President Joe Biden found himself at the wrong end of Twitter’s fact-checking “Community Notes” function on Tuesday.
Biden pointed the finger at Republicans in the debt ceiling fight in a tweet amid the looming deadline.
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“America is not a deadbeat nation,” Biden wrote. “We have never, ever failed to pay our debt. But MAGA Republicans are engaged in reckless hostage-taking by threatening to force America into default. It’s dangerous and wrong.”
America is not a deadbeat nation.
We have never, ever failed to pay our debt. But MAGA Republicans are engaged in reckless hostage-taking by threatening to force America into default. It’s dangerous and wrong.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 3, 2023
A new feature of the platform under Elon Musk, called Community Notes, added some context to the tweet after it was posted.
Readers can now upload links for the platform’s approval to fact-check tweets and provide accurate information. It provided a list of occasions where the U.S. defaulted on its various debts.
Among the times the country defaulted, three happened within Biden’s lifetime: in 1968, 1971, and 1979, with the final time happening after Biden took office in the Senate.
This is not the first time the feature was used on a tweet from the president. Biden was previously fact-checked on Twitter the weekend before the 2022 midterm elections in November.
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A subsequent Community Note clarified that while Biden claimed “55 corporations made $40 billion” and would all pay as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, “only 14 had earnings greater than $1 billion and would be eligible under Biden’s tax law.” Both tweets remain despite the addition of the notes.
Even with the recent factual clarifications, Biden has only increased in following, growing from 29 million Twitter followers in November to over 30.7 million now.
