AP FACT CHECK: Trump's errant final pitches on virus, energy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Making final arguments before Tuesday’s election, President Donald Trump asserted the U.S. was shaking off a coronavirus pandemic that is only getting worse, falsely claimed Democrat Joe Biden would lock down the country for years and baselessly alleged that the COVID-19 death count is being inflated by doctors.
His weekend comments capped the 2020 campaign's final week in which the actual crisis of the coronavirus pandemic and a manufactured crisis over voting fraud featured heavily.
Meanwhile, Biden went astray on trade as he assailed the president’s record on China.
A look:
LOCKDOWNS
TRUMP: “Biden wants to LOCKDOWN our Country, maybe for years. Crazy!” — tweet Sunday.
TRUMP: “Biden is all about lockdowns. They want to lock it down ... for a couple years, and let it go away.” — Michigan rally Sunday.
THE FACTS: To be clear, Biden isn't promising to push wide-scale stay-at-home orders to stem the coronavirus if elected, and most certainly not “for a couple years," which is beyond when most scientists think a vaccine could become widely available.
Biden has publicly said he would shut the nation’s economy only if scientists and public health advisers recommended he do so to stem the COVID-19 threat. The former vice president has repeatedly criticized Trump for disregarding scientists on the pandemic response, such as his shunning of masks, but has said repeatedly that no one knows what January would look like.
Biden told an ABC interviewer in August that he “will be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives” when he was asked if he would be willing to shut the country again.
“So if the scientists say shut it down?” asked ABC’s David Muir.
“I would shut it down,” Biden responded. “I would listen to the...
