Democratic Convention Night 2
Summary
It was another unconventional night for fact-checkers at the truncated Democratic National Convention that has been forced to go virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic.
But we found a few statements to write about, including a misleading claim about the U.S. unemployment rate and auto industry bailout claims that don’t tell the whole story.
Analysis
On the night the Democratic Party formally nominated former Vice President Joe Biden as the party’s 2020 presidential nominee, two former U.S. presidents spoke — Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
Clinton’s Misleading and Meaningless Unemployment Claim
Clinton, who uncharacteristically spoke for less than five minutes, made a misleading claim when he said that the U.S. is “the only major industrial economy to have its unemployment rate triple” because of President Donald Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s true that the unemployment rates listed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show the U.S. jobless rate nearly tripling between January and the most recent month on record. The next-largest increase was a near-doubling of the rate in Canada.
