Eric Trump's phony meme on Biden and Telemundo The Trumps are a family of tweeters, and this week, Eric Trump shared a meme implying that Democratic nominee Joe Biden had been "caught red-handed using a teleprompter" to answer voters' questions. The evidence? A clip from Biden's Sept. 15 interview with Telemundo. As the meme goes, Biden says, "Okay, I lost that line" as he looks askance from the camera. Eric Trump retweeted it with his own comment: "Unreal!" But a review of the full interview shows it was the meme — not Biden's handling of the interview — that was unreal. The video in the meme begins several minutes into one of Biden's answers. He is addressing a viewer who is on a screen placed outside of his own video frame. He then pauses, looks quizzically at the screen before saying, "Okay, I lost that lady." Univision anchor José Díaz-Balart begins to speak just as Biden says "lady," making Biden's last word difficult to hear on first listen. So, the meme uses an inaccurate and misleading quote, "Okay, I lost that line" (instead of "lady"), and never reveals that Biden was talking to a viewer onscreen out of his own camera frame, making his puzzled look and off-camera focus appear to be evidence of teleprompter use, and adding to the false narrative. A woman's dropped connection, and a blank screen, don't lend any support for the Trump campaign's frequent baseless claim that Biden is incapable of handling interviews and other tasks. The younger Trump earned Four Pinocchios. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. GOP ad falsely says Democrat lobbied for child predators A foreboding ad running in a tightly-contested congressional race in New Jersey claims Rep. Tom Malinowski (D), who was elected in 2018, was "helping sexual predators hide in the shadows" when he was a human-rights lobbyist. "In every city, in every neighborhood, around every corner, sex offenders are living among us," the narrator of the ad from the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) says over dark imagery, adding, "Tom Malinowski chose sex offenders over your family." Malinowski was a high-ranking official ("Washington director") at Human Rights Watch before joining the Obama State Department, but his lobbying work focused on foreign policy and issues such as Darfur, not on domestic legislation. Pages 2 and 3 of HRW's 2006 lobbying form list dozens of issues, including "sex offender legislation" that the group lobbied on. Malinowski is listed, but so is Jennifer Daskal. Daskal noted that in the Congressional Record, a letter on behalf of HRW was published under her name and title ("Advocacy Director, U.S. Program"), raising concerns about the legislation. The ad claims HRW was "strongly opposed" to a national sex offender registry. But the letter signed by Daskal did not object to creating one. Instead, the letter said HRW opposed the bill because the language was so sweeping that it included low-level or misdemeanor offenders, such as people charged with public urination, who were attempting to reintegrate into the community after serving their sentences. We gave the NRCC ad Four Pinocchios. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @rizzoTK, @mmkelly22, @SarahCahlan) or Facebook. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. You can order our book, "Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth," in paperback, e-book and audiobook via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, independent booksellers or directly from the publisher. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. | 
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