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.
Biden: “So many black Americans wake up knowing they could lose their life in the course of just living their life — jogging, sleeping at home" pic.twitter.com/3cKenLbCjO
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 25, 2022
“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.
