Biden flip-flops on wealth tax

 Biden's Desperate Wealth Tax Flip-Flop } Reason - Peter Suderman:

March 29, 2022 - "In December 2019, when Joe Biden, still campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, released his tax plan, much of the coverage focused on the contrast between his comparatively [moderate] plan and the plans issued by his more progressive rivals. A CNBC report on his plan was labeled 'wealth tax wars. A Washington Post headline noted that  Biden's $3.2 trillion tax plan highlighted 'divisions' with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.). Among the starkest of those divisions was that the former vice president had rejected calls by Warren and Sanders to back a wealth tax on the richest Americans. 

"On the campaign trail, Biden himself played up that contrast. Among the criticisms lobbed at the Sanders and Warren wealth tax proposals was that they were fundamentally punitive, because they taxed wealth of a small, specific group of individuals. He told a wealthy crowd of supporters in Los Angeles that while they shouldn't expect a tax cut from him, there would be 'no punishment either'.... He complained about divisive tax policy, and rejected the idea of a 'a single tax, on a single group of people'.... 

"Yet now, as president, Biden has embraced a wealth tax of his own. In his latest budget plan, Biden proposed something the White House has dubbed the 'Billionaire Minimum Income Tax,' which applies to all income, realized and unrealized, for households worth more than $100 million. The Biden administration is framing this as a form of 'prepayment' on future capital gains — which is to say it's a form of taxation on money that someone has not actually seen, based on the value of their holdings. It's not exactly the same as the wealth taxes proposed by Warren and Sanders, but it's designed around the same fundamental idea: the taxation of personal wealth, rather than of cash income, which often takes the form of difficult-to-value assets. 

"Most of the same criticisms that applied to the Warren and Sanders plans still apply: Biden's plan probably wouldn't raise nearly as much money as the administration assumes: Wealth taxes are exceptionally difficult and resource-intensive to administer, which is why most OECD countries that have implemented wealth taxes eventually dropped them. It's also quite likely to be unconstitutional. At minimum, if it passed, it would be tied up in court.  

"But ... it's not intended to pass, which makes this exercise even more of a charade. Biden's latest wealth tax proposal is part of the White House's annual budget proposal, which is always a sort of wish list rather than a realistic path forward for the budget. Biden's wealth tax, then, is a desperate policy gimmick by a White House struggling with low approval numbers on the economy.... 

"It's a publicity stunt, however, that tells us something, not only about Biden's leftward drift, but about his comportment as president, given his previously stated opposition to the idea. Biden is willing to make an obvious phony of himself, embracing a policy he knows is punitive, divisive, unworkable, and virtually certain not to pass — and he's willing to do so simply to get attention. Not only is Biden not a moderate, he is evidently not trustworthy either."

Read more: https://reason.com/2022/03/29/bidens-desperate-wealth-tax-flip-flop/

Biden earned 11 Post Pinocchios in Covid's first month

Biden Has Earned 11 Pinocchios From Fact-Checkers During Coronavirus Crisis | Washington Free Beacon - Graham Piro

April 3, 2020 - "Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has been dinged several times by fact-checkers over claims he has made during the coronavirus crisis, including a total of 11 "Pinocchios" from the Washington Post. Over the course of three weeks between March 13 and April 3, Biden was fact-checked five separate times for making false or misleading claims concerning the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic.

"A Washington Post fact check on March 13 awarded Biden four Pinocchios, the fact-checker's most severe rating, for two manipulated videos the Biden campaign circulated. The first video claimed to show Trump at a Feb. 28 rally saying Democrats were turning the coronavirus into "their new hoax" after they failed to bring Trump down through impeachment. Biden's video was edited to make it appear that Trump was calling the coronavirus a hoax. Trump, however, was referring to the Democrats' attempts to blame him for the virus, not the virus itself. The second Biden campaign video showed Trump saying the phrase 'the American Dream is dead,' which the Post found was taken out of context and missing the second part of Trump's statement where he promised to 'bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before.'

"Another Post fact check on March 24 gave the campaign four Pinocchios after adviser Ron Klain accused Trump of silencing Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 'The president and the White House sent a clear message to scientists in the government—there would be a price for speaking out and speaking up,' he said in a campaign video released on March 21. Messonnier continued to hold routine phone briefings with reporters in the weeks after she raised the alarm about the virus at a press conference with Trump. Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote that Klain's framing was 'simply wrong.' Messonnier's alarming rhetoric did irritate Trump, but the idea that she was silenced was a 'false narrative,' Kessler added.

"At a CNN town hall on March 27, Biden repeated an earlier claim that Trump had eliminated the White House pandemic office. He also claimed Trump made 'no effort' to put any pressure on Chinese president Xi Jinping and reduced the CDC's staff in China prior to the outbreak. Biden added he called for China to admit medical experts from the United States when the outbreak in China was still in its early stages. The Post‘s fact check gave Biden three Pinocchios due to his imprecise language. The Trump administration sought access for CDC experts, and the administration told the Post that Trump offered to send experts to China to help with the outbreak. Biden also did not specifically call for experts to be sent until late February.

"Those weren't the only times Biden has been fact-checked for rhetoric during the crisis.

"On March 15, during the Democratic presidential debate, Biden falsely claimed that Trump refused coronavirus testing kits from the World Health Organization. The kits were never offered in the first place. PolitiFact rated his statement 'Mostly False.' CNN, after initially deeming his statement factual, retracted its rating after a report by the Washington Free Beacon.

"On March 19, Biden first tweeted that Trump 'eliminated' the pandemic response team. The Washington Post fact check found this claim 'overstated' due to the fact that the global health directorate was folded into another office under the guidance of former national security adviser John Bolton. Citing 'dueling narratives,' however, it didn't give a rating to Biden's claim."

Read more:  https://freebeacon.com/elections/biden-has-earned-11-pinocchios-from-fact-checkers-during-coronavirus-crisis/

Biden: vaccinated are 'not going to get Covid-19'

 Fact check: Biden makes false claims about Covid-19, auto prices and other subjects at CNN town hall | CNN - Daniel Dale & Tara Subramaniam:

July 22, 2021 - "President Joe Biden participated Wednesday [July 21] in the second CNN town hall of his presidency, taking questions from anchor Don Lemon and local residents in Cincinnati. As he did at his February town hall, Biden made a number of false or misleading claims....

"Calling on Americans to get vaccinated against Covid-19, Biden said, 'If you're vaccinated, you're not going to be hospitalized, you're not going to be in the ICU unit and you're not going to die.' In another exchange moments later, Biden said that even if vaccinated people do 'catch the virus,' they are 'not likely to get sick.' But then, during a third exchange, Biden said that since the vaccines 'cover' the highly transmissible Delta variant of the virus: 'You're not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations'....

"Biden's second claim -- that vaccinated people are 'not likely to get sick' -- was accurate. But the blanket promises in his first and third comments -- that vaccinated people are simply 'not going to be hospitalized,' 'not going to die' and, even with the very contagious Delta variant, "not going to get Covid" -- were inaccurate. Covid-19 vaccines are highly effective, and they sharply reduce the likelihood of infection, serious illness and death. However, contrary to Biden's categorical declarations, they do not guarantee that people will not get the virus or will not be hospitalized or die. Even vaccinated people on Biden's own staff have been infected. So have a senior aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, multiple Democratic state legislators from Texas who have been in Washington, DC, this month; and various other high-profile people....

"The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ... notes on its website that 'vaccine breakthrough cases will occur, even though the vaccines are working as expected' and 'there will be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who still get sick, are hospitalized or die from Covid-19.'"

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/politics/fact-check-biden-cnn-town-hall-july/index.html

Covid-19: Unvaccinated face 11 times risk of death from delta variant, CDC data show | British Medical Journal - Owen Dyer:

September 16, 2021 - "Unvaccinated Americans have died at 11 times the rate of those fully vaccinated since the delta variant became the dominant strain, indicate surveillance data gathered over the summer by the US Centers for Disease Control. Vaccinated people were 10 times less likely to be admitted to hospital and five times less likely to be infected than unvaccinated people, found one study that tracked adults across 13 states and cities.1

"Levels of protection were lower than were conferred by vaccines offered at the end of spring, the study found.... From 4 April to 20 June unvaccinated people died from covid-19 at 16.6 times the rate among the fully vaccinated (95% confidence interval 13.5 to 20.4). Between 20 June and 17 July that rate fell to 11.3 (9.1 to 13.9). Before 20 June admissions of unvaccinated people with covid-19 to hospital were running at 13.3 (11.3 to 15.6) times the rate among the vaccinated, but this had fallen to 10.4 (8.1 to 13.3) after that date. Unvaccinated people were infected at 11.1 (7.8 to 15.8) times the rate of the vaccinated before 20 June but at only 4.6 (2.5 to 8.5) times the rate thereafter. These figures represent declines in crude efficacy, for all vaccine types combined, from 94% to 91% for death, 92% to 90% for hospital admissions, and 91% to 78% for infection."

Read more: https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2282

Read study: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm?s_cid=mm7037e1_w

Biden lies about the filibuster

Biden’s Lies about the Filibuster Are Brazen Beyond Belief | National Review - Charles C.W. Cooke:

March 26, 2021 - "Joe Biden’s lies about his position on the legislative filibuster are so audacious, so brazen, so extraordinarily disingenuous that it is hard to know where to begin. Having supported the provision for nearly five decades, Biden now says that he considers it a 'relic of Jim Crow,' that he was forced to reconsider its utility by the abuse that took place 'last year' and 'in the last 20 years,' and that he has no 'expertise, in what the parliamentary rules and how to get there are.' No journalist who can look themselves in the mirror should repeat this without laughter, derision, or disbelief.

"For half a century, Biden was one of the most emphatic defenders of the filibuster in the history of the United States. So passionate about it has he been, in fact, that he liked to shout at people who disagreed with him. To Biden, the filibuster was the Senate, if not the country, and, far from being a relic of Jim Crow, it was baked into the system from the outset. 'The Framers,' Biden contended, 'created the Senate as a unique legislative body designed to protect against the excesses of any temporary majority,' and those who so much as contemplated the 'naked power grab' that abolition would represent did not understand that they were merely 'temporary custodians' of that body. To take the 'nuclear option,' Biden argued, would be 'catastrophic.' It would destroy 'America’s sense of fair play.' It would sully 'the one thing this country stands for: Not tilting the playing field on the side of those who control and own the field.' Worse yet, to abolish the filibuster with 50 votes, would:

send a terrible message about the malleability of Senate rules. No longer would they be the framework that each party works within. I’ve been in the Senate for a long time, and there are plenty of times I would have loved to change this rule or that rule to pass a bill or to confirm a nominee I felt strongly about. But I didn’t, and it was understood that the option of doing so just wasn’t on the table. You fought political battles; you fought hard; but you fought them within the strictures and requirements of the Senate rules. Despite the short-term pain, that understanding has served both parties well, and provided long-term gain.

In the same speech, Biden displayed a mastery of the Senate rules in this area, and even went so far as to criticize himself for his role in changing them back in 1975. 'No expertise in what the parliamentary rules and how to get there are'?.... 

"There is simply no way — no way whatsoever — of squaring the truth with what Biden said yesterday. Biden complained about the last '20 years.' But he made what is perhaps the best speech ever made in defense of the filibuster in 2005, and reiterated its thesis while running for president in 2020. He complained about the number of times the tool was used 'last year.' But 'last year' it was his own party that was using it, and, even after it had done so, Biden was happy to confirm his support.

"There is no nicer way of putting it than to say that Joe Biden is lying.... It is a falsehood, distortion, a deception. Pretty much every single Democrat in the Senate is trying to pull the same trick — trying, that is, to pretend that Mitch McConnell, who last used the filibuster in 2014, is the reason that they have changed their mind on this since 2017 — but nobody’s reasoning is less obviously fake than Biden’s. The reporting on this should reflect that. The president hasn’t 'evolved.' He’s a liar. The press used to care about that sort of thing."

Read more: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bidens-lies-about-the-filibuster-are-brazen-beyond-belief/

Biden's border lies

Everything Biden and his top people are saying about the border is a bald-faced lie | New York Post - Post Editorial Board:

March 27, 2021 - "From President Joe Biden on down, the administration is telling nonstop, bald-faced lies about the border crisis — while trying to stop the media from reporting the truth. Biden insists the surge is normal, when it’s setting records. He insists it’s not because of his words and policies, when common sense, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the migrants themselves say the opposite. He also pretends it’s all his predecessor’s fault, with yet more lies about what President Donald Trump did. And he claims most illegal crossers are being turned back, when officials on the ground report the reverse....

"Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas insists the US-Mexico border is 'closed' for everyone except migrant children seeking to enter the country alone. Solo minors are indeed accepted without question, but the recent immigrant surge, the worst border 'challenge' in 20 years, goes far beyond that. Sheriff J.E. Guerra of a Texas border town told The Post that so many agents are being transferred from patrol duty to processing stations that 'basically, the border’s open' to anyone. 

"Agents have been instructed to let groups of migrants pass through without so much as a court date because there simply isn’t room to detain them anywhere. In Del Rio, Texas, where an average of 150 immigrants arrive daily, facilities have released 2,000 migrants into the country since February without a COVID test due to a lack of resources....

"The surge is setting records by the week and month, with the eventual total certain to surpass the worst under the last two presidents. Over the span of a single week this month, Border Patrol turned away only 13 percent of the 13,000 border-crossers traveling in family units. Indeed, over 1,000 children and family units are crossing the border on any given day, and the feds expect crossings to double over the next month.

"In February alone, more than 9,000 unaccompanied children crossed the border, up 63 percent from January and bringing the total since October to nearly 30,000. Some 15,500 immigrant children are in federal custody, with 5,000 of those housed in facilities on the border (some of which are the very 'cages' liberals condemned under President Trump)....

Mayorkas, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have repeatedly tried to blame the chaos on the previous administration, but Biden’s policies are the ones separating families.... And Biden made an exception for Trump’s Title 42 order, allowing children to stay despite the health crisis of the pandemic. Indeed, the administration is releasing COVID-positive migrants by the dozens into the interior.

"You can see why Team Biden has moved to restrict media access, even though left-leaning reporters focus mainly on the feds’ failure to help the migrants enough. It’s amazing that they keep all these lies coming, but apparently they have no idea what else to do. Be outraged, but also ask: How much else is the Biden administration lying about?"

Read more: https://nypost.com/2021/03/27/everything-biden-administration-says-about-border-is-a-bald-faced-lie/

Biden lies about Georgia voting law change

Biden falsely claims the new Georgia law ‘ends voting hours early’ | Washington Post - Glenn Kessler:

• “What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It’s sick. It’s sick … deciding that you’re going to end voting at five o’clock when working people are just getting off work.” — President Biden, in remarks at a news conference, March 25
• “Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.” — Biden, in a statement “on the attack on the right to vote in Georgia,” March 26

March 30, 2021 - "During his first news conference, President Biden became especially passionate when discussing a law being pressed by Republican lawmakers in Georgia that he said was intended to make it harder for people to vote. He reiterated those concerns the next day in a written statement after Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed the bill into law.... But there was one line in both his news conference and his statement that has kept us puzzling until our puzzler was sore. It also puzzled experts who have studied the new law....

"On Election Day in Georgia, polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and if you are in line by 7 p.m., you are allowed to cast your ballot. Nothing in the new law changes those rules. However, the law did make some changes to early voting. But experts say the net effect was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them....

"'One of the biggest changes in the bill would expand early voting access for most counties, adding an additional mandatory Saturday and formally codifying Sunday voting hours as optional,' Stephen Fowler of Georgia Public Broadcasting said in an excellent and comprehensive report on the impact of the new law. 'Counties can have early voting open as long as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at minimum. If you live in a larger metropolitan county, you might not notice a change. For most other counties, you will have an extra weekend day, and your weekday early voting hours will likely be longer'....

"So where would Biden get this perception that ordinary workers were getting the shaft because the state would “end voting at five o’clock"? We have one clue. The law used to say early 'voting shall be conducted during normal business hours.' Experts said that generally means 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The new law makes it specific — “beginning at 9:00 AM and ending at 5:00 PM.” A Georgia election official said the change was made in part because some rural county election offices only worked part time during the week, not a full eight-hour day, so the shift to more specific times makes it clear they must be open every weekday for at least eight hours. But, as noted, the law also allows individual counties to set the hours anywhere between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. So the practical effect of the 5 p.m. reference in the law is minimal....

During the 2020 election, for instance, vote-rich Fulton County, with a substantial Black population, set early-voting hours at 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on most weekdays and two Saturdays, though the last weekdays had 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. voting hours. Voting was allowed on two Sundays between 12 p.m. and 6 p.m. Under the new law, Fulton County could set the exact same hours for in-person early voting — or expand them from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day.... We sought an explanation from the White House for the reason for Biden’s remarks but did not receive an on-the-record response....

"One could understand a flub in a news conference. But then this same claim popped up in an official presidential statement. Not a single expert we consulted who has studied the law understood why Biden made this claim, as this was the section of law that expanded early voting for many Georgians. Somehow Biden managed to turn that expansion into a restriction aimed at working people, calling it 'among the outrageous parts' of the law. There’s no evidence that is the case. The president earns Four Pinocchios."

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/30/biden-falsely-claims-new-georgia-law-ends-voting-hours-early/

Ben Shapiro on second Biden/Trump debate

 This analysis of the second Trump/Biden debate by Ben Shapiro is loaded with goodies:

25:58 - "Joe Biden has been telling one lie on Covid... If Donald Trump had handled this differently, hundreds of thousands of people would be alive today."

31:48 - "Joe Biden, for his part denied he was going to shut down the country.... Here is Biden saying he's going to shut down the virus, not the country, but then admitting that he has not ruled out more shutdowns."

34.40 - "Here is Joe Biden saying there are no red states and blue states, but the red states are terrible."

Biden lies about Brennan letter

Biden claims "five former heads of the CIA" called the Hunter Biden story a "Russian plant."

Biden Lies Again and Again | National Review - Kyle Smith: 

October 23, 2020 - "Joe Biden is a career liar and he lied some more in the debate, for instance when he dismissed the now well-supported New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s business dealing as 'a Russian plant.' There is zero evidence for this. He offered this line:

'There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. Five former heads of the CIA — both parties — say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.'

"There were some headlines from Biden-friendly media to this effect, but this is a gross mischaracterization of the letter from ex-CIA chief John Brennan et al, which merely asserted that the Hunter Biden story sounded like a Russian disinformation op, not that there was any evidence for this. The relevant portion reads:

We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement” [But] "there are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement." [stress added - gd]

Read more: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/biden-lies-again-and-again/

Biden's debate lie on criminal justice reform

Biden claims he tried to reform 1994 crime bill, but was blocked by "Republican Congress" 

Trump cleaned Biden’s clock on race | Washington Post - Marc A. Thiessen: 

Oct. 23, 2020 - "At first glance, the final presidential debate might have seemed to some like a draw.... But a closer look shows that Trump was the big winner, because he was the only candidate who landed blows that damaged his opponent with a constituency Biden desperately needs to win the presidency — African American voters. On Thursday night, Trump cleaned Biden’s clock on race....

"Moderator Kristen Welker asked both candidates whether they understood the fears of Black and brown families who worry their children 'could be targeted, including by the police, for no reason other than the color of their skin.' When it was Trump’s turn to answer, he said 'Yes, I do' and laid out his record, including opportunity zones to bring investment into struggling Black communities, substantial funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, prison reform and criminal justice reform. By contrast, he said, Biden has 'been in government for 47 years. He never did a thing except in 1994 when he did such harm to the Black community' with his crime bill.

"Biden responded by trying to take credit for Trump’s success on criminal justice reform, saying 'The very law he’s talking about is the law that, in fact, initiated by Barack Obama.' But Trump kept pressing him on why he and Obama didn’t pass it? 'You were vice president,' Trump said. 'You keep talking about all these things you’re going to do … but you were there just a short time ago and you guys did nothing.'

"Biden tried to change the subject with a snide remark, noting 'Abraham Lincoln here is one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history. He pours fuel on every single racist fire, every single one.' Trump replied calmly, 'I didn’t say I’m Abraham Lincoln. I said, not since Abraham Lincoln has anybody done what I’ve done for the black community. Now you have done nothing other than the crime bill, which put tens of thousands of black men mostly in jail. And you know what? They remember it. … they remember that you treated them very, very badly.'

"Rather than let Biden off the hook, Welker pressed him to answer Trump’s question: 'Vice President Biden, let me give you a chance to respond within this context. Crime bills that you supported in the ’80s and ’90 contributed to the incarceration of tens of thousands of young black men who had small amounts of drugs in their possession. They are sons, they are brothers, they’re fathers, they’re uncles whose families are still, to this day, some of them suffering the consequences. So, speak to those families, why should they vote for you?'

"Biden conceded, 'It was a mistake. I’ve been trying to change it since then.' Trump jumped on that, saying that trying was not good enough. 'But why didn’t he get it done? See, it’s all talk, no action with these politicians. Why didn’t he get it done?' When Biden tried to deflect by pointing out that he and Obama released 38,000 federal prisoners and granted clemency to over 1,000, Trump kept pressing. 'Why didn’t you do it in the eight years, a short time ago? … You put tens of thousands of mostly Black young men in prison …. Why didn’t you get it done? You had eight years with Obama. You know why, Joe? Because you’re all talk and no action.'

"Finally, Biden delivered a feeble answer: 'Because we had a Republican Congress. That’s the answer.' Sorry, but when he and Obama took office in 2009, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, and they had a 60-vote filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate for parts of 2009 and 2010. Republicans didn’t win back the House until 2010 and didn’t retake the Senate until 2014. Obama and Biden could have passed anything."

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/23/trump-cleaned-bidens-clock-race/

Bobulinski: Biden lied about business dealings with son

Biden claims he had no knowledge or involvement in his son's business dealings

Biden accuser, in first TV interview, alleges nominee lied in debate about China dealings | WJLA ABC 7 - James Rosen: 

October 27, 2020 - "In his first extended interview, Tony Bobulinski, the former business associate of Hunter Biden who met face-to-face with former Vice President Joe Biden about his son's business dealings in China, told a nationwide television audience Tuesday night that the Democratic presidential nominee 'lied' about the subject at last week's debate with President Trump. 

Appearing for the full hour on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight,' the Fox News program that is the highest-rated in cable news, Bobulinksi, a former naval officer and corporate investor who attended the showdown in Nashville, said he almost shouted 'liar' at the former vice president and walked out of the event. 'That is a blatant lie,' Bobulinski said, when Carlson noted that the nominee 'has said he had no knowledge whatsoever of his son's business dealings and was not involved in them at all'....

"Bobulinski has cited corporate emails that appear to label the former vice president 'the big guy,' to whom Hunter Biden was purportedly preparing to steer, off the books, a 10 percent cut of the younger Biden's proposed business deal in China. Because the elder Biden has flatly denied knowing anything about his son's overseas consulting work, Bobulinski suggested in the televised interview that, the nominee, if elected president in next week's election, could be subjected to Chinese pressure or blackmail.... 'I'm very, very concerned....I think Joe Biden and the Biden family are compromised'."

"Andrew Bates, a 'rapid response' spokesman for the Biden campaign, did not respond to a request for comment."

Read more: https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/biden-accuser-in-first-tv-interview-alleges-nominee-lied-in-debate-about-china-dealings

Biden claims 6,000+ military deaths from COVID-19

Biden claims that over 6,000 American military personnel had died from COVID by September

Fact check: Biden way overstates the number of military deaths and cases from Covid | CNN - Holmes Lybrand:

September 9, 2020 - "In a campaign speech in Michigan focused on manufacturing and union support, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden closed out his remarks Wednesday by reading from a list of US troop fatalities. Biden told the audience that he carries an updated list with him of the number of troops lost and wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq on the back of his schedule. After reading several figures of soldiers who had died or been wounded, the former vice president said there had been 6,114 'military Covid deaths' and 118,984 'military Covid' [infections].

"Facts First: This is wrong -- and not just by a little. Biden overstated the number of military Covid deaths by 6,107 and infections by nearly 79,000. There have been seven deaths in the military due to Covid-19 and 40,026 cases as of September 9, according to the Defense Department.

"A Biden campaign aide told CNN that Biden misspoke, accidentally citing Michigan numbers of Covid-19 deaths and cases instead of military numbers. The Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker reports 6,811 deaths from the virus in Michigan, not 6,114. And the number of cases in the state, according to Hopkins, is 118,902."

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics/joe-biden-us-troop-covid-deaths-fact-check/index.html

Joe Biden on pot

Biden claims he has never called cannabis a 'gateway drug' 

Joe Biden on pot, 2010: '"As vice president, Biden was a blunt opponent of marijuana. He told ABC News in 2010, 'I still believe it's a gateway drug," and said legalizing it would be 'a mistake."'

Joe Biden on pot, 2019: "Biden claimed that he never said marijuana was a gateway drug, only that 'some say' it is."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-rolls-back-stance-on-marijuana-being-a-gateway-drug-2019-11-26/

No one would have died from coronavirus, if president had 'done his job'

Biden claims the U.S. would have had zero deaths from COVID-19 'if the president had done his job'.

Joe Biden’s CNN town hall: An occasional whopper | Washington Post - Glenn Kessler & Salvador Rizzo:

September 17, 2020 - 'Joe Biden ... tends to stick close to the facts but occasionally gets carried away with some over-exuberance. Here are five claims that caught our attention during his CNN town hall in Moosic, Pa., moderated by Anderson Cooper.

'“If the president had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all the people would still be alive. All the people — I’m not making this up. Just look at the data. Look at the data.” Actually, Biden is making this up. There is no data to support this.... Even nations that have been praised for their handling of the pandemic, such as South Korea, New Zealand and Iceland, have suffered some deaths (377 in South Korea, 25 in New Zealand and 10 in Iceland). In the United States, with 50 states run by governors, policies have varied greatly. Trump has been faulted for not articulating a national plan, but he would have had trouble persuading every governor to follow the exact same path....

'“When, back in January, I wrote an article for USA Today saying, ‘We’ve got a pandemic. We’ve got a real problem.’” 'Biden overstates what he said in January; he did not flatly say it was a pandemic. Biden’s opinion piece was published on Jan. 27 and titled 'Trump is worst possible leader to deal with coronavirus outbreak'.... The USA Today piece is more of an attack on Trump and a recollection of Obama administration steps taken against the 2014 Ebola outbreak than a detailed plan for action against a possible pandemic. Biden referred to the 'possibility of a pandemic' and noted: 'The outbreak of a new coronavirus, which has already infected more than 2,700 people and killed over 80 in China, will get worse before it gets better. Cases have been confirmed in a dozen countries, with at least five in the United States. There will likely be more.' A few days later, on Jan. 31, Biden asserted: 'We have, right now, a crisis with the coronavirus'....

'“We should expect another 215,000 dead by January. But if we wore a mask, we’d save 100,000 of those lives, doing nothing but that”.... The projection comes from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. The IHME model currently forecasts 415,090 U.S. deaths by Jan. 1, 2021. Assuming public health mandates were relaxed, the IHME model predicts twice as many deaths before the end of the year: 400,000, for a total of nearly 612,000. But the increase could be cut by half with universal face masks, according to the model, which predicts an additional 100,000 deaths under that scenario.... The institute’s forecasts were influential earlier in the pandemic in guiding policies developed by the White House coronavirus task force, but they have been criticized by some experts as projecting further into the future than can be done reliably, The Washington Post reported.

'“He’s in federal court — federal court trying to do away with the Affordable Care Act, 100 million people with preexisting conditions like your mom would not have to pay more for their insurance under now.” There are an estimated 102 million people with preexisting health conditions, according to a 2018 report by the consulting group Avalere. But depending on where people get their insurance — such as the half of Americans who get it from their employer — premiums would not necessarily go up for all 102 million if Trump succeeds in nullifying the ACA....

'“But when you guys started talking on television about Biden, if he wins he’d be the first person without an Ivy League degree to be elected president.” Nope, no reporter said that. Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, was the last president who did not go to an Ivy League university. (He went to little Eureka College in Illinois.) Neither Biden nor his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), went to an Ivy League university, the first such Democratic ticket since 1984. Biden attended the University of Delaware and the Syracuse University College of Law, while Harris attended Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law."

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/17/joe-bidens-cnn-town-hall-an-occasional-whopper/