“Let’s not let the truth get in the way of a good story."
Sky News Australia host doesn't hold back fact-checking Pres. Biden
A Sky News Australia host Gabriella Power has had it with President Joe Biden repeating lies in various interviews following his disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump.
Power cites Biden in an interview saying the inflation rate was 9% when he began his presidency.
“The inflation rate in January 2021 was 1.4%,” Power said. “ But hey, let’s not let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
A clip is played of Biden in an interview being asked about inflation and instead of addressing the question head on, he pivots to his repeated line of “16 Nobel Laureates” on the economy say he’s “done an incredible job,” and then delivers the 9% inflation lie.
Power observes this isn’t a moment where Biden doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing, “this is a message he’s had on repeat.”
“Either Joe Biden hasn’t figured out that the American people are smart, and they can tell when they are being lied to,” Power later says. “Or Joe Biden has lied about this so much he actually believed it to the truth."
Power also tackles other Biden falsehoods.
Watch the full video below:
More To The Story
Biden’s claims that are “on repeat,” to quote Power, go back farther than the debate, but in recent interviews, Biden has used a near verbatim recitation of what he said during the debate.
Here’s a shortened list of some of the bigger falsehoods Biden tossed out during the debate.
BIDEN: “All he said was is [it’s] not that serious, to inject a little bleach in your arm.”
REALITY: This is false. Trump spoke about disinfectants killing COVID-19 on surfaces during a 2020 press conference.
BIDEN: “We brought on in a position where we have 800,000 new manufacturing jobs.”
REALITY: This is false. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024 has seen almost no job growth and of the 800,000 figure claimed by Biden, only around 25,000 were created since January 2023. The pandemic killed current jobs and job growth; the gains under Biden are mainly a rebound effect.
BIDEN: “Truth is, I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have any, this decade, that doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world, like he did."
REALITY: Utterly False. 13 service members lost their lives during Biden's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. At least 18 other service members have died either during training accidents or due to terror attacks abroad.
BIDEN: “We have a thousand millionaires in America, I mean billionaires. And what’s happening? They’re in a situation where they in fact pay 8.2 percent taxes.”
REALITY: IRS data shows the top 1% of taxpayers, those with an income of at least $548,000, paid just under 26%. What Biden is actually referring to is the White House’s own 2021 study that said the 400 wealthiest taxpayers paid a tax rate of 8%, but there’s a big problem: the estimate included unrealized capital gains in the income calculation, thereby majorly skewing the tax rate estimate.
BIDEN: “We brought down the price of prescription drugs, which is a major issue for many people, to $15 for a insulin shot as opposed to $400. No senior has to pay more than $200 for any drug … beginning next year.
REALITY: False. On insulin, Trump was the first president to bring costs down to $35. Biden repealed Trump's actions on insulin in 2021, only to reverse course again and reinstate them in 2022. Biden never brought it down to $15. Period. Also, out-of-pocket drug costs under Medicare Part D are not capped at $200, the cap is actually $2,000 as of 2025.
BIDEN: “Black unemployment is the lowest level it’s been in a long, long time.”
REALITY: Half True. Under Trump the Black unemployment rate fell to 6.8%; the lowest rate in 45 years. Then the pandemic hit and that rate spiked to 9.3% just before Biden took office in January 2021. Under Biden, the rate stayed around the 8% range during 2021 and dropped to around 6% in 2022. This rate has only started to decline again in the last two years with a high of 4.8% in April 2023 and a current rate of 5.4% in May 2024.
BIDEN: He [Trump] wants to get rid of Social Security.
REALITY: False. There is absolutely no proof of this claim beyond generalized statements made by Trump in the past. Trump made statements to the contrary during his 2024 campaign, that he would "never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt" Social Security.," and saying, "We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them."
BIDEN: “What I’ve done since I changed the law, what’s happened? I’ve changed it in a way that now you’re in situation where there are 40% fewer people coming across the border illegally."
REALITY: Purposefully misleading. The 40% Biden refers to is actually the decrease in daily encounters at the border following his border proclamation. The proclamation, in a nutshell, is a suspension of accepting asylum seekers crossing the southern border during periods of high crossings (7-day average of 2,500+ encounters). That suspension lifts temporarily when crossings drop below 1,500 for 7 days. Biden's border order did not seem to have an effect with 10,000 surging the border just days after the proclamation was issued. Over 9 million illegal aliens have flooded into the U.S. under Biden, that we know of.
Biden also claimed during the debate that the border patrol union has endorsed him but that's false.
“To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.”
- Border Patrol Union on X
Biden has also repeated the claim that Trump called military personnel “suckers and losers.”
This claim, oft repeated by Biden, comes from an article in the left-leaning "Atlantic," which used four unnamed sources alleging Trump made such a statement. However, there is no evidence whatsoever beyond “anonymous” sources that Trump, who frequently visited soldiers in hospitals throughout his presidency, ever said such a thing.
The inflation lie specifically was also repeated when Biden came to Raleigh the day after his debate with Trump, one of many told that night.
Prior to the president taking the stage, NC Governor Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein both took the podium to stump for Biden.
Cooper’s remarks centered on Trump being a “dictator” who “wants his job back,” to which the crowd then chanted “lock him up.”
When Biden did come out on stage, he was accompanied by his wife, Jill, who, wearing a dress covered in the word “vote,” told the crowd it was Trump who lied during the debate.
"What you saw last night on the debate stage was Joe Biden a president with integrity and character who told the truth and Donald Trump told lie after lie after lie,” the First Lady said.
Biden praised Roy Cooper as governor and endorsed Stein to replace him and said "when I'm re-elected again with your help, I want you to know that I'm not promising not to take Roy away from North Carolina."
“I'm here in North Carolina for one reason because I intend to win this state in November,” Biden said.
Polling over the past year has shown Biden has no chance of winning North Carolina.
Biden also said "Democracy" and "America itself is at stake" this election.
The president then went on to address his disastrous debate performance by trashing former President Trump, saying he spent “90 minutes on the stage debating a guy who has the morals of an alley cat." He later would harp on Trump's recent felony convictions and call Trump a "one man crime wave."
Biden then claimed Trump broke a record for the most lies told during a debate before going on to say Trump "botched" the pandemic, killed millions of people, closed businesses and schools. Armchair quarterbacking aside, Biden's campaign in 2020 created "The Biden Plan to Combat Coronavirus," which, frankly, was mostly about mobilizing various federal agencies and establishing massive pandemic spending funds. When he did get into office, it’s hard to forget his vaccine mandates and how many Americans lost their jobs because of it.
The lines Biden delivered about crime need to be addressed.
"Look he lied about how great he was on crime; had to remind him that he oversaw a record increase in murder rates in 2020,” Biden said. “On my watch violent crime is... hit a 50-year low."
That's very misleading. Under Trump, crime rates were trending downward when one excludes the violent riots during 2020 So, sure crime rates are dropping under Biden too — at least on paper. Here's why this topic is problematic: Crime data reported to the FBI has had issues for several years.
The most recent data only includes about 76-77% of the nation’s population areas and reporting has not included large U.S. cities.
Back in 2021, police agencies, mainly in Blue states with the exception of Florida, stopped reporting crime data to the FBI. According to the Marshall Project, nearly 1/3 of law enforcement agencies failed to report their crime data.
It’s also worth noting that an early November Gallup poll that showed Americans personal safety fears had hit a three decade high.
Read more about the problems with the crime data:
Video of the June 28 Raleigh rally can be viewed at this link; Biden begins his remarks after the 1 hour 28 minute mark. Read the text of Biden’s remarks.