Fact-checking Joe Biden
CNN has a man named Daniel Dale whose job is fact-checking things people say and a while back he wrote an article about fact-checking Joe Biden.
At the time of the article, Dale calculated Joe Biden had made 29 false claims during his first 100 days in office which works out to be one false claim every three-and-a-half days which I could beat in 20 minutes flat given an ice-cold Bud Light, a shot of Jack Daniels and a request to tell any interesting baseball stories I know.
For comparison’s sake (to Joe Biden, not me) Donald Trump’s made 214 false claims in first 100 days which is about two false claims a day which strikes me as kinda low, but once Donald got the hang of it, he was making false claims eight times a day and those were just Official-On-The-Record-False-Claims and not golf scores or overly-conservative estimates of how many Double-Quarter Pounders he had for lunch.
(If there’s a difference between “false claims” and “lies” I’m not sure what it is, so why don’t we save seven letters and from here on in I’ll just say “lies.”)
That was from August 2019 through July 2020 and there’s no word on how many times a day Trump was lying during the election and its aftermath because I don’t think calculators go that high and Daniel Dale had to occasionally stop counting and get some sleep.
To fit that many lies into a 24-hour day you’ve got to talk a lot and according to Factba.se (which is not a typo even though it probably ought to be) a website that counts public utterances by presidents (and you thought your job sucked) Joe Biden said 28% fewer words than Trump through April 29 of their first terms.
Also, Biden was more likely to speak from a script than Trump, who would often depart from prepared texts and instead use the time-honored technique of pulling information directly out of his ass.
If I understood the article correctly, none of this counted Twitter which Trump used like Tony Montana used cocaine. Biden also uses Twitter, but not as often and when he does it’s often stuff without “checkable claims” which I sense is Daniel Dale’s way of saying they’re “really boring.”
Turns out when Biden makes a false claim (OK, it does sound much more polite) it’s usually when he starts ad-libbing about some statistic and pulls that information directly out of his ass.
For instance:
Biden claimed that the majority of undocumented immigrants in the US are not Hispanic; turns out they are.
Biden claimed that China has more retired people than workers; turns out they don’t.
Biden claimed that the $7.25 an hour minimum wage would be $20 an hour today if it had been linked to inflation when it was created; turns out it wouldn’t.
Daniel Dale had a bunch of other stuff that Biden got wrong (and isn’t it funny how when people make “mistakes” the “mistakes” are consistently made in a direction that favors them, a concept I’m completely familiar with because when a doctor asks how many drinks I have per week I’m pretty sure I’ve never overestimated.)
If pretty much all politicians lie (with the exception of Liz Cheney who is paying the price for not lying about the 2020 election) then it’s a matter of degree and at least so far Joe Biden lies a lot less than Donald Trump although give him time and Joe might pick up the pace.
The point of all this (and there is a point, so hang on) is that someone at CNN fact-checked Joe Biden and called him out for lying and I don’t see people on the right doing the same thing to Donald Trump, which brings up a question I’ve been asked by conservatives.
When am I going to lay off Trump?
Comedian Ron White — who once told a story about telling his wife he wanted to try anal sex and she said, “Ron, I’m not putting that thing on” and deserves to be in the Comedy Hall of Fame (and, yes, there is one) for that joke alone — has a stand-up special called: If You Quit Listening I’ll Shut Up.
Which is pretty much how I feel about Donald Trump; if he’d shut up, I’d quit drawing cartoons about him.
Although, I gotta admit I loved it when I heard he dropped by a wedding being held at Mar-a-Lago and used the occasion to once again complain about being cheated out of the presidency and I really hope he made his complaint while toasting the bride and groom:
“Here’s to many years of connubial bliss and all that, but, face it; she’s at best a six and I’d do her, but I’ve had much, much better when I worked on The Celebrity Apprentice and now let me tell you a few things about Georgia election laws.”
It does my heart good to think of Donald Trump wandering around Florida (Our Nation’s Penis …which I’m pretty sure is on their license plates) whining about the 2020 election to random caddies, pool boys and cocktail waitresses.
All of which led to the cartoon at the top of this post: if Joe Biden really wants to punish Russia he should have air-dropped Trump into Red Square and made Vladimir Putin listen to Trump’s complaints.
Anyway…
It’s pretty clear Donald Trump is genetically incapable of shutting up (a charge that could also be made about certain semi-retired political cartoonists, but the less said about that the better) and Trump has now started something called From the Desk of Donald J. Trump and it appears to be DJ’s random thoughts (huge emphasis on the word “random”) and features a picture of him writing in what appears to be a Bible so I can only assume he’s editing out the Commandments he doesn’t like.
After a horse called Medina Spirit won the Kentucky Derby and then failed a drug test for steroids, here’s what Donald Trump had to say about it:
"So now even our Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, is a junky. This is emblematic of what is happening to our Country. The whole world is laughing at us as we go to hell on our Borders, our fake Presidential Election, and everywhere else!"
This paragraph would appear to be words cut out of newspapers, thrown into a hat, then pulled out and pasted together in random order to make a semi-incoherent trio of sentences which doesn’t prevent its author from being considered the favorite to get the Republican nomination should he decide to once again run for president, which is completely understandable if his main competition is Ted Cruz and SS-Obersturmfuhrer Josh Hawley.
Which reminds me of a photo that explains why most of us think politicians are scumbags (I got all this from Chris Cillizza’s CNN column so he deserves the credit although the jokes are all mine):
Apparently Ted Cruz wants to run for president because he thinks we’re all going to develop amnesia in the next three years, so that being the case he went to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump’s ass and was willing to do so even though in the past Trump:
Said Cruz stole the Iowa caucuses.
Suggested that Cruz’s father was involved in the JFK assassination.
Insulted Cruz’s wife looks.
And gave him the nickname “Lyin’ Ted.”
And Trump was willing to sit next to Lyin’ Ted and have his picture taken even though in the past Cruz:
Called Trump a “pathological liar.”
Called Trump “utterly amoral.”
Called Trump “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.”
Called Trump “a serial philanderer.”
And suggested Trump may have ties to the Mafia.
The fact that these two slime balls would sit together and grin for a photo suggests that neither has a moral center of any kind and would go bass fishing with Hitler if it would help their political careers, a mythical scenario which once again fulfills my obligation to mention Hitler whenever talking about Republicans.
OK, that’s it for today and I’m now going to sit and wait for my next cartoon idea to arrive which has about about a 60-40 chance of originating From the Desk of Donald J. Trump.
I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.
Truth!!!!