Twitter, now owned entirely by African-American billionaire Elon Musk, has launched its first fact check of Joe Biden’s account under the new regime.
Users noticed the 79-year-old Democrat was fact checked after he – or, ostensibly someone on his staff – used the official @POTUS Twitter account to spread information that could charitably be described as incomplete, or uncharitably described as misinformation.
“Some seniors pay $400 a month for insulin,” noted Biden, ending the true and factual part of his message. “Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, we’re capping that cost at $35 a month.”
Some seniors pay $400 a month for insulin. It’s ridiculous.
Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, we’re capping that cost at $35 a month.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 29, 2022
Conservatives quickly complained that this not entirely true.
Biden’s tax and spend Inflation Reduction Act bill only caps the cost of insulin for Medicare recipients, who must be at least 65 years of age to qualify for the program. This means less than half of those dependent on insulin will benefit from the Democrat’s legislation, and those who do are mostly older people who are statistically more likely to be able to afford their medication.
Shockingly, Twitter’s new management saw fit to fact check Biden’s tweet, adding important context.
“While the Inflation Reduction Act capped insulin costs at $35 for individuals on Medicare,” Musk’s Twitter notes in a pop up that is, in fact, larger than Biden’s tweet, “it did not cap costs for seniors on private insurance or anyone under the age of 65.”
Unlike Biden, who provided no source for his claims, Musk’s Twitter fact check backed up this statement with a link to a PBS station in Indianapolis that profiled the life of an 18-year-old woman with Type 1 diabetes who will not see any relief from Biden’s bill.
Not content, however, Musk’s Twitter continued.
“Out of the 8.4 million Americans who take insulin,” it stressed, “only 3.3 million are covered by Medicare.” The source for this fact is Marketwatch.
Apparently the information was added by Twitter’s “Birdwatch” program, which allows individuals to “sign up” to both “write and rate notes about potentially misleading Tweets.” It’s unclear if this feature had ever been used to fact check Biden prior to Musk’s acquisition.
Musk officially became the owner of Twitter last week, after he originally promised to buy the platform to restore freedom of speech to the digital town square.
His first act was to fire Twitter’s former executives, including all of the men and women behind both the decision to ban 45th President Donald Trump and to censor the “Laptop from Hell” formerly belonging to Hunter Biden.
This news and commentary by Tom Pappert originally appeared on Valiant News.
