President Joe Biden held a solo news conference on Thursday after a NATO summit in Washington, seeking to reassure voters concerned about his ability to serve and Democratic officials concerned about his ability to defeat former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
Biden’s comments included some false and misleading claims. Here is a fact check.
Biden played down a gaffe he made at an event earlier on Thursday in which he had mistakenly introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” before correcting himself moments later. Biden said at the press conference: “I said, ‘No, I’m sorry, Zelensky.’ And then I added five other names.”
Facts First: Biden’s last claim was false. He didn’t utter “five other names” after he corrected the Putin-Zelensky mix-up. In fact, after Biden corrected himself, Zelensky said he is “better” than Putin, Biden agreed, and then Zelensky delivered remarks as Biden stood silently beside him.
Biden spoke of a need to “pace” himself in his activities. He said, “The next debate, I’m not going to be traveling 15 time zones a week before. Anyway. That’s what it was about.”
Facts First: This is misleading. Biden did not travel abroad “a week before” the June 27 CNN presidential debate in which he performed poorly. In fact, he returned to the US from Europe 12 days before that debate, on June 15.
Biden attended a fundraiser in Los Angeles on June 15, returned to the White House on June 16 and went to Camp David on June 20 for intensive debate preparations. He stayed at Camp David until the day of the CNN presidential debate against Trump, which was held in Atlanta.
Biden, criticizing Trump’s position on the NATO military alliance, said, “I think he said at one of his rallies, don’t hold me to this, recently, where, ‘NATO – I just learned about NATO,’ or something to that effect. Foreign policy’s never been his strong point.”
Facts First: Biden’s description of Trump’s comment was indeed inaccurate. Trump did not say at a recent rally that “I just learned about NATO.” Rather, Trump said at the rally that he had not known what NATO was, “too much,” prior to attending his first alliance summit as president in 2017.
Trump said at his Tuesday rally in Florida: “I didn’t want to be obnoxious because I felt, you know, it was the first time I’d ever done this. I went; I didn’t even know what the hell NATO was too much before, but it didn’t take me long to figure it out. Like about two minutes. And the first thing I figured out was they weren’t paying.” (Trump continued by making his usual false claims about NATO’s funding structure.)
Biden is entitled to criticize Trump for this profession of prior ignorance about NATO or for his continued inaccuracy about NATO, but Biden’s comments made it sound like Trump had acknowledged he had just learned about NATO now rather than seven years ago.
Hamas and the West Bank
Talking about the war between Israel and Hamas, Biden said Thursday, “There is a growing dissatisfaction in, on the West Bank, from the Palestinians, about Hamas. Hamas is not popular now.”
Facts First: The limited available public opinion polling suggests the claim that “Hamas is not popular now” in the West Bank is not true – and that Hamas’ popularity has increased there since its attack on Israel last October.
A poll taken in late May and early June by a well-known pollster based in the West Bank, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, found that 73% of respondents in the West Bank supported the October attack by Hamas, that 82% of respondents in the West Bank were satisfied with Hamas’ performance in the current war with Israel and that 71% of respondents in the West Bank preferred Hamas to control the Gaza Strip after the war. Hamas scored better on all of those questions among the respondents in the West Bank than it did among the respondents in Gaza.
In addition, Hamas had the support of about half the West Bank respondents who said they would vote in hypothetical parliamentary elections – double its support level in a poll nine months prior and more than double West Bank respondents’ support in the latest poll for more moderate rival Fatah.
When a reporter told Biden that Reuters had reported Thursday that the leadership of the United Auto Workers union was concerned about Biden’s ability to win the election, Biden responded, “UAW just endorsed me, but go ahead.”
Facts First: Biden’s claim that the UAW “just” endorsed him is misleading at best. The UAW actually announced its endorsement of Biden on January 24, more than five months ago.
In other words, Biden attempted to dismiss the reported post-debate concerns of UAW president Shawn Fain by insinuating that Fain’s union had made a recent decision to back Biden. But the endorsement actually came long before the debate and the resulting crisis of confidence among some of Biden’s pre-debate backers.
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