Twitter fact-checked a bogus claim by President Joe Biden on Monday that he had lowered the deficit, despite signing trillions of dollars in spending bills and raising taxes.
“The Biden-Harris Administration lowered the deficit with the single largest one-year reduction in American history,” the claim from the White House read on Twitter.
Biden’s bogus claim has been repeatedly fact-checked as misleading by major outlets, but he and his staff continue to spread the talking point as fact.
The main source of falling deficits is the expiration of emergency coronavirus relief spending, not anything that Biden has done.
Biden has added at least $2.5 trillion to the deficit, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Since billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter, more bogus political claims are fact-checked thanks to a crowdsourced fact-checking program known as Birdwatch.
Twitter users offer additional context or facts for dishonest claims on the platform, which are then attached to the offending messages.
The Birdwatch program fact-checked Biden’s bogus claim he increased Social Security payments, which are automatically set by law to increase based on the rate of inflation.
Musk himself endorsed the program, open to Twitter users who sign up.
“Birdwatch (soon to be renamed Community Notes) has incredible potential for improving information accuracy on Twitter!” Musk wrote on Twitter on November 2.
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