On Tuesday, Joe Biden delivered his second State of the Union address, and it was the most bizarre speech that I’ve ever seen given in the United States.
From the beginning it was gaffe after gaffe and lie after lie. The President was repeatedly heckled and even laughed at during the State of the Union, when he claimed that we will need oil for another decade and then will be able to start phasing out production.
During the address, Biden mentioned many things that were extremely inaccurate, at best. That included:
- Biden claimed that enough acres have burned to equal the size of the state of Missouri. It turns out that that claim wasn’t anywhere close to being accurate. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, nearly 7.6 million acres of land burnt in 2022. Just the forest in Missouri is 15.2 million acres, about double the acres that burnt nationwide. The state of Missouri is 44.6 million acres, nearly 6 times the size of total acres that burnt in 2022.
- Biden took credit for cutting the size of the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion and claimed that his administration reduced the deficit by the most in history. But the Biden administration hasn’t actually done anything that reduces the deficit. Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), noted that 80% of the deficit reduction under this administration is due to expiring and waning COVID relief. The other 20% is due to economic changes, which includes a stronger than expected economy and higher inflation which leads to higher tax revenue. So is he now taking credit for the rise in inflation?
- Biden claimed that manufacturing jobs in America is booming and that during his administration 800,000 new manufacturing jobs were created. BLS ( (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) data shows that just 214,000 new manufacturing jobs were really created in the last two year. The rest were people being allowed to go back to work following COVID restrictions.
- Biden claimed that there have been “more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years” and that 12 million new jobs have been created on his watch. Even CNN has pointed out that most of those jobs “created” was people going back to work after being told that they couldn’t work because of COVID. BLS noted that just 2.7 million new jobs have been created in the last two years.
- Biden made this bizzare claim that fast food workers shouldn’t have to sign Noncompete agreements and that “A cashier at a burger place can’t walk across town and take the same job at another burger place and make a few bucks more.” He also made this claim in July 2020, which even Politifact rated the claim as “false”.
- Biden renewed his push to ban “assault weapons” and claimed that the 1994 to 2004 ban reduced mass shootings and that mass shootings tripled when Republicans let it expire. Data shows that the ban did nothing to reduce mass shootings and that overall crime continued to drop even after the ban expired.
- Biden claimed that gas prices are down $1.5 since the peak. What he ignored is that gas prices are still up signficantly since he took office.
Biden also mentioned that he wants 100% of building material to be made in the United States. The issue with that is that will drive demand for American made material up significantly, and as a result drive prices up signficantly, to the point where the average person won’t be able to afford to build anything. So “by 2030 you’ll own nothing?”
The gaffes started early. He referred to Chuck Schumer as “minority leader” when he is currently majority leader. And apparently it wasn’t just people that were laid off, but so did “everything from refrigerators to cell phones.” (I do not have data for how many refrigerators were laid off due to COVID).