Covering the Midterm Elections

The 2022 primaries begin in earnest next week, with elections on May 3 in Ohio and Indiana.

There are several primaries that we are following, including the Senate race in Ohio, where a crowded Republican field is vying to win the party's nomination for a seat held by retiring Sen. Rob Portman.

Managing Editor Lori Robertson -- a native of the Buckeye State -- reviewed the Republican candidates' positions on taxes in Ohio after a September videotape recently surfaced of Mike Gibbons criticizing Democrats who say that the wealthy don't pay their fair share in taxes. Nothing unusual there, but then Gibbons went on to say "the middle class is not really paying any kind of a fair share."

For good measure, Gibbons added, "Everybody should share at least to some degree in the tax bill." (As Lori explained, nearly half of federal tax units usually earn too little to owe anything, or they qualify for deductions and refundable tax credits that cancel out any income tax liability.)  

Not surprisingly, Gibbons' opponents attacked him for proposing to raise taxes, and Gibbons returned the fire by making misleading tax claims about two of his opponents -- JD Vance, the author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy” and former President Trump's endorsed candidate, and Jane Timken, a former chair of the Ohio Republican Party and Portman’s endorsed candidate.  

For more, read Lori's story, "Context for Ohio GOP Senate Race Spat on Taxes."

We also have written about Republican Senate primaries in North Carolina (May 17) and Pennsylvania (May 17), as well as the Republican primary for governor in Georgia (May 24). Our 2022 election articles can be found here. 

Reader: Did Trump ever say “Drink Bleach”? I still hear references to President Trump telling people to “drink bleach” to treat Covid. Having watched almost all of the Covid briefings I never heard him recommend that. Is there any validity to the claim?

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: Wow, that's still going around? We wrote about that in an April 2020 article "The White House Spins Trump’s Disinfectant Remarks." He did not tell people to "drink bleach." He did, however, wonder if there was a way to inject disinfectant into the body to kill COVID-19. It occurred at an April 23, 2020, COVID-19 briefing. Here's an excerpt from that briefing: 

Trump, April 23, 2020: A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting, right? And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that. So that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.

We wrote about the president’s claim the following day that he was being sarcastic, even though there was no hint of sarcasm at the time.   

Wrapping Up

Here's what else we've got for you this week:

• "Biden’s Deficit Spin": In recent speeches, President Joe Biden has been misleadingly taking credit for cutting federal deficits by historic amounts, though most of the reduction in deficits is the result of expiring emergency pandemic spending. Deficits fell between fiscal year 2020 and 2021 far less than initially projected after Biden added to them with more emergency pandemic and infrastructure spending.
• "Red Cross Accepts Blood Donations From People Vaccinated Against COVID-19": The American Red Cross and other blood collectors in the U.S. strongly encourage everyone who is feeling healthy to donate blood, including people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine. But a social media post falsely implies the organization does not use the blood from vaccinated people.
• "California Not Poised to ‘Legalize Infanticide’": A California bill would do away with mandatory investigations of stillbirths. Opponents misleadingly claim it would “legalize infanticide.” The bill would prevent prosecution in cases of “perinatal death due to a pregnancy-related cause.” But authorities would investigate if there were evidence of foul play leading to an infant’s death.
• "Attorney General Never Called Concerned Parents ‘Domestic Terrorists’": U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said that he couldn’t even “imagine a circumstance” where “parents complaining” at a school board meeting would be “labeled as domestic terrorism.” Yet, several Republicans have continued to falsely claim Garland called such parents “terrorists.”
• "Posts Make Unfounded Claims About Political Affiliation of John Wilkes Booth": John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Republican President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, was affiliated with the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party and was a supporter of slavery and the Confederacy. Social media posts claim without evidence that Booth was a Democrat.
   

• "La Cruz Roja acepta donaciones de sangre de personas vacunadas contra el COVID-19": La Cruz Roja Americana y otras agencias de donación de sangre en Estados Unidos solicitan encarecidamente que todas las personas saludables donen sangre, incluyendo quienes han recibido la vacuna contra el COVID-19. Pero una publicación en las redes sociales insinúa erróneamente que la organización no utiliza sangre de personas vacunadas.