Did the Washington Post Say It Wouldn’t Fact Check Joe Biden?

An article from website Trending Politics claims that the Washington Post “Says They Won’t Hold Joe Biden Accountable With ‘Fact Checker’ Like They Did With Trump.” The article states that the Post will not “fact check anything [Biden] says” and that they “refuse to fact check Biden.”

The article misrepresents the recent ending of the Washington Post database of false and misleading claims made by Donald Trump during his presidency. The Post’s director of communications, Shani George told The Daily Caller that “The database of Trump claims was started a month after Trump became president as a way to not overwhelm our fact-checking enterprise, where the core mission is to explain complex policy issues.” George also mentioned that there were no plans to start a comparable database of false or misleading claims from Biden, but that “we will continue to dig into the accuracy of statements by political figures of all party affiliations.”

And thus far into the Biden administration, they’ve done just that. Two examples since Biden became president: a fact check about Biden’s claim that under Trump federal contracts to foreign governments increased 30 percent and analysis of whether Biden accused Trump of xenophobia for limiting travel from China at the start of the pandemic. The Washington Post has also recently published fact checks dinging Biden’s climate envoy  John Kerry, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and a Democratic attack ad. 

While it is true that the Washington Post will not maintain a database of Biden falsehoods, Trending Politics’ claim that the publication said it will not be fact checking him at all is misleading. 

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