As Nick Arama reported earlier, Joe Biden made a rather wild claim about the coronavirus vaccine during last night’s CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper.

During a discussion on the availability of the vaccine and the timeline for Biden’s vaccine administration goals, Biden told Cooper that “we didn’t have” the vaccine when he came into office:

And the biggest thing, though, as you remember when you and I, I shouldn’t say it that way, as remember, but when you and I talked last, we talked about it’s one thing to have the vaccine, which we didn’t have when we came into office, but a vaccinator. How do you get the vaccine into someone’s arm?

It was a bizarre statement, to say the least, especially considering the fact that Biden had not only mentioned earlier that the administration allegedly started out with “only 50 million doses”, but also the fact that Biden himself received his first dose of the vaccine in mid-December, and his second one in early January before he was inaugurated:

Here's Joe Biden saying tonight that we did not have a vaccine when he entered the White House

vs.

Joe Biden receiving his second dose of the vaccine on January 11 (9 days before entering office) pic.twitter.com/Nh1sosd2Of

— Caleb Hull (I'm With the CCP Don't Ban Me) (@CalebJHull) February 17, 2021

Former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany ripped Biden’s answer, noting that his comments were “abjectly FALSE”:

Biden says there was no vaccine when he came into office.

That is abjectly FALSE. President Trump brought about the fastest vaccine for a novel pathogen in history.

How does Joe get away with this? pic.twitter.com/OcFeVbQ3At

— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) February 17, 2021

As I’ve noted before, so-called “fact-checkers” have done about as much damage to their own profession as national media journalists have in recent years, and there are no better examples of that than CNN’s Daniel Dale and the WaPo’s Glenn Kessler.

As you’ll note below, both of them responded to McEnany by spinning like tops to explain away Biden’s comments:

Biden had said just prior that there were "only" 50 million vaccine doses when he took office. I'm looking into that claim (and a bunch of other claims Biden made tonight), but he clearly wasn't trying to claim the vaccine did not exist at all under Trump. https://t.co/2EtKDWyR7o

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 17, 2021

It was a verbal stumble, a typical Biden gaffe, as he had already mentioned 50 million doses being available when he took office. Ex Trump officials should especially cool the outrage meter, as it just looks silly. https://t.co/HFjH01lXgH

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) February 17, 2021

And then later, here’s how Kessler explained what a “verbal stumble” was – in his view:

It depends in part on whether he spoke correctly about vaccine availability elsewhere in the interview. People screw up on live television. Biden with his stutter especially does so.

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) February 17, 2021

In response, McEnany blasted back at Kessler, pointing out the predictability of fact-checkers tripping all over themselves in making excuses for and trying to explain away Joe Biden’s answers as nothingburgers:

Bring in the “fact” checkers. It was “a typical gaffe”, “a verbal stumble”

🙄🙄🙄 https://t.co/t1DJTKoHIs

— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) February 17, 2021

Later, former Trump campaign staffer Abigail Marone wondered why “fact checkers” seemed to be more interested in trying to fact check Kayleigh McEnany than dig into Joe Biden’s claims:

Why do the “fact checkers” care more about defending Joe Biden to @kayleighmcenany than actually fact checking Joe Biden?

A verbal stumble is tripping on a word NOT saying a vaccine didn’t exist when it did. pic.twitter.com/GsYfn6ePXB

— Abigail Marone (@abigailmarone) February 17, 2021

This is all quite simple: No matter what “context” Biden’s “verbal stumble” was made from, whether he was talking about the vaccine rollout or the vaccine itself, he was incorrect on the former based on what Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr. Fauci has said about the rollout in the past, and incorrect on the latter based off of the volume of news reports that have talked about vaccine dosages being administered as early as mid-December.

If this had been Trump, Dale and Kessler would have immediately jumped to proclaim the president “lied.” But because it’s Biden, and because many major media outlets appear to be comfortable at his point coming across as little more than state-run media operations, the spins on Biden’s answers have become quite absurd and comical.

Not that this should surprise anyone, but it’s worth documenting for the record all the same.

Related/Flashback –>> In Which CNN’s Daniel Dale Demonstrates the Problem With ‘Fact Checkers’ in One Post-Debate Tweet