During an interview on Sunday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden promoted a debunked claim about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, falsely claiming that the Trump administration was silencing him.
“And, look, right now you have this president, hasn’t allowed his scientists to speak, number one,” Biden falsely claimed during an interview on ABC News’s “This Week.” “He has the vice president speaking, not the scientists who know what they’re talking about, like Fauci.”
“And I see — I see no preparedness other than a political talking points, putting someone in charge who is not a scientist and not — and muzzling the scientist,” Biden claimed. “Mr. Fauci’s been here — anyway, all the way back to the Bush administration. What’s going on here?”
The Trump administration has let Fauci talk to the media, and Fauci directly debunked the conspiracy theory that the administration was not allowing him to talk during a press conference with reporters last week.
“I have never been muzzled ever, and I’ve been doing this since the administration of Ronald Reagan,” Fauci told a reporter who asked about the false claim last week. “I’m not being muzzled by this administration.”
“What happened — which was misinterpreted — is that we were set up to go on some shows, and when the Vice President took over, we said, ‘Let’s regroup and figure out how we’re going to be communicating,'” Fauci continued. “So I had to just stand down on a couple of shows and resubmit for clearance. And when I resubmitted for clearance, I got cleared. So I have not been muzzled at all. That was a real misrepresentation of what happened.”
Joe Biden just touted the debunked talking point that President Trump had muzzled Doctor Fauci form discussing the coronavirus.
This is what Fauci had to say about that claim yesterday:
"I’ve never been muzzled ever and I’ve been doing this since…Reagan."
ROLL THE TAPE! pic.twitter.com/1HAcLl3qes
— Francis Brennan (@FrancisBrennan) March 1, 2020
Biden continued by repeating another debunked lie that The Associated Press specifically called him out on last week.
“They don’t — they — they’ve cut the funding for the CDC. They’ve cut the — the Centers for Disease Control,” Biden said during his interview on ABC News.
The Associated Press debunked this falsehood from Biden:
Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has increased.
Biden also promoted a news article on Sunday on his Twitter account that was debunked by a Facebook fact-checker over the weekend and labeled as containing false and inaccurate information.
The article falsely claimed that Trump called the coronavirus a “hoax,” when in fact he was referring to the media and Democratic Party’s politicization and sensationalizing of the virus as a “hoax.”
Trump made it clear last week that he was in no way referring to the coronavirus as a hoax, saying, “‘Hoax’ referring to the action that they take to try and pin this on somebody, because we’ve done such a good job. The hoax is on them, not — I’m not talking about what’s happening here; I’m talking what they’re doing. … This is what I’m talking about. Certainly not referring to this. How could anybody refer to this? This is very serious stuff.”
“But the way they refer to it — because these people have done such an incredible job, and I don’t like it when they are criticizing these people,” Trump continued. “And that’s the hoax. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Trump responded to Biden’s lies in a tweet, writing, “Sleepy Joe Biden also said that guns killed 150 million Americans last year, wants to win Georgia on Super Tuesday (not up), and got his speaking location wrong again!”
Sleepy Joe Biden also said that guns killed 150 million Americans last year, wants to win Georgia on Super Tuesday (not up), and got his speaking location wrong again! https://t.co/INuGY214xa
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 2, 2020
Trump was referring to Biden saying during last week’s Democrat debate that 150 million Americans had been killed since 2007 from gun violence, an obviously false claim.
Democrat Joe Biden blatantly lies as he falsely claims that *150 MILLION* Americans have been killed in shootings since 2007.
That's nearly half the U.S. population. pic.twitter.com/hwkg2YQjZn
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) February 26, 2020