Biden compares apples and oranges during SOTU address

President Joe Biden touted his record during the recent State of the Union address. But parts of that speech lacked context.

“I inherited an economy that was on the brink. Now our economy is literally the envy of the world!” Biden said during the March 7 address. “Fifteen million new jobs in just three years – a record, a record!”

But there is an issue with Biden’s comparison to other administrations, according to the Washington Post. He is putting his three-year term up against the four-year terms of previous presidents.

The final year of Biden’s first term could change the numbers.

In former President Donald Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address, he said, “Incredibly, the average unemployment rate under my administration is lower than any administration in the history of our country.” But then the country was shut down as the coronavirus hit and his record numbers dropped when people were suddenly out of work.

The rise in population has also helped Biden’s statistics, which makes the record misleading, the Post said. Previous presidents also set jobs records during their administrations, but with a lower number of new jobs created.

During the SOTU address, Biden also claimed, “Inflation has dropped from 9% to 3% – the lowest in the world.”

A nice statistic, the Post said, but it’s not the lowest on the planet. Japan and Germany had lower inflation rates as of January, and Italy’s rate is less than 1%, according to a report last week from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Photo of Trump created by AI

A recent Facebook post shows former President Donald Trump walking down a street lined with American flags as he is flanked by security guards and is being followed by a huge crowd.

“AMERICA STANDS WITH TRUMP,” reads the large text across the top of the March 6 post.

But the photo in this post is not authentic, according to PolitiFact. It was created using artificial intelligence, or AI.

The image was posted by Trump’s son Eric last year with the words, “One of a kind.” At that time, the AI-generated photo included a watermark from the social media account Brick Suit. But in recent posts, that watermark can’t be seen.

With close inspection, it’s obvious the photo was generated by AI, PolitiFact said. The hands and other body parts of people behind Trump appear to be distorted and some faces fade into others.

Canada not banning Christianity

A recent social media post claimed Canada could soon be a tough place for Christians.

“Canada is passing a bill to essentially ban the idea of Christianity,” read a March 5 Instagram post, which included a screenshot of an X post stating, “Canada is the new North Korea. Bill proposes to jail Christians who quote the Bible in public and to jail pastors who preach against certain sins as guilty of hate crimes.”

The X post had a link to an article about Bill C-367 in Canada.

That’s not what the bill proposes, according to PolitiFact. And that bill is far from becoming a law.

Bill C-367, filed last year by Canada’s Bloc Québécois party leader Yves-François Blanchet, is an attempt to remove religious exemptions as a defense for inciting hatred or violence. The bill doesn’t mention Christianity or any other religion.

On Nov. 28, 2023, Blanchet told the Canadian Parliament the bill was due to threats against the Jewish community. But the bill has not yet passed the first of three required readings in the House of Commons. If it makes it past that, the bill will have to pass three readings in the Senate.

University of Waterloo professor Emmett Macfarlane told PolitiFact the Instagram post is “mostly nonsense.”

"The exemptions that the bill would remove from the law would not change the very high threshold that must be met before any expression is deemed to be the willful promotion of hatred or the willful promotion of antisemitism," he said.

Public hangings not happening

A social media post appears to outline the consequences for treason in the U.S.

“I’ll donate all my time and rope to get this job done,” reads the text at the top of a March 3 Instagram post. A video in the post begins with the words, “The following is the U.S. penalty for TREASON.”

Then a narrator reads the text on a small card which appears to explain “Title 18 U.S. Code section 2381,” claiming those found guilty of treason will be taken “to the nearest busy intersection and at high noon hung by the neck until dead.”

But the post is wrong, according to USA Today. The code doesn’t include anything about public hanging.

Title 18 U.S. Code section 2381 does say those guilty of treason “shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

The last state-sanctioned public hanging in the U.S. was in 1936 in Kentucky, at the time the only state still using the method of execution. Two years later Kentucky joined the other states by outlawing public hangings.

• Bob Oswald is a veteran Chicago-area journalist and former news editor of the Elgin Courier-News. Contact him at boboswald33@gmail.com