Once again, CNN summoned Daniel Dale for a fact-check of a presidential speech. And, once again, Dale showed his reluctance to fact-check Joe Biden- choosing to check economic data instead of some of the incendiary and easily refutable hoaxes amplified during his DNC swan song.
Watch Dale’s meek fact-check of Biden:
CNN DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION
8/20/24
12:51 AM
JAKE TAPPER: Let's bring in CNN Senior Reporter Daniel Dale for a fact check of tonight’s speeches. Daniel, I guess let's start with the president. What did you make of it?
DANIEL DALE: There were certainly some false or misleading claims there, especially on the subject of the economy. I want you to listen to something he said on the subject of US imports and exports.
JOE BIDEN: We used to import products and export jobs. Now we export American products and create American jobs. Right here in America. Where jobs belong.
DALE: This claim is misleading. Jake, US exports of goods have increased under president Biden. So far, so good with that claim. But contrary to the other part of that claim, we are still importing a whole lot of stuff, too. What he didn't mention is that US imports have increased during his presidency, increased, not decreased. In fact, increased by more than exports have increased. So therefore, the trade deficit in goods has increased under President Biden, not declined as this claim suggested. It was over $1 trillion in each of his first three years in office. It had never hit that level before. I also want to play something else he said on the subject of the economy in the budget. This is something he said about billionaires and tax rates.
BIDEN: We have 1,000 billionaires in America. You know what their average tax rate they pay? 8.2%!
DALE: I've called this misleading before. It's still misleading. An expert at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has told me this number is quote, “way too low”. Now he said the average federal tax rate for billionaires is 8.2%. What he doesn't explain is that that number is not an actual tax rate. What it is is an alternative calculation from economists in his own administration that factors in unrealized capital gains that are not actually treated as taxable income under current law. And there's nothing wrong with using an alternative figure when you explain it as The White House does, but Biden himself uses it like it's a tax rate under current law, it's not. So what, Jake, do tax rate- what tax rate do billionaires actually pay? A precise figure is not publicly known at the moment, but a study from two well-known economists estimated that the top 400 households paid an average effective tax rate of 23% in 2018, much higher than the president's number.
TAPPER: All right, Daniel Dale. Thank you so much.
This fact-check was tonally very deferential to Biden. Compare that with his fact-check of Donald Trump at the RNC, whose claims he dismissed as “nonsense”.
Dale’s biggest omissions here are the most egregious: by checking Biden on tax and economic data, he allows him to skate on both the “Very Fine People Hoax” and the “Bloodbath Hoax”, both of which have been very thoroughly debunked.
As we noted during the RNC:
Let’s face it: CNN lured Daniel Dale away from the Toronto Star, with promises of flat bacon and access to on-demand MRIs, for the sole purpose of fact-checking Republicans generally, and Donald Trump specifically. And it is broadly understood that the fact-checking industry is little more than a partisan hack operation performing comms and smearing the opposition.
There is just no interest, real interest, in fact-checking Democrats beyond the pro forma bare minimum.
Note, also, that Tapper’s introduction implied there would be other fact-checks. That didn’t happen. Which means that Congressman Robert García’s repetition of the “Drinking Bleach Hoax”, also echoed by Chris Wallace, went unchecked.
It turns out that, when it comes to fact-checking, there’s a (D)ifference.
