Washington
CNN
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In a brand new interview with a youth tradition media outlet, President Joe Biden made false or deceptive claims about immigration, inflation, his administration’s spending, and a comment he made about Israel eventually month’s CNN presidential debate.
Biden sat down Friday with Speedy Morman, a number for Complex. Here’s a reality examine of a few of Biden’s feedback, which have been launched in a YouTube video Monday.
Morman asked Biden about his debate comment that “we’re offering Israel with all of the weapons they want and once they want them.” Biden responded, “I stated defensive weapons. I denied them offensive weapons that they have been utilizing, 2,000-pound bombs and the remaining.”
Information First: Biden’s declare is fake. It’s not true that he specified on the debate that he was speaking about “defensive” weapons. Morman quoted him appropriately; Biden said at the debate, “We’re offering Israel with all of the weapons they want and once they want them.” As well as, Biden’s administration has stated he has withheld solely a single cargo of two,000-pound bombs from Israel – not these 2,000 bombs and “the remaining.” Biden himself stated on the debate that “the one factor I’ve denied Israel was 2,000-pound bombs.”
After sending Israel thousands of 2,000-pound bombs in the course of the warfare in Gaza, which started after Hamas’ terror assault on Israel in October, the Biden administration paused a recent planned shipment over issues about attainable hurt to harmless individuals in extremely populated areas. However the administration continues to supply Israel with 500-pound bombs and numerous different weapons. (There isn’t a single definition of what constitutes an “offensive weapon,” nor a consensus about which acts by Israel ought to be thought-about defensive or offensive.)
After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broadly claimed in a June video that the Biden administration was “withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel,” US envoy Amos Hochstein informed Netanyahu the claim was “completely untrue,” a senior US official informed CNN. Additionally, White Home nationwide safety spokesperson John Kirby said Netanyahu’s declare was “incorrect,” and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “it’s common order” on the subject of offering navy provides to Israel “except for that one system that we’ve talked about many occasions in public,” the two,000-pound bombs.
Touting the influence of the executive action he took in June to tighten the southern border, Biden stated, “Guess what? The variety of individuals searching for to come back into the nation is down decrease than it was at any time when he [Donald Trump] was president.”
Information First: That is false. US encounters with migrants on the southern border did fall in June, however the variety of encounters was decrease throughout a lot of the Trump presidency – throughout 2017 and 2018, eight months of 2019 (there was a spike in part of that year), and once more all through 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic limited global movement and Trump tightly restricted the border.
The important thing quantity monitored by federal officers underneath Biden’s executive action, Border Patrol encounters with migrants on the southern border in between authorized ports of entry, was 83,536 in June 2024, figures launched after Biden’s interview present. This was decrease than the determine in June 2019, which US Customs and Border Safety calls “the final comparable yr previous to the pandemic.”
Nonetheless, the June 2024 quantity was increased than the numbers for June 2017 and June 2018 – and better than each different month in these Trump-era years – plus increased than the quantity for June 2020 and the remainder of that yr.
The Biden administration has made way more modest claims than the president did. In a press release Monday, US Customs and Border Safety famous the June determine was the bottom since January 2021 – the month Biden took workplace – however didn’t declare it was the bottom since Trump took workplace in January 2017, as Biden implied.
Requested for remark, a White Home official informed CNN on Tuesday that the present seven-day common for encounters between ports of entry has fallen beneath the seven-day common as of January 19, 2021, the day earlier than Trump left workplace. That’s honest, however Biden’s personal declare was a lot broader.
Biden claimed: “All of the packages that I’ve initiated have saved the federal government cash.” He cited the $160 billion in financial savings that the nonpartisan Congressional Price range Workplace expects shall be achieved by two of the primary prescription drug provisions in his Inflation Discount Act of 2022.
Information First: Biden’s declare that “all” of his new packages have saved the federal government cash is fake. Although he’s proper that these prescription drug insurance policies are projected to save lots of the federal government $160 billion, quite a few different Biden initiatives have value the federal government cash.
Marc Goldwein, senior vice chairman on the Committee for a Accountable Federal Price range, an advocacy group that promotes deficit discount and tracks the problem, stated in a Might e-mail: “The President has signed into regulation and motion a mix of deficit-increasing and deficit-reducing insurance policies — however way more so on the deficit-boosting facet.”
Biden has signed various laws and taken various actions which have resulted in additional spending than financial savings. These embrace a massive pandemic relief law, a bipartisan infrastructure law, a bipartisan law to raised assist veterans who have been uncovered to poisonous substances, bipartisan foreign aid packages, and administration efforts to scale back scholar debt and boost food stamp benefits.
A June analysis from the Committee for a Accountable Federal Price range concluded that “President Biden has up to now authorised $6.2 trillion of gross new borrowing and $1.9 trillion of deficit discount.”
Biden has repeatedly boasted that the federal price range deficit has declined throughout his tenure. However the primary reason for the decline is that the deficit had skyrocketed to a report excessive on the finish of Trump’s time period due to bipartisan emergency pandemic reduction spending in fiscal 2020, then fell as anticipated when that spending expired underneath Biden. Goldwein stated the Biden-era deficit discount has been “largely regardless of President Biden’s efforts, not due to them.”
Touting progress towards inflation, Biden claimed, “It was 9% after I obtained [inaudible].
It’s down to three%.”
Information First: Biden’s “it was 9%” declare was deceptive at finest – and the declare can be flat false if the president completed the declare the way in which he did twice in May, when he stated inflation was 9% when he took over. The truth is, the inflation fee was 1.4% in January 2021, the month Biden was inaugurated as president, and didn’t hit 9% till June 2022, after he had been president for greater than 16 months.
The June 2024 inflation fee was indeed 3%, and Biden may pretty tout the decline during the last two years. However he retains claiming, or not less than suggesting as he did right here, that he inherited 9% inflation from Trump. That’s not true.
Requested about his age, Biden talked about how he was as soon as thought-about “too younger” to be in authorities. He then repeated a biographical declare he has made on quite a few earlier events: “I used to be the second-youngest man within the historical past of the Senate to get elected.”
Information First: Biden’s declare is fake. He was the sixth-youngest man to turn into a US senator, not the second youngest, when he was sworn in at age 30 and about 1½ months in 1973. FactCheck.org has previously reported that Biden was the second-youngest senator from Delaware, not for the nation as a complete.