The best (worst) Pinocchios of the election It's award season at The Fact Checker, and we regret to inform you that the scale of dishonesty continues to climb in presidential elections. Let's take a quick tour. In 2016, President Trump had an average rating of 3.4 Pinocchios to Hillary Clinton's 2.2 Pinocchios. In 2012, Mitt Romney had an average rating of 2.4 Pinocchios, compared with 2.1 for Barack Obama. This year, Trump amassed 295 Pinocchios combined from our fact checks since May 2019, with an average rating of 3.64 Pinocchios. (That basically means he almost always received Four Pinocchios when we rated him.) Former vice president Joe Biden was no slouch, earning 51 Pinocchios with an average rating of 2.67. A number of times, Biden avoided Pinocchios by admitting error. Biden also spoke far less often than Trump, providing fewer opportunities for fact-checking. Most imaginary history: Biden asserted that he had the "great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see him [Nelson Mandela] on Robbens Island." Soweto, a township near Johannesburg, is nearly 900 miles from Robben — not Robbens — Island. No one knew what Biden was talking about, including Andrew Young, the former ambassador. Eventually Biden explained he was separated from Black colleagues at the airport. That's not an arrest. Most imaginary plan: Trump repeatedly says he has a health-care plan ready to unveil that would replace Obamacare and protect people with preexisting conditions. But he has revealed no such plan, and every legislative and legal move he has made would have weakened protections for preexisting conditions. He's at the Supreme Court now asking to undo those protections. 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. Covid who? As the 2020 campaign ends, Trump continues to flood the zone with false and misleading claims about the coronavirus pandemic. Cases have been spiking across the country, while Trump insists "we're rounding the turn." The president continues to assert that U.S. infections are rising "because we do more testing than anybody else," when experts say the main reason is the spreading disease. Trump earned Four Pinocchios for a variety of coronavirus claims he keeps repeating in the last legs of the race. Here's a sample: Trump: "We're rounding the turn. Even without the vaccines, we're rounding the turn, it's going to be over." As of Oct. 28, the United States had more than 8.8 million reported coronavirus cases and at least 227,000 deaths, according to The Washington Post covid-19 tracker. The rate of new coronavirus infections per week began to climb in mid-September and is currently climbing, showing the United States experiencing a third wave of the disease after two earlier surges in 2020. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @rizzoTK, @mmkelly22) 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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