Twisted Media

Media Fact-Checkers Twist Themselves In Knots Defending Biden’s Town Hall Disaster by Amanda Prestigiacomo

Joe Biden’s stumbling and sometimes shocking answers during a town hall event with CNN prompted left-wing media “fact-checkers” to tie themselves in knots to defend him.

As The Daily Wire highlighted, Biden seemingly claimed his administration did not have a vaccine to work with when he came into office: “It’s one thing to have the vaccine, which we didn’t have when we came into office, but a vaccinator, how do you get the vaccine into someone’s arm?”

“What we did, we got into office and found out the supply, there was no backlog, I mean, there was nothing in the refrigerator, figuratively and literally speaking,” the president said.

Biden telling the American people “we didn’t have” the vaccine when he came into office was not a lie, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler explained, but rather “a typical Biden gaffe.”

“It was a verbal stumble, a typical Biden gaffe, as he had already mentioned 50 million doses being available when he took office,” the politico posted to Twitter. “Ex Trump officials should especially cool the outrage meter, as it just looks silly.”

“Honest question: how do you determine what’s a verbal stumble and what’s not?” one Twitter user pressed.

Kessler noted Biden’s “stutter” to offer rationale for his generous coverage. “It depends in part on whether he spoke correctly about vaccine availability elsewhere in the interview,” he said. “People screw up on live television. Biden with his stutter especially does so.”

Conservative writer and podcast host Stephen L. Miller highlighted Biden himself saying his missteps are not because of his stutter.

“This is not fact checking,” Miller asserted, captioning a video from Axios, titled, “Joe Biden denies that stuttering is to blame for verbal missteps Glenn Kessler is making excuses for Joe Biden that not even Joe Biden himself makes excuses for.”

“Look, the mistakes I make are mistakes,” Biden says in the Axios video. “And some people think I still stutter. I don’t think of myself that way.”

The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway noted of Kessler’s “generosity” being turned up to “full blast” — a far cry from the media’s stance relative to former President Donald Trump.

“So the generosity spigot is being turned on full blast now, when it wasn’t even in existence the last four years. Interesting. What could account for the difference, I wonder? It’s a real mystery!” Hemingway mocked.