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Adriana Usero

It’s time for our roundup of the biggest Pinocchios of the year.

False claims made by President Biden and conspiracy theories about the president yet again dominate the list. Former president — and 2024 presidential hopeful — <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> featured on this list for the ninth straight year. As usual with Trump, it’s hard to isolate a particular falsehood. We focused on invented stories he told about his dealings with Iran, as well as his claims about a top rival in the GOP primary, Florida Gov. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/ron-desantis-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Ron DeSantis</a>, regarding tariffs on imports from China.

Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox News this year, makes the list for the third straight year.

This list has no particular order. To read the full fact check, click on the link embedded in the quote. The all-around categories have links within the summaries.

Ricky Carioti

President Biden, like many politicians, likes to tell stories — stories in which he tries to connect his own life with his audiences’, and that make up an essential part of his persona. But throughout his career, Biden’s propensity to exaggerate or embellish tales about his life have led to doubts about his truthfulness. That hasn’t changed in his third year as president. He <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/31/biden-loves-retell-certain-stories-some-arent-credible/" target=_blank>repeatedly exaggerated</a> the extent of a fire that occurred at his house in 2004. He often told a heartwarming but implausible story about an Amtrak conductor who congratulated him for traveling more on Amtrak than he had on Air Force planes as vice president. And several times when discussing gay issues, he offered <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/15/three-reasons-doubt-bidens-story-his-father-gay-kiss/" target=_blank>another implausible tale</a> about words his father supposedly spoke after a teenage Biden saw two well-dressed men in suits kiss each other in downtown Wilmington in the early 1960s.

Jonathan Newton

In the battle between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and former South Carolina governor <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/nikki-haley-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Nikki Haley</a> (R) to be the main alternative to Trump in the Republican presidential primary race, the two candidates and their allies have lobbed absurd claims about each other regarding relations with China. Trump has also gotten into the act with jingoistic claims. A pro-Haley group <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/02/pro-haley-group-falsely-claims-desantis-wanted-fast-track-china-deals/" target=_blank>falsely charged</a> that DeSantis, as a member of Congress, voted to “fast-track Obama’s Chinese trade deals.” Not so. A pro-DeSantis group <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/04/desantis-groups-ad-attacks-haley-with-facts-offers-false-conclusions/" target=_blank>absurdly claimed</a> that Haley made a serious national security blunder when as governor she welcomed a Chinese fiberglass factory to her state. Meanwhile, when DeSantis still seemed to be Trump’s main threat, the former president <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/13/trump-conjures-up-phony-dispute-with-ron-desantis-over-china-tariffs/" target=_blank>conjured up an imaginary dispute</a> over tariffs on imports from China. “‘DeSanctis’ sided with the communists in China. I sided with the farmers of America,” Trump claimed at a campaign rally. In reality, DeSantis did not oppose Trump’s tariffs on China or aid to farmers — and did not take any steps to block either program.

Iran <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/15/no-iran-didnt-deliberately-avoid-hitting-us-base-trump-claims/" target="_blank">“hit one of our drones and I hit them. …. They called us to tell us that we’re going to hit back. Here’s the target, but we’re not going to hit the target.</a>”

Jabin Botsford

Donald Trump could easily fill this list all by himself, as he did often during his presidency. But this claim stood out from among many. In Trump’s telling, he struck back against Iran and then Iran was so chastened that officials called him and said Iran would deliberately miss a military base with its next strike. In reality, Trump canceled the original retaliatory strike, to the shock of his aides. And Iran did not warn Trump or miss the base. Most of the missiles hit the base. No one was killed, but that was more a result of a well-planned evacuation than Iranian targeting.

“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/21/lauren-boeberts-migrant-misinformation-trail-winds-back-canada-2006/" target=_blank>Biden is giving each illegal family $2,200 per month plus a free plane ticket and free medical care.</a>”

— Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Sept. 8

Elizabeth Frantz

Boebert made this claim in a tweet that drew nearly 2.5 million views. What’s noteworthy is not that this is false (it is), but that Boebert was repeating a zombie claim that actually started in Canada 17 years ago. Her source was the Gateway Pundit, which is notorious for spreading false information. An interview conducted by Tucker Carlson on social media also amplified this claim. Undocumented immigrants — those Boebert refers to as illegal — do not receive monthly checks. Under a 1980 law, refugees — people who have documented that they are fleeing a war or persecution — may receive a one-time resettlement payment for items such as food, clothing, transportation or rent. Then they may qualify for cash assistance for a period of time not more than one year, with the amount varying by size of family.

“...<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/06/james-comer-claims-that-biden-pseudonym-email-was-code-thats-nonsense/" target=_blank>This was Joe Biden’s way of copying Hunter Biden to say, okay, send it to the Burisma owners and tell them help is on the way, and five days later, Joe Biden flew to Ukraine to begin the process of firing the prosecutor in exchange for America tax dollars in the form of foreign aid.</a>”

— Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), Aug. 29

Comer is leading the congressional investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings when his father was vice president. So far, Comer and his congressional allies have turned up little evidence of nefarious doings by the president, although that has not stopped the House from launching an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/12/biden-impeachment-inquiry-meaning/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">impeachment inquiry</a>. In August, Comer made a serious misstep when he pointed to an email in which he claimed that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Joe Biden</a> was sending a secret message to his son indicating that he was about to push for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor — a move that supposedly would have furthered his son’s business interests. Here’s the problem: The email is dated May 26, 2016. The prosecutor in question had been dismissed by the Ukrainian parliament two months earlier.

“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/28/bidens-misleading-deficit-claim-earns-him-bottomless-pinocchio/" target="_blank">As a matter of fact, my first two years in office I’ve lowered the deficit by a record $1.7 trillion</a>.”

When we awarded Biden a Bottomless Pinocchio for this statement back in April, we noted that at least 30 times he had falsely taken credit for reducing the budget deficit by $1.7 trillion. Well, that didn’t seem to bother him. Since April, he’s made the claim nearly 30 more times. Biden gets his $1.7 trillion figure by comparing the deficit in fiscal 2020 ($3.132 trillion) with the deficit in fiscal 2022 ($1.375 trillion). The deficit was always expected to fall with the end of the pandemic. But Biden’s policies increased the national debt about $850 billion more than originally projected. So the deficit picture has worsened under Biden, and he’s seizing on a technicality to claim otherwise.

“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/10/tennessee-congressman-andrew-ogless-rsum-is-too-good-be-true/" target=_blank>If you don’t have the integrity to just be you and run on what you’ve done, then I don’t want you in Congress</a>.”

— Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.), when he was running for Congress last year

Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) lied about so many things about his past that he was ousted from Congress. Ogles received less attention, although he also had problems with résumé enhancement. When he arrived in Washington, he claimed he was “an economist,” but it turned out he had taken only one course in economics, at a community college, and received a C. The Fact Checker dug into his business past and found more fishy claims. In a 2009 résumé submitted for a job, he claimed numerous roles with businesses and on boards of organizations that were exaggerated or could not be corroborated. A consulting firm he claimed to have run from 2003 to 2010 cannot be found in Tennessee corporate records. At a time he was supposedly saving Merrill Lynch millions of dollars through consulting work, he was also briefly a stockbroker there and co-owned a doughnut shop. (Ogles voted against expelling Santos.)

“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/21/how-hunter-biden-conspiracy-theory-grew-lone-tweet-big-megaphone/" target=_blank>Each day it becomes clearer that Joe Biden and the Biden Crime Family are corrupt and significant threats to national security.</a>”

— Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Jan. 21

Stefanik tweeted this over a post by a Breitbart reporter who had latched onto a wild conspiracy theory that Hunter Biden in 2018 paid $49,000 in rent to his father — who did not report it on his tax return. (This had all started with a tweet on Jan. 12 by an anonymous account — a photo of a rental application by Hunter Biden, plucked from the hard drive of his laptop left behind for repair in a Delaware shop in April 2019.) Then-Fox News host Carlson devoted his whole show to the subject. Other Fox News personalities touted the story. Comer suggested that the “rent” might be akin to money laundering. But then some basic reporting showed the rental application had been misinterpreted. Reports in the conservative media were quietly updated — or, in the case of the Daily Caller, retracted.

“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/01/biden-said-his-son-earned-no-money-china-his-son-says-otherwise/" target=_blank>My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China</a>.”

— Biden, while running for president in 2020

The president made this comment in a contentious exchange with Trump during a 2020 presidential debate amid a fire hose of accusations — <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/unraveling-tale-hunter-biden-35-million-russia/?itid=lk_inline_manual_11" target="_blank">many fabricated</a> — that Trump made about Hunter Biden’s business practices. Three years later, however, Biden’s assertions were directly rebutted by Hunter himself. In court testimony, the younger Biden acknowledged that he in fact had been paid substantial sums in China — the first official confirmation that this was the case. After accounting for expenses, Hunter Biden reported nearly $2.4 million in income in 2017 and $2.2 million in income in 2018 — most of which came from Chinese or Ukrainian interests.

“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/30/black-hole-robert-f-kennedy-jrs-housing-conspiracy-theory/" target="_blank">BlackRock + State Street + Vanguard are robbing Americans of the ability to own homes.</a>”

— <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/robert-kennedy-jr-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Robert F. Kennedy Jr.</a>, Sept. 3

Shuran Huang

Kennedy, who is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/presidential-candidates-2024/?itid=lk_inline_manual_10" target=_blank>running for president</a> as an independent, is best-known these days for spreading conspiracy theories, such as this one — that evil institutional investors are driving up home prices. But his critique, a key part of his campaign message, is totally off base. The three companies he attacks are not even in the business of buying single-family homes. They are index-fund managers that mainly make passive investments. And the apparent target — a company called Blackstone, not BlackRock — doesn’t buy enough homes to have much effect on the market.

“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/tommy-tuberville-veterans-fact-checker/" target=_blank>I stand with our veterans and I’m going to donate every dime I make when I’m in Washington, D.C., to the veterans of the state of Alabama.</a>”

— Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), while running for Senate

When he ran for Senate in 2020, Tuberville — who in 2023 stalled the confirmation of hundreds of senior military officers in a dispute over Defense Department <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/abortion/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">abortion</a> policies — pledged that he would “donate every dime” he made in Washington to Alabama veterans. Tuberville, a former college football coach, has an estimated $20 million net worth. Yet, no contributions could be found after he had served 2½ years as a senator, even though he had earned $437,000 in salary at the point. We also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/26/tubervilles-tales-about-his-father-world-war-ii-have-false-elements/" target=_blank>discovered</a> that Tuberville told stories about his father’s service during World War II that contained many false elements.

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Glenn Kessler has reported on domestic and foreign policy for more than four decades. Send him statements to fact check by emailing him or sending a DM on Twitter 

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The biggest Pinocchios of 2023

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Adriana Usero has been a video editor on The Fact Checker since 2020. Adriana was part of a team of journalists that won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2021. She was previously embedded with the General Assignment desk and Opinions section. She joined The Post in 2016 and was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

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