While former President Donald Trump spent much of his week in court, President Joe Biden visited the swing state of Pennsylvania for three days and gave speeches in Scranton, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. We flagged some false and misleading claims, including several common talking points.
On the day of the tax filing deadline, former President Donald Trump went on Truth Social to misleadingly warn that if President Joe Biden is reelected, “you will soon be facing colossal tax HIKES.” But in his latest budget proposal, Biden supports extending the tax cuts championed by Trump for people making less than $400,000.
As a primer for the 2024 election, here’s our guide to the top 10 falsehoods and distortions — so far — in terms of Trump’s and Biden’s propensity to repeat them.
During a speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin, former President Donald Trump pointed to a chart on apprehensions of people trying to enter the U.S. illegally at the southwest border. “See the arrow on the bottom? That was my last week in office,” he said. “That was the lowest number in history.” But Trump was wrong on both points.
Former President Donald Trump attended the wake for slain New York City Police Officer Jonathan Diller and met with his family. But social media posts make the unsupported claim that Trump paid off the family’s mortgage. A nonprofit announced it would pay the mortgage and told a news outlet it had no contact with Trump about the Diller mortgage.
Both Easter and the Transgender Day of Visibility happened to fall on March 31 this year. President Joe Biden recognized both occasions, as he has done every year in office. But some social media posts and conservative politicians characterized his acknowledgement of Transgender Day of Visibility as “mocking” Easter and declaring “war” on Christianity.
COVID-19 vaccines are not “being used to cure cancer,” as social media posts falsely claim, misinterpreting President Joe Biden’s reference to mRNA cancer vaccines during his State of the Union address. Biden was referring to the mRNA technology used to make the COVID-19 vaccines and being studied by researchers to treat cancer.
Under President Joe Biden, the Latino unemployment rate reached a low of 3.9% in September 2022 — the lowest rate since September 2019. But Biden recently said that the rate under his presidency was the lowest in “a long, long time.”
While speaking about the potential loss of U.S. auto manufacturing jobs to foreign countries, former President Donald Trump said if he isn’t elected, “it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
President Joe Biden said he has caught former President Donald Trump admitting that he wants to cut Social Security and Medicare. The Trump campaign said, in context, Trump was talking about cutting waste and fraud in those programs – not benefits.