Fact-checking President Biden’s 2022 State of the Union address – By Glenn Kessler (Washington Post) / March 1, 2022
A State of the Union address generally is a product of many hands and is carefully vetted. But State of the Union addresses often are very political speeches, an argument for the president’s policies, so context is sometimes missing. Last year, President Biden got in trouble when he ad-libbed some lines in a speech to Congress that stretched the truth. He stuck to the script more closely in his first State of the Union address. Here’s a roundup of seven claims that caught our attention.
As is our practice with live events, we do not award Pinocchio ratings, which are reserved for complete columns.
“Our economy created over 6.5 million new jobs just last year, more jobs created in one year than ever before in the history of America.”
“The only president ever to cut the deficit by more than 1 trillion dollars in a single year.”
Both of these figures are misleading because of the context — the impact the once-in-a-century pandemic had on jobs and federal finances. Jobs plunged and deficits soared in 2020 when the coronavirus struck and shuttered the worldwide economy.
