Biden speech fact check: President called out for claims about Xi Jinping and jobs

In a speech that has largely stuck closely to the facts, there were nevertheless some points that were not entirely accurate.

Joe Biden’s love for veering off-script and adlibbing saw him repeat a spurious claim about travels with the Chinese premier.

Speaking about his relationship with Xi Jinping, the president said: “I travelled 17,000 miles” with him.

This is a claim that Mr Biden has made before and that has previously been shown to be inaccurate by The Washington Post.

A fact-check by the paper notes that he has not travelled anywhere close to 17,000 miles “with” him. He has spent many hours with Xi during his time as vice president, but they “often did not even travel parallel routes to their gatherings, let alone physically together.”

A White House official told CNN in the past that Mr Biden was making a reference to the total amount of travel back and forth to China and internally, as well as in the US for meetings that the pair attended.

At another point, Mr Biden said that the economy created 1.3 million new jobs in 100 days: “More jobs in the first 100 days than any president on record.”

While the delivery of vaccines and opening up of the economy has led to a faster rebound of the economy than many expected, there are still just under 8.5 million fewer jobs than there were before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Mr Biden can take credit for an effective roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine that has increased economic confidence, it’s not clear how much of the bounceback in employment can be directly attributed to him.

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