'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' FactChecking Biden’s Swing-State Stops in Pennsylvania

While former President Donald Trump spent much of his week in court, President Joe Biden visited the swing state of Pennsylvania for three days and gave speeches in Scranton, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. We flagged some false and misleading claims, including several common talking points:

• Biden twisted Trump’s words about the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, “Remember when he told us, literally, inject bleach?” Trump suggested having scientists test the use of “very powerful light” and “disinfectant” in the body to kill the disease. He didn’t tell people to “inject bleach.”
• Biden got ahead of himself in touting Medicare savings, due to drug price negotiations, which won’t happen for several years.
• The president falsely said there were “more people in retirement than working” in China.
• Biden wrongly said he was “the second-youngest man ever elected to the Senate.” He was the second-youngest from Delaware, but the sixth-youngest overall.

The president also repeated misleading claims we’ve fact-checked before — on taxes, jobs, deficit reduction, the Affordable Care Act, and Trump’s comments on Social Security and Medicare.

In 2020, Biden, who was born in Scranton, won the presidency after winning the state of Pennsylvania. He started off his trip to the state on April 16 in Scranton and then visited Pittsburgh and Philadelphia the following two days.

Trump spent the week in a New York courtroom as a jury was selected for the criminal fraud case alleging that Trump falsified business records to cover up state and federal election law violations after paying to keep allegations of extramarital affairs a secret during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Posts Misrepresent Views of Eclipse With Composite Images

A total solar eclipse — in which the moon blocked Earth’s view of the sun — occurred on April 8 in a narrow path across Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Crowds gathered in cities along the path, including Dallas, Cleveland, and Montreal, to witness totality, the brief period in which the sun’s light is completely obscured by the moon.

In addition to the sky darkening, those in the path of totality could see a part of the sun’s atmosphere, called the corona, which is otherwise impossible to see because of the sun’s bright light.

An actual photo provided by NASA shows the total solar eclipse
seen in Dallas on April 8. Photo by NASA/Keegan Barber.

Gary Bernstein, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, explained the appearance of the corona in an email to us. “The sun is always in the process of ejecting a tenuous stream of gas into space. This gas emits a very faint light compared to the sun’s main body, so while it’s always present in the sky, we can’t see it on a normal day because it’s lost in the glare of the disk of the sun,” he said.

“During a total eclipse, the moon blocks the disk, and the sky becomes dark enough to see the corona.  This only occurs during the totality phase,” Bernstein said.