Biden did not "admit" to perpetrating electoral fraud, despite Trump and McEnany's claim

27-Oct-2020 12:15 PM EDT, by Newswise

Fact Check By: Craig Jones, Newswise

Truthfulness: False


Claim:
BIDEN ADMITS TO VOTER FRAUD! Joe Biden brags about having the “most extensive VOTER FRAUD organization” in history!!Claim Publisher and Date: White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on 2020-10-24

On October 24, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted out a short video clip of Biden, along with the text "BIDEN ADMITS TO VOTER FRAUD! Joe Biden brags about having the “most extensive VOTER FRAUD organization” in history!!" This claim is false and the video is taken out of context. Pres. Trump, his son Eric Trump, and RNC Research also circulated this dubious claim on Twitter. Biden was talking about responding to voter supression and intimidation in the video, which is a huge concern for voters.

Authors of a study conducted at University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs and Department of Political Science say “during the pre-election phase, we found that respondents [in a survey] were most concerned about President Trump’s attacks on the media, the reduction of access to voting (including reduction in polling stations and the removal of voters from the voting rolls) and large-scale foreign and domestic disinformation campaigns." More on this study here.

As reported by Dan McGuill for Snopes...


Biden made the remarks shown in the video during an interview with the popular left-leaning political podcast Pod Save America, which was published on Oct. 24, 2020. Pod Save America is hosted by Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor, all of whom previously worked in the administrations of former President Barack Obama. The relevant section of the interview can be watched below. Toward the end of the discussion, Pfeiffer asked Biden a two-part question:

“Part one, what’s your message to the folks who have not yet voted or do not yet have a plan to vote? And part two, for the folks who have already voted — 50 million Americans who have already voted — what can they do, over the last 10 days, to help make sure that you’re the next president of the United States?”

In the interest of providing readers with all the relevant context, a transcript of that question and Biden’s response can be found here. In brief, Biden encouraged prospective voters not to be intimidated by what he cast as efforts by Republicans and the Trump administration to suppress voting, especially by people of color. He outlined what he presented as his campaign’s efforts to ensure the integrity of the election, including a dedicated telephone helpline, backed by hundreds of attorneys offering support and advice, as well as poll-watchers who will “police and watch” the election.

Immediately after he referred to “the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics,” (the soundbite highlighted in the RNCResearch clip), Biden said:

“What the president is trying to do is discourage people from voting by implying that their vote won’t be counted, it can’t be counted, we’re going to challenge it and all these things.”

“If enough people vote,” Biden added, it would “overwhelm the system” and effectively ensure that Trump’s purported efforts at voter suppression would not be successful.

It’s clear from watching the clip in its proper context that Biden was describing his campaign’s efforts to combat voter suppression and intimidation, as well as misinformation about the widespread perpetration of voter fraud. It would make no sense for a political candidate whose campaign was engaged in large-scale electoral fraud to publicly say as much, in those words, and that’s not what Biden was doing.