President Joe Biden resorted to a slew of familiar hoaxes in his address Monday night to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago — not just the “very fine people hoax,” but also several other familiar, long-debunked, hoaxes.
The “very fine people” hoax: Biden repeated his claim that then-President Donald Trump had referred to neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 as “very fine people.” In fact, Trump condemned them “totally.” This hoax has been repeatedly debunked. Ironically, Biden praised the pro-Palestinian protesters on the streets, never condemning those who had pro-Hamas flags or chanted antisemitic slogans. (One protester even wore a swastika).
The “suckers and losers” hoax: This is another Biden mainstay, based on an unsubstantiated claim in 2020 in The Atlantic that Trump had refused to visit the graves of U.S. soldiers in Europe, and had disparaged dead soldiers. Bad weather had prevented Trump from visiting the graves, and the claim about “suckers and losers” was denied by everyone who was with Trump. Biden cited former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, but Kelly simply repeated the claim as it had been reported in the media; he did not say that he heard the president say those words.
The “bloodbath” hoax: Biden claimed, as he has before, that Trump “promised a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses.” That is false: Trump used the term “bloodbath” to refer to the fate of the automobile industry, not to political violence.
The “injecting bleach” hoax: Biden did not use this one personally, but it was used on the stage before him by Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA). Trump never told people to drink or inject bleach; at a press conference in 2020, he talked about developing technology that could “inject” ultraviolet (UV) light into the body to disinfect it. Asked by a journalist whether he was suggesting that people inject bleach, Trump explicitly said that he was not doing so.
Biden has repeated these hoaxes, despite many fact checks, largely because the media rarely hold him accountable.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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