WaPo Awards 'Bottomless Pinocchio' To Joe Biden

The Washington Post crowned President Biden Monday with its Trump-era “bottomless Pinocchio” rating after he told multiple untruths and committed several gaffes ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections. 

The NY Post reports it’s the first time the newspaper has “awarded” Biden the not-so-coveted rating, which it defines as a statement repeated at least 20 times that is so false that it has received either “three Pinocchios” or “four Pinocchios” on prior occasions. 

The statement in question is Biden’s oft-repeated claim that he has spent “more time with [Chinese

President Biden

President] Xi Jinping than any other head of state,” traveling “17,000 miles with him.” 

The statement has been proven false, with the White House in February 2021 telling the newspaper it was “a reference to the total travel back and forth — both internally in the US and China, and as well as internationally — for meetings they held together.” 

But even that claim proved to be inaccurate. “There is no evidence Biden traveled that much with Xi, the president of China — and even if we added up the miles Biden flew to see Xi, it still did not total 17,000 miles,” Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote Monday. 

Biden made the comment for the 20th and 21st times during political events in California and New Mexico last week. 

The newspaper created the “bottomless” rating during the Trump administration to describe “false or misleading statements repeated so often that they became a form of propaganda.” Trump earned 56 such ratings by the time he left office in January 2021. 

Kessler also called out the president for claiming that “the most common price of gas in America is $3.39 — down from over $5 when I took office,” which he said Oct. 27. Biden repeated the claim on Twitter Sunday, noting that the “most common price at gas stations across the country is $3.19.” The issue is with Biden’s use of the term “most common” — which does not equal the “average.” The average price at the pump when he took office was about $2.48, according to the Energy Information Administration.