Fact check: Breaking down Joe Biden's first month of claims - CNN

Walter Reed visits

Biden told reporters before his January 29 visit with wounded soldiers at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center: "...as vice president, every single Christmas, we spent all of Christmas day at Walter Reed." He told military personnel in a chat upon his arrival: "For eight years, as uh, vice president, I'd come here, we'd -- the whole family would spend every Christmas day here, all day."

Facts First: There is public proof that Biden visited Walter Reed on five of his eight Christmases as vice president, but not on "every single Christmas" as vice president as he claimed.

Vaccines to community health centers

Responding to a question that asked generally about racial disparities in health care and specifically about the relatively low rates at which Black and Hispanic people were being vaccinated for Covid-19, Biden said at the CNN town hall that he met with the Congressional Black Caucus and agreed that "all of the community health centers now, which take care of the toughest of the toughest neighborhoods in terms of illness, they are going to get a million doses, you know, a week..."

Facts First: Biden was right that his administration planned to send community health centers one million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine -- but wrong when he said it would one million doses "a week." Dr.

(When we asked the White House how long the phase is supposed to last, the White House official referred us to an online "fact sheet" that didn't contain an answer.)

Biden's travel with Xi Jinping

Speaking about how well he knows Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden claimed twice that he has traveled 17,000 miles with Xi.

For example, Biden said in a February 5 interview with CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell, "I probably spent more time with Xi Jinping, I'm told, than any world leader has because I had 24, 25 hours of private meetings with him when I was vice president.

However, we aren't calling Biden's claim false or misleading because two sources in the pharmacy industry said the Trump administration never presented an actual plan to turn its concept into reality.

"When we first started talking to the Biden team during the transition, it was unclear what the federal pharmacy partnership program was going to look like, and key details...were missing.

When we told the White House what the two experts had told us, the White House official who responded to most of our queries pointed to: reports about suicides increasing in particular areas of the US, the evidence that suicidal ideation is up in the US, evidence that suicide in Japan has increased during the pandemic, and an NPR article that noted the absence of nationwide numbers but also said, "NPR spoke with providers at hospitals in seven states across the country, and all of them reported a similar trend: More suicidal children are coming to their hospitals -- in worse mental states."

All of that is fair enough.

Snowe left office in 2013, and her institute did not respond to a request for comment.

Hunger in January

Biden said during January 29 remarks on his pandemic relief plan: "Thirty million Americans don't have enough food to eat this week."

Facts First: This figure was slightly outdated.

A Census Bureau survey for December 9 to December 21, which was released in early January, found that just under 30 million people said they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat in the previous seven days.

However, the latest version of the survey at the time Biden spoke, released two days before his speech, put the number at just under 24 million people.

Oil subsidies

Biden said in a January 27 environmental speech: "Unlike previous administrations, I don't think the federal government should give handouts to Big Oil to the tune of $40 billion in fossil fuel subsidies."

Facts First: Biden has a reasonable factual basis for this claim, but it's worth noting that the accuracy of the "$40 billion" figure depends on what you consider a "handout to Big Oil" and what time period you are looking at.

Trump and health care

In a January 28 speech about health care executive orders, Biden said the orders would "undo" damage done by Trump.

He said, "There's nothing new that we're doing here, other than restoring the Affordable Care Act and restoring the Medicaid to the way it was before Trump became President, which by fiat he changed -- made more inaccessible, more expensive, and more difficult for people to qualify for either of those two items: the Affordable Care Act or Medicaid."

Facts First: This needs context.

The White House pointed to five incidents during Biden's career as senator and vice president, at least two of them corroborated by media outlets.

In 2009, the New York Times reported that the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq was "attacked by rocket fire for a second night on Wednesday, this time just after Vice President Joseph R.

Vice President Joe Biden, U.S.

and Iraqi officials said."

The White House sent CNN a list of three other incidents Biden says occurred: another Green Zone mortar incident in 2005, an incident in 2005 in which Biden said a bullet narrowly missed a helicopter carrying him from the Green Zone to the Baghdad airport, and an incident in 2004 in which Biden said he was leaving Iraq in a military plane that had to take evasive action after its missile warning system was activated.

Some of Biden's critics have noted that, as a senator in 2007, he walked back a claim about having been "shot at" in the Green Zone.

Racial disparities and the pandemic

Biden said in a January 26 speech on racial issues: "Black and Latino Americans are dying of Covid-19 at rates nearly three times that of White Americans."

Facts First: Biden was correct at the time he spoke; these figures were taken from published Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data at the time.

Latino people had died at 2.3 times the rate of White people, also down from 2.8 times in the previous data.

Attitudes about climate change

Biden said in the environmental speech: "And I might note, parenthetically: If you notice, the attitude of the American people toward greater impetus on focusing on climate change and doing something about it has increased across the board -- Democrat, Republican, independent."

Facts First: This is correct, but it's worth noting that survey data suggests there has been a much smaller increase among Republicans than among Democrats.

About one-half are vulnerable to wildfires."

Here are some other claims Biden was correct about:

Race and the economy: Biden was correct in saying that about 1 in 4 Black households and 1 in 5 Latino households reported not having enough to eat; that 1 in 10 Black people and 1 in 11 Latino people were out of work; that more than 10 million people were out of work in total, four million of them for six months or longer; and that more than 40 percent of the active-duty military is made up of people of color.

The pandemic: Biden was correct that January 2021 was the deadliest US month of the pandemic (with more than 95,000 deaths, per the latest Johns Hopkins University data); that more than 24 million Americans had been infected with the virus as of late January; that the US had 25 percent of the world's confirmed Covid-19 cases with just 4 percent of the world's population (though it's important to note that international statistics do not capture all actual cases); that studies have shown that air pollution is associated with an increased risk of death from Covid-19; that there was initial talk that it could take years or even decades before there was a Covid-19 vaccine; and that, in January, experts predicted more than 100,000 more US deaths from the virus.

Assorted: Biden was also correct that Trump reversed a late-Obama-era move to reduce the use of private prisons; that there are more than 80 million displaced people around the world; that China has trains that go more than 225 miles per hour; and that Biden is the first president in 40 years to have a child who served in a war zone.