Biden Told an Egregious Lie This Week. The Mainstream Media Barely Noticed.

President Biden made a dubious statement Wednesday while signing an executive order on policing and public safety, but unlike with his predecessor, the mainstream press gave the comments a pass.

SO WHAT

Maybe this isn’t the guy you want running a disinformation board.

WHAT HE SAID

Speaking a day after a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Biden linked this week’s national tragedy to police killings of black Americans like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

“So many black Americans wake up knowing they could lose their life in the course of just living their life — jogging, sleeping at home,” Biden said.

  • Biden’s suggestion that the deaths of Taylor and Floyd are everyday occurrences among black Americans is not supported by data.
  • According to the Washington Post’s police shooting database, six unarmed black people were killed by U.S. law enforcement in 2021, down from 18 in 2020.
  • About 7,000 black people are killed each year in the U.S., per FBI data.

Biden’s executive order will establish a national database of police misconduct and aims to reform federal policing practices.

THE DOUBLE STANDARD

Whereas news organizations breathlessly fact-checked former President Trump on the minutest of claims, Biden’s lies and misstatements have gone largely ignored.

  • The Washington Post maintained a “false or misleading claims” database throughout Trump’s presidency but scrapped a follow-up project just 100 days after Biden took over.
  • “When Donald Trump misled the American people, the media somberly told us that he was a ‘threat to democracy.’ When Biden misleads the American people it’s because … well, you know, that’s simply Joe being Joe,” The Hill columnist Bernard Goldberg wrote last year of the media’s disparate treatment of the two leaders.