Fact-Checkers Spin Biden’s False Claim ‘We Didn’t Have’ Vaccine When He Came Into Office
“… we talked about it’s one thing to have the vaccine, which we didn’t have when we came into office, but a vaccinator,” Joe Biden told CNN’s Anderson Cooper during Tuesday night’s town hall.
There have been so many false claims from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the Trump administration’s Wuhan coronavirus vaccine rollout plan that it’s hard to know where to start.
One of the biggest whoppers has been the persistent allegation from Biden, Harris, and other administration officials that they “had to start from scratch” on the rollout. Harris told Axios in a recent interview that “we’re starting from scratch on something that’s been raging for almost an entire year.”
Predictably, so-called “fact-checkers” have so far given her a pass on her false statement, even though Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci had debunked a CNN report on this supposed “issue” last month.
During last night’s town hall on CNN, Biden added another bogus claim to the stack. He told moderator Anderson Cooper that “we didn’t have” the coronavirus vaccine when he came into office (bolded emphasis added):
BIDEN: In other words, not just all of a sudden 600 million doses are going to appear. And what’s going to happen is it’s going to continue to increase as we move along. And we’ll have — we’ll have reached 400 million by the end of May and 600 million by the middle of — by the end of July.
And the biggest thing, though, as you remember when you and I, I shouldn’t say it that way, as remember, but when you and I talked last, we talked about it’s one thing to have the vaccine, which we didn’t have when we came into office, but a vaccinator. How do you get the vaccine into someone’s arm?
Watch:
When Biden took office, the vaccine was being administered to almost a million people per day, but last night he claimed they didn't have the vaccine when he took office.
BIDEN: "It's one thing to have the vaccine which we didn't have when we came into office." pic.twitter.com/plA1YvI4Kq
— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) February 17, 2021
A direct reading of Biden’s comments, even “in context,” suggests Biden meant what he said – that the administration didn’t have a vaccine when he took office.
But here’s how the fact-checkers from significant mainstream media news outlets rushed to explain Biden’s town hall answer last night:
CNN’s Daniel Dale, who tweeted last year during Biden’s last CNN town hall that Biden was “fact-checking” Trump by “uttering many consecutive coherent sentences,” had this to say:
Biden had said just prior that there were "only" 50 million vaccine doses when he took office. I'm looking into that claim (and a bunch of other claims Biden made tonight), but he clearly wasn't trying to claim the vaccine did not exist at all under Trump. https://t.co/2EtKDWyR7o
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 17, 2021
Reuters reporter Jan Wolfe:
Deleted two tweets. The first was getting more shares than the follow-up to provide context.
Biden did say: "It's one thing to have the vaccine, which we didn't have when we came into office."
But earlier in the show he acknowledged Trump's vaccine supply. Wanna give full picture https://t.co/gvtSkADc7K pic.twitter.com/22H6YemTnG— Jan Wolfe (@JanNWolfe) February 17, 2021
The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, whose paper announced last month that they had “no plans” to launch a Biden fact-checking database like they did with Trump, spun Biden’s answer like this:
It was a verbal stumble, a typical Biden gaffe, as he had already mentioned 50 million doses being available when he took office. Ex Trump officials should especially cool the outrage meter, as it just looks silly. https://t.co/HFjH01lXgH
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) February 17, 2021
When someone asked Kessler how he determined a “verbal stumble,” here was his answer:
It depends in part on whether he spoke correctly about vaccine availability elsewhere in the interview. People screw up on live television. Biden with his stutter especially does so.
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) February 17, 2021
As others observed, it looked more like a coordinated Biden “rapid response team” reaction than supposedly objective fact-checkers trying to boil down Biden’s false statement to a “verbal stumble”:
Rapid response team activated pic.twitter.com/ociZ64X8lJ
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 17, 2021
This is not fact checking. Glenn Kessler is making excuses for Joe Biden that not even Joe Biden himself makes excuses for – per @axios https://t.co/f9wyk5IfPY https://t.co/XUXhwxgXWt pic.twitter.com/dfdzXILRM2
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 17, 2021
WaPo rang up Trump for over 30,000 "false or misleading" claims — averaging 16 lies a day for 5 years. They dinged Trump for statements such as "I have tremendous African American support."
I don't know how you go from that hyperliteral standard to giving Biden a pass on this. https://t.co/5xTC7NqnkS
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) February 17, 2021
Amazingly, a full 12 hours after the town hall, Kessler is still at it (as I write this, he’s still trying to explain Biden’s answer):
Here’s a guide for ex-Trump officials for how to tell whether a politician might be telling a deliberate lie or just had a verbal stumble. They were quick to declare Biden was a deliberate “liar” last night on vaccine development. So here we go…1/6
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) February 17, 2021
A) Did he say something different elsewhere in the town hall? Yes, just minutes before: “We came into office, there was only 50 million doses that were available.” That’s a clue he knows the vaccine was created when he became president.
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) February 17, 2021
That’s another clue. So the odds are this is a flub, not a deliberate falsehood. He contradicts what he said just moments earlier and what he has said in the past. As fact checkers, we look for patterns and context ….
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) February 17, 2021
And the finale from Kessler was the inevitable veiled swipe at Trump because they just can’t quit him:
I know it’s fun to snip a clip and act outraged on social media. But what’s more telling is if a politician over and over says the same falsehood, day after day, no matter how often he or she has been fact-checked. No going to mention any names, of course.
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) February 17, 2021
Gosh, what could have changed over the last month to make fact-checkers so much more willing to give a president the benefit of the doubt when they say something that isn’t true?
So the generosity spigot is being turned on full blast now, when it wasn’t even in existence the last four years. Interesting. What could account for the difference, I wonder? It’s a real mystery! pic.twitter.com/hLETTHG604
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) February 17, 2021
My God, you are spinning like a top on this, Glenn. I guess this is what "fact checks" are supposed to look like from state-run media outlets. https://t.co/wIhHzwFwSb
— Sister Toldjah Le Pew ? (@sistertoldjah) February 17, 2021
As usual, it’s the “D” beside their names that makes all the (D)ifference.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
We got Trump because of Obama’s lies and the media treating him like the black Messiah. Now they are treating Delusional China Joe the same way, even though he doesn’t even know where the hell he is, and has been in Congress for almost 50 years with NOTHING to show for it, except wanting us to go to War.
Change “treating” to “worshipping.”
You forgot, he also always wanted to be President! He worked mightily for the honor!!!!
He just doesn’t always remember how he got there.
I think he got there by bus.
And the only reason that Biden has a vaccine, IS TRUMP !!
Didn’t have the vaccine? Then I wonder what was in the 5000+ injections I gave before Jan. 20th? From all my reading and checking it was COVID-19 Vaccine made by Pfizer.
This man is to impaired to work as a Wal-Mart greeter.
The Big Lie, which Andy is more than happy to treat as truth.
Methinks the fact-checker protests too much.
Is that a fact! /ducking
During the Trump admin anything not 100% verifiably true was called a ‘lie’.
Even some things that were 100% true were called lies. Because diversity, intersectionality, inclusion, BLM, etc…
What a difference a D makes.
My favorite is the newspapers giving credit to the Biden administration for the AZ state Cardinal Stadium vaccine dispensary that operates 24/7. It has been in operation since the first of the year. It has the capacity to give 10K shots/day if the state is provided the vaccines it orders. Typically AZ get 165K/week with an order of 300K/week.
Trump could say “Good morning” and they’d fact check him false.
Biden gets baffled in the middle of a very simple spoon-fed CNN interview and the fact checkers come flooding out to declare the emperor’s new clothes to be the most fantastic thing in the world.
In reality, there’s only two explanations for this: outright lying or mental confusion. The media is frantic to find a third option, because they can’t admit he lies, and they sure can’t admit we elected a very confused person, so… Minor flub! That’s all it is! Look over there! Squirrel!
There was no vaccine…..anywhere in the world. Biden had to make it himself in the basement. He was so busy he didn’t have time to talk to world leaders, but Kamella came to the rescue making a seamless transition of lesser duties to herself.
With his most important task finished, Biden called a lid, cleared his schedule for the next three days and went to Camp David. News Media reports that that Biden, mental genius that he is, was able to easily beat his granddaughter at an advanced level video game playing the role of Luigi.
so all the times joe has been caught plagiarizing were “verbal stumble”?
dont get me started on this neobullsh!t stutter claim. he doesnt have a stutter, hes an 1d10t.
“There are good people on both sides. But I’m not talking about the lying media. They are to be totally condemned for spreading lies, hate, and false claims of racism to divide this country.”
The biggest media lie is the total BS of absolutely ignoring Biden’s mental state. You don’t lie about it. You just pretend his mind is still there, like the emperor’s new clothes.
The frightening thing is how many people pretend with you instead of recognizing what dangerous evil liars you are.
Biden forgot that he had the vaccine in December and again in January.
Cooper of Obama/Biden wars without borders, transnational terrorism, [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] immigration reform (e.g. trail of tears, waterboarded refugees) cover-up fame.
What Kessler writes about verbal stumbles, and how one must look at the context and at other statements before labeling something a deliberate attempt to mislead, is absolutely correct. That is how fact-checking should be done, and not by seizing on one garbled moment.
But that’s not the standard he used for Trump’s four years, or for GWB’s eight years. (I’m not sure how long he’s been doing this, but at least that long.)
Remember when Dick Cheney in an interview, after having said four times that Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons as of yet but was trying to get them, by reconstituting his nuclear weapons program, said once that “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons”? By Kessler’s new standard, which is the correct one, it was obvious that Cheney meant to say “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted his nuclear weapons program”. But Kessler and his colleagues in the fake “fact-checking” industry ran with the literal meaning of the words, even though they made no sense. How do you reconstitute a nuclear weapon? Just add water?!
Interesting comment, I don’t know much about the fact checkers pre Trump. But yes you are right in the setting of that standard, context is very important.
“We need a vaccinator”?? Basement Joe told a breathless press that he was going to shoot for 1 million injections a day.
On that same day the “vaccinators” gave more than 1 million injections ( they were hired by President Trump) . Also see the previous comment regarding Arizona.
Glenn Kessler is just one of the army of make up artists that are putting lipstick on this pig.
Or remember when Sarah Palin, immediately after worrying that the 0bama White House may not “come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea’s going to do”, thus clearly recognizing that North Korea is the enemy, referred to “our North Korean allies”. And when the interviewer corrected her, saying “South Korea”, she didn’t even notice that she’d flubbed it; she thought he was just repeating what she’d said, so she confirmed it and went on: “Yeah. And we’re also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes.”
That’s not how Kessler and his colleagues treated it, though.
I don’t care if they have a billion doses in Texas. They won’t stick that needle in my arm unless I’m unconscious or dead.
Sad thing is, the demented old communist pedophile probably believes it.
Of course he believes it, but you have to keep telling him every 15 minutes.
Ah, but he said “came into office.” What he means, is on November 3rd — that’s when he came into “The Office of the President-Elect.” It’s a real office, Jill told him so. It had a stapler and a Herman Miller chair and everything.
Although it would be a first, maybe Biden isn’t lying this time? Could be he honestly doesn’t know or remember. Maybe he doesn’t know what a vaccine is. He made that claim while confused about which office he came into. He could be firing on half his cylinders after sniffing his son’s hair.
These aren’t fact checkers, they are fabulists. They write fairy tales for the illiterate.