Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks about the coronavirus Thursday, March 12, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

We reported earlier today about the raw deal that President Donald Trump got today from the press in a dust-up with NBC reporter Peter Alexander and then the CNN tweet/story chastising him for having “unsubstantiated hope,” as though having hope and encouraging people is a bad thing now.

It is a bad thing, I guess, to media who wants to preach panic, division and negative things about the president.

It’s largely continued through the Wuhan virus outbreak so far.

But while media is constantly painting everything about Trump in a bad light, the attitude is decidedly different when it comes to the Democrats presumptive nominee for president, Joe Biden.

As we reported during the last Democratic debate, Biden made several extreme statements about drilling and fracking, trying to appeal to the left for their votes.

He promised that there would be no more drilling and no new fracking. Period.

Joe Biden: “no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends” #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/STbBrh8DLg

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) March 16, 2020

Joe Biden: “no more, no new fracking” in my administrationhttps://t.co/gnHCex8NPv pic.twitter.com/bwvLaU2VyB

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 16, 2020

“No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry,” he said. “No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period. Ends.”

Now, we immediately reported that and observed that would likely cost him the election because of how that would go over in states dependent on energy jobs like Pennsylvania.

So the Biden folks tried to backpedal and say he was only referring to federal lands.

So how did the WaPo fact-checker deal with that? Well, had it been Trump we could just imagine.

According to the Free Beacon, they gave Biden “zero Pinocchios” for his debate claim, painting it as he had “misspoken” and that his position was the same. He hadn’t intending on misleading people they adjudged, despite the fact that his comments were very clear. Or in Biden words, “period.”

They didn’t fault Biden for trying to mislead people on the left with his comments. Instead, of course, the fault lay with the conservatives who “pounced.” (Cool, I love pouncing).

“Republican operatives cut a short video of Biden’s remarks, to use as a cudgel in races against moderate House Democrats. Sanders supporters accused Biden of misleading voters about his policy, which doesn’t ban fracking outright, as Sanders would.” [….]

“The Trump campaign also used a Biden video snippet from the debate in a tweet claiming he would ‘ban fracking,'” the Post complained. “Right-wing media outlets including the Washington Free Beacon, the Daily Caller and Fox News all reported on Biden’s remarks as though he had adopted a tougher line.”

The WaPo article didn’t link to Biden’s debate remarks (so people could judge for themselves) and as the Free Beacon accurately noted, “Biden, confronted by Sanders for not taking dramatic enough steps to combat climate change, also said there would be no ‘new fracking’ and ‘not another coal plant will be built’ under his administration.”

This isn’t the first time that Biden has skirted Pinocchios with the WaPo by claiming to have “misspoken.”

Biden previously said he “misspoke,” avoiding a bad rating from the Post fact-checker, after he was caught falsely claiming on two separate occasions that he opposed the Iraq war from the moment it started.

“Regular readers know that we withhold Pinocchios when a politician admits error. Biden was on his way to Four Pinocchios until his staff acknowledged that he misspoke,” the Post wrote. “So we will leave this unrated and let readers make their own decision.”

Of course, he didn’t misspeak, he has a habit of saying anything he needs to say when he thinks he needs to say it, whatever it’s relationship to reality or what he actually thinks. Now that he’s the presumptive nominee, he will get a pass and be coddled all the way to the general election.

But if he “misspeaks” so much from the Iraq war to this, and a 30+ year record of “misspeaking,” perhaps he’s not the person we want in the most powerful position in the world.

HT: Hot Air