Joe Biden Falsely Claims He Called for Defense Production Act in January

Presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden falsely suggested he called for President Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act in January during an interview on Monday.

Biden told Joy Reid on MSNBC, “You may recall, I, uh, all the way back in January, warned of this pandemic was coming. I talked about what we needed to do. I talked early on about the defense act that allows him to go and say to a company, ‘Manufacture the following things,’ and so on.”

The first case of coronavirus in the United States was not diagnosed until January 20.

The coronavirus, or COVID-19, was not declared a pandemic until March 11, 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A national emergency was declared two days later.

FactCheck.org reported Biden didn’t call for the implementation of the Defense Product Act until March 18 — after Trump had already done so:

Prior to March 18, we found instances of Biden talking generally, as he did on March 12, about the need to “surge our capacity” at hospitals, and make “sure communities have the hospital beds available, the staff, the medical supplies, the personal protective equipment necessary to treat the patient.”

Biden did not mention the Defense Production Act in the Democratic debate on March 15, where he encouraged viewers to see his full, detailed plan to combat COVID-19 on his campaign website. Nor does that plan, which was initially posted to the campaign website on March 12, mention the Defense Production Act.

Biden’s plan said to “prioritize and immediately increase domestic production of any critical medical equipment required to respond to this crisis — such as the production of ventilators and associated training to operate — by invoking the Defense Production Act.”

“This action must be built on forecasted demand, using the best modeling currently available for negative scenarios,” he wrote.

But just minutes prior, Trump did exactly that.

Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays. Listen to segments on YouTube. Follow him on Twitter, like him on Facebook, and follow him on Parler.