“When I took over,” President Joe Biden tweetedMonday’s economic collapse was imminent.
False. This statement is false, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Department of Commerce. The real gross domestic product in America, which had increased by 33.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2020, saw a preliminary rise of 4 percent during Donald Trump’s last quarter. CNBC reported that the economy was in a good place at the end of 2020, despite facing challenges from politics and a pandemic.
Wall Street reached all-time records on Inauguration day. Many consider vaccination for COVID-19 to be the key component in reviving the economy following the second-half of the 2020 recession. The forecasts of analysts included phrases such as “overall the economic backdrop seems promising” and “we expect continued strength in several fundamental economic indicators.”
Biden might claim credit by inventing an economic disaster that was imminent. Neat! It’s also the type of deception that you would expect professional journalism to be sensitive to spot and critique in an age of increased “moral clarity”.
But you’d be wrong. Google News searches for the terms “Biden,” “economy,” or “brink to collapse” produce zero mainstream news articles. Similar interest was absent when President Obama made another claim about the “brink to collapse” in May, Ohio.
The tendency to do the same thing is for behavior that’s rewarded, or not punished at all, to be repeated. Biden’s presidency at this moment is filled with repeated lies.
At his big omicron speech and mini-press conference last week, the president, when asked a question about Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.V.), who had just signaled his opposition to Biden’s signature Build Back Better legislation, said, “Joe went on TV today and—I don’t know if it was TV or not; I’m told he was speaking to the liberal caucus in the House and said, ‘Joe Biden didn’t mislead you, I misled you.'”
Later, the White House had to clarifyIt was stated that Senator Manchin had not described himself as being’misleading.
In the same conference, the president answered the question: “Why did it take so long to increase testing?”President Obama responded, “Come on. ‘What took so many years? This sarcastic rejoinder was removed from the White House transcript. However, the sentence that followed was. “Well, what took so long is—it didn’t take long at all. “The Omicron virus spread much faster than everyone thought.
It’s also not true. You can read the full article here. Washington Post‘s Claire Parker pointed out, “experts had sounded the alarm for more than a year that such a variant could emerge, especially in the vast swaths of the world that remain largely unvaccinated, coming back to bite wealthy countries accused of hoarding doses. Some had repeatedly urged the U.S. Government to Accelerate the Authorization and Distribution of Rapid Tests, Pointing to Other Wealthy Nations That Have Doed Just that.” The White House was very mocking when it answered these questions, as recent as December.
It seems that the President telling two lies at a press conference on pandemics is the sort of thing that could attract the attention of journalists who are experts in journalism covering media, politics and truth. Yet, CNN had the next-day headline Trustworthy SourcesBiden calls out anti vax liars who promote ‘dangerous misinformation. Don’t think that anything will change.
My pre-election article “Case Against Trump” argued, “The first rule in pandemic crisis management is that public officers must communicate with the public in a sane, sober and honest manner.” Trump may have many talents, but this is not one of his strengths. Jacob Sullum, who wrote the companion piece “Case Against Biden”, has observed that Trump lies frequently, reflexively and extravagantly. But his supporters don’t seem to believe him.
Supporters of any politician, even President Biden, must set higher standards. Biden, a political leader from the pandemic era, stated that “if you have the vaccine, it is not okay to spread the virus to anyone else.”
A president should not claim such a thing Tuesday, in an interview. single tweet, that Build Back Better is “fully paid for” (it’s not), that it “will not increase the deficit” (it would), and that it “won’t raise the taxes by one penny for anyone making less than $400,000 a year” (counters the Tax Policy Center: “roughly 20 percent to 30 percent of middle-income households would pay more in taxes in 2022”). These hyperbolic statements are worthy of a 24-year old social media intern for a hacker think tank, and not of Commander in Chief of what is allegedly the most powerful nation on Earth.
A certain amount of self-respect is required for democratic self-governance. If elected executive can lie with impunity they will continue to do so, with little chance of them being “noble”. The world is facing the usual pandemic, with all its uncertainties and oncoming disasters that are difficult to predict. All that will happen is worsened by dishonest federal leadership.