Not the Biden you know Joe Biden has a long list of speeches, campaign stops and congressional votes for opposition researchers to pick through, and scrutiny of his record has been getting tougher now that he's close to clinching the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden has been a high-profile politician, and somewhat of a gaffe machine, for decades. But that was apparently not enough material for his critics to work with. We found three prominent examples of misleadingly edited videos meant to damage Biden's candidacy. A video from President Trump's campaign isolated some of Biden's remarks, quoting the former vice president as saying: "Excuse me. We can only reelect President Trump." A full look at Biden's remarks shows they were truncated, and he actually said: "We can only reelect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It's gotta be a positive campaign." The deceptive editing led Twitter to apply its new "manipulated media" label to a tweet for the first time. Sean Hannity of Fox News highlighted a speech Biden gave in 1973 to the City Club of Cleveland. Hannity claimed that Biden referred to African Americans with "a horrible, degrading word" in the speech, and the network bleeped it out. The implication was that Biden used the "n-word." But the word Biden used was "Negro." The word may seem archaic or obsolete now, but is it really so offensive that it needs to be bleeped out? Some organizations, such as the United Negro College Fund and the National Council of Negro Women, still use it as part of their names. Negro was commonly used in the 1960s by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other early civil rights era leaders. The audio of the 1973 speech shows that Biden was responding to a questioner who used the word Negro: "For some time I have had the feeling that the Southern senators are warmer now to the problems of the Negro in America. … Do you feel that way about it?" For the full fact check, click here. (We also fact-checked a video from Biden's camp.) 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. The virus doesn't respect wallsIt's the latest justification for a wall along the southern border. Trump claimed twice that a barrier would help mitigate the coronavirus from spreading in the United States, first at a campaign rally and then in a tweet quoting a right-wing activist, who wrote: "Now, more than ever, we need the wall. With China Virus spreading across the globe, the US stands a chance if we can control of our borders." But none of the coronavirus cases reported in the United States have been linked to people who entered through the U.S.-Mexico border. According to U.S. officials and experts, travelers who arrived on airplanes and cruise ships contracted the virus overseas. On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced a ban on foreign travelers from most of Europe for 30 days, following previous restrictions on travel from China and Iran. Hours after Trump's tweet, Rep. Katherine M. Clark (D-Mass.) asked at a House hearing whether "structural barriers at our border would be of any use in mitigating the outbreak of this virus." "Not that I've seen," CDC Director Robert Redfield responded. As of Wednesday, the United States had recorded more than 1,000 cases of coronavirus; Canada had nearly 100 and Mexico eight. Public-health experts say Trump's claim is off is because the coronavirus has already entered the United States — meaning containment measures are needed inside the country now. We gave Four Pinocchios to Trump. For the full fact check, click here. Sign up for The Post's Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked within the newsletter are free to access. 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. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. | 
Email 
No comments:
Post a Comment