Fact Check – 2nd Presidential Debate
It hardly seems worth fact-checking Trump anymore considering his notorious record of dishonesty compared to other politicians, but I couldn’t resist taking a look at the standard fact-checking sites after the Second Trump-Biden Debate. Since these did mention incorrect statements from both candidates, I wanted to do a comparison and display the results graphically.
The chart of false statements separates outright falsehoods (in pink) from dubious, partially correct, or relatively minor falsehoods (in yellow). This is a subjective distinction, but saying that Biden received $3.5M from Russia, which is inflammatory, damming, and untrue, needs to be in a different category than saying that Biden talked about “super-predators”, also not true, but not that far off from Biden’s support for crime legislation against “predators”.
The detailed fact check confirms that the debate stayed true to form, with some dubious statements from Biden and a barrage of Trump claims that exactly reverse the truth. [added note: see below]
Later same day: After I posted this chart, Jeff Sullivan pointed out a Biden statement about the ACA that factcheck.org did not list even though they themselves listed it among its “Whoppers of the Year” during the Obama administration. This statement, like several by Trump, is blatantly untrue, though see my Letters to a Trump Voter II for some more information about it. I’ve updated the chart accordingly. It still does not put Biden in the same league of dishonesty as Trump, but there is a significant difference between “no blatantly false statements” and “one blatantly false statement.”
And thumbs down to factcheck.org for not listing this one. I am hoping they will fix their fact check on the debate.