PolitiFact just can't avoid the chance to defend Joe Biden, even if the "facts" at hand are pretty much true. On August 23, Louis Jacobson threw a "Half True" at a Daily Wire meme on Facebook about Biden cancelling the Keystone pipeline out of Canada, and now we're importing Russian oil instead.
The post said, "The imbecile in chief is now importing 800,000 barrels of oil from Russia. Guess how much oil the keystone (pipeline) would have carried from Canada? I will give you a hint. It rhymes with 800,000 barrels." Jacobson never mentioned The Daily Wire, but it's stamped in the meme, a version of the often-used Eric Andre meme:
On Facebook, the meme was covered by a black square that proclaimed:
Missing Context
Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.
See Why
The joke here in the office was: "Did the fact checkers complain that 'No, Joe Biden, did not shoot and kill this black man'?"
The conclusion of this fact check underlines that this sounds much more like "Mostly True" than "Half True."
The amount of oil being imported today from Russia has reached a record level of more than 800,000 barrels a day. That does roughly equal the transport capacity of the Keystone XL pipeline — but it’s not as simple as substituting one source for the other.
The pipeline would have required years of construction and likely more legal challenges, so it couldn’t have solved today’s demand needs. Even in the future, there would be no certainty that the pipeline could produce a net increase of 800,000 barrels a day...
Under this meme with their added "NEEDS CONTEXT" warning, they used the usual convenient Experts: "Oil experts say the post draws a misleading relationship between Russian imports and the Keystone pipeline project."
"There is no justification for comparing oil import levels from Russia to the transportation capacity of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, or to suggest that these imports from Russia would have been entirely displaced by crude transported through Keystone XL," said Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
Spoiler: Climate cop Bordoff's Twitter bio includes "fmr energy advisor to Pres @BarackObama." PolitiFact left that fact out.
Their "If Your Time Is Short" summary at the top complains this way, which could be described as a lineup of but-but-but, coulda-coulda-coulda:
- The amount of oil being imported today from Russia has reached a record level, and it does roughly equal the transport capacity of the now-cancelled Keystone XL pipeline.
- However, the pipeline would first need to be built, meaning it couldn’t solve today’s demand needs, and it’s hardly assured that the Canadian production that would feed the pipeline would have risen by 800,000 barrels a day beyond today’s production, or that this entire amount would be sold to the U.S.
In other words, "you're right, but you're still half-false because you're guessing about what might have happened if Biden hadn't killed it". They're fact-checking humorous memes because they can't handle Biden being mocked as incompetent.
