The president's bogus job-creation claim We've learned from experience that when a president utters a big job-creation number, it's ripe for fact-checking. So when President Biden claimed twice — in a speech and a tweet — that a new bill promoting the semiconductor industry would create "1 million construction jobs," we were curious to figure out how that was calculated. It turned out this number is wildly exaggerated. When we asked the White House for documentation, we were directed to a 2021 report issued by the Semiconductor Industry Association, hardly a neutral party. When we dug into the report, moreover, we could not find any reference to 1 million construction jobs being created. "The statement about 1 million construction jobs is not accurate," said Sarah Ravi, a spokeswoman for the association. She directed us to a chart in the report that indicated that a $50 billion investment would create an additional 6,200 construction jobs. That's a huge difference. (In the full fact check, we dig deeper into how these numbers are calculated.) The White House initially defended the figure but eventually conceded it was wrong, claiming a "mix-up." But the tweet was not deleted and speech transcript was not corrected. So the president 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. Cortez Masto's misfired attack on Laxalt's opioid record The Senate race between Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, is one of the closest in the nation. In an attack ad, Cortez Masto accused Laxalt of refusing to sue an opioid manufacturer when he was attorney general. The ad darkly suggests that Laxalt's stance was influenced by campaign contributions. This is one of those highly technical issues that makes it ripe for campaign mischief. Coincidentally or not, after we started asking questions, the campaign released a new ad that more precisely targeted the critique. This new ad removed the accusation that he refused to sue a particular company but instead said he tried to block Reno from filing a suit against manufacturers. Long story short, the Cortez Masto campaign is straining mightily to connect dots in a sinister way. But they don't add up. The first version of this ad was especially bad, falsely claiming that Laxalt refused to sue a particular company. The retooled version, focused on a dispute with the Reno mayor, falsely says he did not want to hold opioid manufacturers accountable. Initially, Laxalt said he was concerned the Reno suit would interfere with multistate settlement discussions with opioid manufacturers. But when he determined it did not, he applauded the Reno suit. The first ad was worthy of Four Pinocchios, while the second ad just managed to earn Three. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP and @AdriUsero) 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