Fact Checking Biden’s Town Hall

Biden's weak performance repeats his past lies, doesn't get pressed on corruption

Posted on Oct 16, 2020

Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden continued to lie to the American people at last night’s ABC Town Hall, disavowing his past support for fracking, the Green New Deal, and continuing to dodge questions about packing the Supreme Court.

Perhaps most notable were the questions not asked. Biden was never confronted about the explosive New York Post article detailing his son Hunter’s foreign business deals. Why didn’t Biden stop his son from selling access to him?  Why did Biden lie about not knowing about Hunter’s deals while he was Vice President of the United States?

Below are a few of the mistruths, misdirections, and outright lies from last night:

FICTION: Joe Biden continues to dodge questions as to whether he would pack the Supreme Court if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed.

FACT: So far, Biden has refused to reject the idea of court-packing, because the answer is yes he would. Joe Biden has said:

  • “It’s a legitimate question, but let me tell you why I’m not going to answer that question,” Biden said in an interview with WBAY-TV in Wisconsin.
  • “What I’m not going to do, and I hope you’ll understand, is play the president’s game. He wants to change the subject,” Biden told WRAL-TV in North Carolina. “I’m not gonna get into that.”
  • “I know you’re going to be upset with my answer, but … if I were to say yes or no to that, that becomes a big issue. That’s the headline here,” Biden said last weekend.
  • Joe Biden said on October 9, 2020, in Nevada that voters “don’t deserve to know” if he supports court-packing.
  • Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, has also recently refused to answer questions about court-packing despite being willing in the past to ignore historical precedent and add more Justices to the Supreme Court.

FICTION: Joe Biden asserted that Republicans blocked coronavirus stimulus in favor of a Supreme Court nomination proceedings for Amy Coney Barrett.

FACT: Last month, Democrats filibustered Republican’s coronavirus relief bill, effectively killing it and putting working Americans in limbo as they continue to hurt from the fallout of the pandemic.

This isn’t the first time Democrats have blocked relief for the American people. In April, Pelosi led the House Democrats charge to block funding for President Trump’s highly effective Paycheck Protection Program. Pelosi and Democrats allowed the program to run dry for a week, blocking small business owners from urgent relief.

  • Pelosi tried to push a $2 trillion relief bill and failed to negotiate with Administration officials to bring another round of economic impact payments to working families. Pelosi and Democrats’ lack of action prompted President Trump to sign a series of executive actions to postpone payroll taxes, increase unemployment benefits, extend student loan relief, and postpone evictions.
  • Secretary Mnuchin said: “She [Pelosi] made clear that she was unwilling to meet to continue negotiations unless we agreed in advance to her proposal, costing at least $2 trillion. The Democrats have no interest in negotiating.”
  • Nancy Pelosi laughed over a freezer full of expensive ice cream on national television while holding American workers hostage. During a global pandemic where families stressed over potential unemployment, Nancy Pelosi held up funding while she sat comfortably in her San Francisco home.

FICTION: Joe Biden has repeatedly touted his role in the 2009 recovery as an exemplary model for economic recovery.

FACT: The Biden economic “recovery” was the worst since the Great Depression. It failed to bring back manufacturing jobs, wage growth was stagnant, the middle-class shrunk, 14 million Americans left the workforce, and nearly 800,000 fell into poverty.

Job growth averaged just 110,000 jobs per month, wages grew at a paltry average of just 2.2%, and the average unemployment rate was 7.4%. Even Joe Biden admitted workers were left behind in his “recovery.”

Biden’s recovery failed to bring back manufacturing jobs, the middle-class shrunk, 14 million Americans left the workforce, and nearly 800,000 fell into poverty. By 2016, 57 percent of Americans believed the economy was getting worse.

A look back at Joe’s career will show that he has tried and failed to implement supposedly green projects that would supposedly create American jobs during the economic recovery in 2009. Biden lauded programs backed by stimulus money that completely ripped off the American tax-payer and shipped American jobs overseas.

FICTION: Joe Biden claimed he does not support the framework of the Green New Deal.

FACT: Biden’s own campaign website states that “Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face.” In addition, Biden’s running-mate Kamala Harris is a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal.

FICTION: Joe Biden claimed that NATO is “at risk of beginning to crack”.

FACT: President Trump has successfully urged North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members to increase their defense spending and to focus on modern priorities. President Trump strongly supports NATO, but wants all NATO members to make their full and proper financial contribution to the NATO alliance, which many of them had not been doing. Now, 9 NATO countries are meeting their 2% spending obligations.

FICTION: Biden says Iran has enough material to facilitate a nuclear weapon program and blames the Trump administration. He said the President does not deserve credit for achievements in the Middle East.

 FACT: Biden supported the Iran nuclear deal that sent pallets of unmarked cash to the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. Per the White House: “In theory, the so-called “Iran deal” was supposed to protect the United States and our allies from the lunacy of an Iranian nuclear bomb, a weapon that will only endanger the survival of the Iranian regime. In fact, the deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium and, over time, reach the brink of a nuclear breakout. The deal lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for very weak limits on the regime’s nuclear activity, and no limits at all on its other malign behavior, including its sinister activities in Syria, Yemen, and other places all around the world.”

President Trump has brokered the Abraham Accords, a groundbreaking peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the most significant step towards peace in the Middle East in over 25 years.

President Trump’s lengthy list of accomplishments in the Middle East is historic. He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, held Syria responsible for using chemical weapons, destroyed the ISIS caliphate, brought ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi and his deputy to justice, brought Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani to justice, put maximum pressure on Iran and crippled its ability to fund terrorism and proxy wars throughout the region.

President Trump is also reducing the number of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, keeping his promise to bring our soldiers back home. 

FICTION: Biden repeated his lie that he would not raise taxes on Americans making less than $400,00 a year.

FACT: Five independent analyses have concluded that Biden would raise taxes on middle-class Americans:

Biden’s formal tax plan doesn’t even include other taxes that Biden has endorsed, which would raise taxes on the middle class:

  • Biden has endorsed bringing back Obamacare’s individual mandate, a tax that primarily hit the middle class and lower-income Americans.
  • Biden previously said he supported a carbon tax.

Biden’s $4 trillion tax hike is more than double what Hillary Clinton proposed, and is the largest proposed tax hike in recent history.

Biden’s tax plan would shrink the economy and kill an estimated 585,000 jobs.

FICTION: Joe Biden claimed in regards to coronavirus, “all the way back in the beginning of February, I argued that we should be keeping people in China.”

FACT: On January 31st, the Trump Administration:

  • Declared the coronavirus a public health emergency;
  • Announced Chinese travel restrictions; and
  • Suspendedentry into the United States for foreign nationals who pose a risk of transmitting the coronavirus.

Joe Biden’s response? Later that day at a campaign town hall in Iowa, Biden said, “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia –  and fear-mongering to lead the way instead of science.”

Biden repeated that attack on Twitter the very next day. Also on February 1st, at another Iowa town hall, Biden said, “we don’t know exactly where [coronavirus is] going to go yet.” He then went on to once again criticize President Trump’s life-saving travel ban by saying, “Disease has no borders.”

On March 12th said, “A wall will not stop the coronavirus. Banning all travel from Europe– or any other part of the world– will not stop it.”

Biden took to Twitter again on March 18th to respond to President Trump discussing the China travel ban, saying, “Stop the xenophobic fear-mongering.”

FICTION: Joe Biden claimed President Trump’s policies encourage businesses to move overseas.

FACT: Joe Biden is responsible for the offshoring and elimination of millions of American jobs. Joe Biden supported “The North America Free Trade Agreement” in 1993 but downplayed its significance calling it “vastly overblown” and in terms of “creating jobs or losing jobs,” it would be a wash. This was blatantly false, and middle-class Americans suffered the most with 4.5 million manufacturing jobs disappeared since NAFTA was enacted.

President Trump got rid of the disastrous NAFTA deal that outsourced millions of American jobs and replaced it with USMCA, a better deal for American workers, manufacturers, and farmers that will incite strong economic growth and more jobs.

  • The USMCA will reverse the damage done by Biden’s vote for NAFTA and create an estimated 176,000 new American jobs.
  • America’s farmers and ranchers will gain greater access to Mexican and Canadian markets, allowing them to sell more goods and increase agricultural exports by an estimated $2.2 billion.
  • The modern, state-of-the-art USMCA will also boost blue-collar Americans and small businesses by creating new jobs and increasing wages.
  • American manufacturers will receive the “largest percentage gains” in higher wages, new jobs, and greater exports of any industry under the USMCA.
  • The deal will create 76,000 new auto jobs, $34 billion in new domestic auto manufacturing investments

Additionally, according to the US Treasury Department: “As a result of TCJA, U.S. companies have brought back close to a trillion dollars from overseas. As reported by Bloomberg as recently as June, corporations have brought back $876.8 billion dollars since TCJA was enacted. The TCJA stemmed the tide of corporate tax inversions by substantially reducing incentives for companies to go overseas.” The Council of Economic Advisors confirmed, “since TCJA’s passage, United States multinational enterprises have repatriated $1 trillion in past overseas earnings that were previously invested abroad.”

As the Treasury Department explains, “Manufacturing has seen a boost – contributing to a #BlueCollarBoom. Since November 2016, the manufacturing sector has added an impressive 524,000 jobs. The National Association of Manufacturers’ survey of the industry hit record levels of confidence under the Trump administration. In November 2019 alone, 54,000 new manufacturing jobs were created.”

FICTION: Joe Biden claimed his record on criminal justice is one for which to be proud.

FACT: With Biden’s record of praising segregationists and pushing laws that mass incarcerated Black Americans, his record with African Americans is abysmal. Biden worked with segregationist Strom Thurmond to pass laws incarcerating Black Americans for crack cocaine possession; he voted to protect the tax-exempt status of segregated schools; he praised the civility of segregationists (then refused to apologize for it when confronted by Black Democrats like Cory Booker), and he authored the 1994 crime bill that made him the “architect of mass incarceration. ”

President Trump is undoing the damage Biden caused and delivering results on criminal justice reformsafe policing, and real economic opportunities for Black Americans, while Biden is struggling to explain four decades of betrayal, calamity, and failure.

Biden voted for bills which “Experts Agree Added Millions Of People To America’s Prisons.” Meanwhile, under President Trump’s leadership, the FIRST STEP Act was signed into law to help Americans newly released from prison to successfully integrate back into society.

In fact, At the end of Biden’s 44 years in office, 69% of Americans – an all-time high – said that race relations were mostly bad.

FICTION: Joe Biden claimed he has been a major proponent of community policing throughout his career.

FACT: While serving as vice president, the Obama-Biden administration slashed police funding and enacted “reforms” that changed nothing.

The Obama-Biden 21st Century Policing Task Force was a dud. Despite being launched in 2014, by May 2016, just 15 police departments out of 18,000 had signed on to the Obama-Biden police reforms initiative. Analysts said it “failed to put muscle behind the rhetoric” and “failed to attack the heart of the problem.”

Also during Biden’s time as vice president, the Obama administration continually slashed police budgets. Despite Biden’s promise in 2008 to fully fund the COPS program, COPS funding dropped from $1.55 billion to $792 million during his tenure in office. At the time, police groups protested the Obama-Biden cuts, calling the funding reductions “simply irresponsible.”

Federal aid to state and local law enforcement officials also decreased during the Obama-Biden years. It was reported that the U.S. Department of Justice grants were cut by $833 million. On the campaign trail this year, Biden said he supports redirecting funds from police departments across the country in order to support other initiatives like social services – like his record as vice president would suggest.

Biden broke his promises as vice president, cut funding, and failed to create meaningful reform through his task force. President Trump has done just the opposite. He is a champion for the brave men and women of law enforcement. President Trump increased their federal aid and worked with law enforcement and community leaders to pursue safe policing and safe communities.

FICTION: Joe Biden claimed LGBTQ Americans have a lot to fear if Judge Barrett is confirmed to the Supreme Court.

FACT: According to the left-leaning PolitiFact, “A review of her judicial opinions, public statements, and academic writing hasn’t produced any quotes [claiming Barrett would discriminate against gay people]. Barrett clerked for late Justice Antonin Scalia before joining the faculty of Notre Dame Law School, where she taught for 15 years. Trump nominated her to the appellate court in 2017. . . During her confirmation hearing for the appeals court, Barrett pushed back, saying that she ‘would never impose my own personal convictions upon the law’. . .Barrett never said that ‘gays have a right to be discriminated against.'”