We’ve fact-checked Trump sparingly since his departure from dominating the political scene, yet one of those fact checks ended up in the top 10. Fact checks related to the origin of the coronavirus and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol also drew many readers.
Here’s the rundown
1. Timeline: How the Wuhan lab-leak theory suddenly became credible
Technically not a fact check, this was one of the biggest hits in the 14-year history of The Fact Checker. Our timeline of key events, including important articles, helped readers understand why a theory once dismissed as nonsense — that the coronavirus that killed millions came from a lab in Wuhan, China — had gained new credence among scientists. Shortly after this column appeared, Biden ordered intelligence agencies to conduct a new review of the evidence. Without China’s full cooperation, however, the truth may never be known.
Many scientists continue to think the most likely explanation is that the virus emerged from nature. In 2020, the Fact Checker produced a video that looked into possible explanations for the origin of the virus; it had more than 2 million views on YouTube.
2. ‘Good-looking Marines’: Video misrepresents Biden at inauguration
This was one of the strangest conspiracy theories of the year — a viral tweet claimed that on Inauguration Day, “someone in Biden’s earpiece told him to salute the Marines, and Biden just repeated the words ‘salute the Marines,’ because he is so used to just repeating what comes from his earpiece.”
After multiple viewings of the C-SPAN clip, we made the determination that Biden did not utter the phrase “Salute the Marines.” Instead, Biden remarked, “Good-looking Marines,” as he passed through the Capitol doors. About six hours after this fact check was published, the tweet and the user account associated with it were removed from Twitter.
3. Trump falsely claims he ‘requested’ 10,000 troops rejected by Pelosi
In a March speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump mostly replayed golden oldies from his long list of falsehoods. But in an interview with a Fox News reporter, Trump claimed that he “requested” 10,000 troops to guard the Capitol on Jan. 6 but that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blocked the order. That new claim caught our attention.
Upon inspection, it fell apart as quickly as many of his other statements. Acting defense secretary Christopher Miller said that Trump had assumed 1 million people would gather to hear him the speak — in reality, Trump’s Jan. 6 rally attracted only thousands of people — and he tossed out a 10,000 figure as an offhand remark during a meeting on Iran. Miller and other senior Pentagon officials never relayed the 10,000 figure to anyone outside the Defense Department, according to a former U.S. official familiar with the matter. So Pelosi had no request to reject. Trump, as usual, earned Four Pinocchios.
4. Ocasio-Cortez’s recounting of the Jan. 6 riot was not a hoax
On Feb. 1, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) had a 90-minute Instagram Live talk about her experience during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, including disclosing that she once had been a victim of sexual assault. During her talk, Ocasio-Cortez made clear that she was not in the main Capitol building.
Nevertheless, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), relying on inaccurate Internet articles, declared: “I was in the chamber, unlike AOC — Rep. Ocasio-Cortez — that faked her outrage with another hoax, just another hoax that gets shared everywhere.” Greene earned Four Pinocchios.
5. Fact-checking the Paul-Fauci flap over Wuhan lab funding
A Capitol Hill showdown in May between Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, quickly went viral. We used this fact check to help readers understand a growing debate about whether “gain-of-function” research played a role in the coronavirus pandemic. The debate over such experiments predated the pandemic, but it has gained new urgency as scientists investigate the origin of the virus that has killed more than 3 million people around the world.
We ended up giving Two Pinocchios to Paul for his remarks. There still are enough questions about the work at the Wuhan lab to warrant further scrutiny, even if a National Institutes of Health connection to possible gain-of-function research appears so far to be elusive.
6. Lauren Boebert’s tall tale about a man’s death that led her to pack heat
We’re often interested in the “origin stories” of politicians — regular lines that they use over and over to explain their political motivations. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) arrived in Congress this year after leveraging her fame as the owner of a restaurant, Shooters Grill of Rifle, Colo., where the wait staff often have open-carry firearms as they serve customers.
7. Kevin McCarthy says he rented a room in a 7,000-square-foot penthouse
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) came under fire from Tucker Carlson of Fox News Channel for having shared an apartment with pollster Frank Luntz. McCarthy responded that he had rented “a room” for some months early in 2021.
What kind of apartment is this? We revealed it is a 7,000-square-foot space — a combination of four penthouse apartments — with what appear to be homeowner’s association fees of nearly $5,000 per month. We later found that thebylaws of the building specifically prohibit condo owners from renting anything less than the entire space — and for not less than six months. In another column, we disclosed that Federal Election Commission filings show that the leadership PAC controlled by McCarthy — Majority Committee PAC, or McPAC — paid one of Luntz’s companies nearly $40,000 in late 2020. Two good-government groups have urged the House Ethics Committee to investigate the arrangement.
8. Biden falsely claims the new Georgia law ends voting hours early
In condemning a new Georgia election law that imposed new restrictions on voting, the president made a claim that puzzled us: “It ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.”
Many listeners might assume he was talking about voting on Election Day. But Election Day hours were not changed. The law did make some changes to early voting. But experts say the net effect of the new early-voting rules was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them. Biden earned Four Pinocchios.
9. Tim Scott often talks about his grandfather and cotton. There’s more to that tale.
This was another look at a political origin story. For Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate, it’s the story of his grandfather, who left school at an early age to pick cotton and, according to Scott, never learned to read and write. We dug deep into property and census records to reveal a story that is more complicated than the one Scott tells audiences.
Scott’s family history in South Carolina offered a fascinating window into a little-known aspect of history in the racist South after the Civil War and in the immediate aftermath of slavery — that some enterprising Black families purchased property as a way to avoid sharecropping and achieve a measure of independence from White-dominated society.
10. Rep. Jim Jordan’s false claim that Pelosi denied a request for National Guard troops
In a tweet, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) claimed: “Capitol Police requested National Guard help before January 6th. That request was denied by Speaker Pelosi and her Sergeant-at-Arms.”
Jordan tweeted this without being able to offer any evidence to back it up. Instead, public testimony showed Pelosi did not even hear about the request until two days later. Jordan also tried to pin the blame on the House sergeant-at-arms, but testimony shows the Senate sergeant-at-arms also was not keen on the idea. Jordan earned Four Pinocchios.
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