In the wake of a presidency in which lie-telling was a key feature, preliminary results on dishonesty are in for US President Joe Biden.
Biden made 67 false and misleading statements in his first 100 days in office, according to a report Monday from The Washington Post’s fact-checker. That compares to 511 such comments from his predecessor Donald Trump in his first 100 days.
The Post’s fact-checkers characterised the Biden era as “a return to a more typical pattern when it comes to a commander in chief and his relationship with the facts — one that features frequent spin and obfuscation or exaggeration, with the occasional canard.”
The team analysed Biden’s every speech, interview, tweet or public statement, following the same methodology as the database that tallied more than 30,500 false or misleading claims over the course of Trump’s four years in office.
The Post made several notes on the difference between the two presidents.
Biden has spoken around 40% fewer words than Trump had by this point in his presidency. His public remarks are typically prepared, in contrast to Trump, who was known for his lengthy, stream-of-consciousness-style speeches.
Biden has also tweeted considerably less than his predecessor and tends not to repeat his false claims if they’ve been fact-checked and shown to be false.
Two of Biden’s falsehoods have earned the Post’s “Four Pinocchio” rating, designated for “whoppers.” He claimed several times that Georgia’s GOP-led election law will end voting hours early. It won’t. The other is Biden’s claim that federal government contracts awarded to foreign companies went up by 30% under Trump, when in fact it was likely much less.
The fact-checking analysts noted that when Biden made exaggerated claims, he would often amend his wording in subsequent addresses in apparent response to news coverage.
Trump’s tally grew at a dramatically faster rate as his presidency progressed. Toward the end of his term, he was making around twice as many false claims a month as he did in his entire first year in office. On November 2, the day before the election, Trump made 504 false claims in a day, nearly the same amount he made in his first 100 days.