Diary of disturbing disinformation and dangerous delusions

This statistic:

“The United States has produced more barrels of oil a day under Biden’s leadership than it did under Trump’s.”

– New York magazine, March 13

We say: Lies, damn lies and . . .  left-wing media reports. New York magazine compares the average US oil output per day (10.968 million barrels) for all four of Donald Trump’s years in office — i.e., when production was just ramping up from the lackluster Obama era (7.202 million barrels a day) and then fell due to the pandemic — with output during just one year of Joe Biden’s term (11.185 million barrels), when the economy was recovering. In fact, under Trump, US output hit 12.289 million barrels by 2019, well beyond Biden’s first-year number. Even in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, production was higher (11.3 million barrels) under Trump than Biden.

This claim:

“Government spending is . . . reducing the national debt. It is not inflationary.”

– House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Friday, March 11

We say: Pelosi clearly thinks Americans will buy anything. The truth? When you spend more money than you take in, you simply have to borrow — as more Americans may now have to do, thanks to inflation’s hit on the dollar’s purchasing power. By the way, despite Pelosi’s flagrant disinformation, it’s precisely that spurt in national debt that drives inflation, as even left-leaning economists (like Clinton Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers) admit.

This essay:

We say: The New York Times is often criticized for espousing ideas that could’ve come straight from the Chinese Communist Party playbook. But this week it ran a column by an actual CCP propagandist, Wang Huiyao, who argued for letting China mediate talks to end Russia’s war on Ukraine. Per a US government report, Wang is closely affiliated with the party’s United Front Work Department, which is responsible for coordinating “influence operations” both in and out of China. Most outrageous, the paper originally hid his ties, describing Wang as merely the head of “a nongovernmental think tank” in Beijing. Later, it added that he “advises the Chinese government,” yet that still grossly understates his role.

This tweet:

We say: Yet again, Biden is trying to take credit for something he had nothing to do with, while ignoring the harm he and his fellow Democrats actually caused. Yes, the deficit dropped, but that’s only because the ginormous, bipartisan emergency COVID spending fell after a vaccine became available in 2020 and the economy began to bounce back. Biden & Co. added more red ink in 2021 by passing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Oh, and the deficit still topped $1 trillion last year, for only the third time in history.

This headline:

We say: It’s the very definition of fake news. The headline — and lede — assert that all 133 school supers urged Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to abolish a “tip line” that lets parents complain about school policies and to end his attacks on “divisive” curriculum in schools. Yet the story itself later admits that’s not what happened. The actual facts: The 12-member executive board of a group representing superintendents, not every member of the group, OK’d a letter urging those steps. Indeed, some superintendents reportedly weren’t even aware of the letter.

– Compiled by The Post Editorial Board