The following article, Devastating: CNN Fact-Checks Biden, was first published on The Black Sphere.

What’s happening to the world, when CNN fact-checks Biden and calls him out on his lies?

As CNN reported,

Joe Biden spent three days this week campaigning in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania. He littered his remarks with false and misleading claims on subjects ranging from his annual earnings to his cap on seniors’ prescription drug spending to the demographics of China to the frequency of his past travel to Iraq and Afghanistan.

And in Biden’s most eyebrow-raising remarks of the campaign swing, he told and then retold a story in which he strongly suggested his late uncle, Ambrose Finnegan, was eaten by cannibals after his plane was shot down while he fought in World War II. Biden’s dramatic details don’t match the Defense Department’s official account of the plane crash.

Here is a fact check of eight of Biden’s Pennsylvania remarks.

Ok, so I’ve already ridiculed “Uncle Bosie”, and so has much of America. I wrote of Biden’s multiple lies in just this part of his tall tale.

Not only is there no proof that Biden’s Uncle Bosie was eaten by cannibals as Biden alludes, but worse, Uncle Bosie wasn’t even a pilot. He was part of the ground’s crew.

As for the 8 fact-checks, CNN began with Biden lying about his income.

In the same Tuesday speech in Scranton, Biden repeated his regular promise that nobody making less than $400,000 per year will pay even a cent more in taxes under his proposals. He then added, “I hope you’re all able to make $400,000. I never did.”

Facts First: Biden’s “I never did” claim is false. In fact, his presidential salary is $400,000 per year; the joint tax filings of President Biden and first lady Jill Biden showed $619,976 in income last year, $579,514 in 2022 and $610,702 in 2021. In addition, Biden earned millions in 2017 and 2018, when, during his time as a private citizen following his vice presidency, he and Jill Biden signed a lucrative book deal and he delivered paid speeches. The Bidens’ joint tax filings showed a total of about $11 million in 2017 income and about $4.6 million in 2018 income.

Biden, who was a US senator for 36 years prior to his vice presidency, did regularly earn less than $400,000 per year before 2017. As PolitiFact has previously noted, the Bidens’ joint filings reported less than $400,000 in income in each year from 1998 through 2016 except for 2013, when they were just over $407,000.

Biden is a multi-millionaire. And his money didn’t come from book deals and speeches. His money came from his criminal family enterprise.

Perhaps Biden believes he’s never made more than $400,000 is he never had to actually EARN that money?

And what about those billionaires Biden loves to both receive donations, then act as if he’s throwing them under the bus?

Biden delivered another version of a claim he has regularly made about billionaires’ tax rates. He said in the same Tuesday speech in Scranton: “Do you know what the average federal tax rate for a billionaire is today in America? For real: 8.3%.” After some people in the audience laughed, Biden continued, “That’s how much federal ta- — no, I’m serious. Not a joke. Far less than the vast majority of Americans pay in federal taxes. No billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a teacher, a nurse, a sanitation worker.”

Facts First: Biden’s “8.3%” claim is misleading in the absence of any explanation of what this figure is. As in previous speeches, including the State of the Union address in March, Biden didn’t explain that the figure is the product of an alternative calculation, from economists in his own administration, that factors in unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law. In other words, while Biden made it sound like he was talking about a federal tax rate, he was actually citing a figure that is not based on the way the US tax system actually works at present.

This statement is not only divisive, but misleading on another count. For example, let’s pretend that billionaires only pay 8 percent of their income. Eight percent on a billion dollars is $80 million dollars. Moreover, how many people do billionaires employ? What is their contribution to society, as they employ maids, chauffeurs, pilots, groundskeepers, cooks, assistants, and so on?

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