rough week by taking out his frustrations on Americans.
On Saturday, Biden blasted protesters gathered outside an elementary school where he was speaking, calling them “idiots” for labeling Democrats “socialists” over their approach to health-care policy.
“Social security and Medicare are more than government programs, they’re a promise. They’re a promise. Work hard and contribute and when the time comes, things will be easier for you,” Biden said in remarks at Jones Elementary in Joliet, Ill. “It’s a rock-solid guarantee, an iron-clad commitment. Generations of Americans have counted on it and it works.”
“I love those signs when I came in — socialism. Give me a break, what idiots,” the president added. “No one ever doubts I mean what I say, sometimes of course I say all that I mean.”
Headline Fail of the Week
Despite being just days out from a major election, it must have been a slow week for the New York Times, which dedicated more than 2,200 words to writing about “How Molly Jong-Fast Tweeted Her Way to Liberal Media Stardom.”
“Molly Jong-Fast wasn’t a political insider,” the outlet wrote in a tweet sharing the story. “But she has marshaled a weapons-grade Twitter habit and a penchant for sliding into journalists’ DMs to catapult herself into the beating heart of left-wing media.”
Jong-Fast has made a career telling a certain type of progressive exactly what they want to hear. As reporter Michael Grynbaum comes close to acknowledging in the article, Jong-Fast scores high-profile interview guests precisely because the Democratic politicians she invites know she won’t challenge them:
Ms. Jong-Fast is not an adversarial interviewer — “Do you think, personally, that democracy can survive a second Trump term?” she asked Ms. Harris — but her progressive fans don’t seem to mind.
While Grynbaum clearly grasps the dynamic that fueled Jong-Fast’s rise to prominence, he refuses to draw the obvious conclusion: that she is a propagandist, not a journalist or writer worthy of those titles.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald hit the nail on the head:
Great and exciting news from @nytimes!
If you’re born into a very rich and famous family, which results in your having a gigantic co-op in Manhattan, you can use it to invite fame-hungry journalists and politicians to your awesome parties that will then turn into a media career! https://t.co/ZQ8mWDxvX2
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 7, 2022
Media Misses
— Over the weekend, Saturday Night Live’s Cecily Strong played a character named “Tammy the Trucker” who wants to “talk about gas prices and definitely not abortion.” The sketch, while trying to pass as comedy, features a very serious pro-abortion monologue:
Gas prices are up and families are really hurting, but that’s not gonna magically disappear no matter who you vote for. But what will keep disappearing is safe access to abortion and it’s not really magic, ‘cause they told us that’s exactly what they’re gonna do, and they been doing it.
Tammy the Trucker promises she’s here to talk about gas prices and definitely not abortion pic.twitter.com/JvvrNBudNJ
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) November 6, 2022
— MSNBC’s Steve Benen claims, “It seems as if Herschel Walker has been encouraged to think of random things that bother him, and then just add ‘the biggest threat to democracy’ to the end of the sentence.”
NR’s Dan McLaughlin said it best:
My irony meter just melted. https://t.co/xS6ChS6oTu
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) November 7, 2022
— Rolling Stone’s incoming senior entertainment editor was up on his soapbox:
what is it going to take for ppl to realize that the billionaire class does not have their best interests at heart, and journalists who for the most part do not get paid much (and these days are constantly harassed) to check those powerful ppl are the ones who have their backs
— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) November 6, 2022