The Year's Biggest Whoppers

Before we bring in 2023, we're taking a not-so-fond look back this week at what our staff decided are the worst political and viral deceptions of 2022.

With control of Congress up for grabs, politicians used fear as a way to turn out the vote.

Republicans repeatedly made false claims of an IRS empowered by Democrats to hire 87,000 "agents" to make sure that the "middle class" pays more in taxes, and Democrats regularly -- and wrongly -- branded many Republicans as supporters of a "plan" to "end" Medicare and Social Security.

President Joe Biden made our annual list for falsely insisting that his policies were responsible for a huge drop in the federal deficit and for reviving a U.S. economy "in decline."

Meanwhile, his predecessor, former President Donald "King of Whoppers" Trump, was cited for making an unsupported claim about stopping "ballot theft" in Florida's 2018 election for governor, as well as for mischaracterizing how other presidents handled White House documents upon leaving office.

For the third consecutive year, we found ourselves correcting an onslaught of misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines that have protected millions from severe illness and death caused by the disease. One of the wildest claims we debunked this year was a TV-inspired theory that the government and the Catholic Church conspired to create COVID-19 by using snake venom and the public water supply.

And those are just some of the lowlights from our roundup. To see all of the falsehoods that were recognized as the worst of the year, read "The Whoppers of 2022."

Reader: Is Biden selling strategic oil to China?

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: We received a similar question in July and answered it on our website in a feature we call Ask FactCheck. 

As we wrote at that time, the president announced in March that the administration would release 1 million barrels of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve every day for six months. The goal is to increase the global supply of crude oil and reduce gasoline prices by tapping the strategic reserve. The oil is sold to eligible companies that make the highest offers. Some of the companies are U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, and some that purchased oil have then exported a portion to buyers overseas, including China. U.S. subsidiaries of foreign energy companies have long been eligible to place bids on SPR oil.

You can read the full answer in our story "U.S. Selling Oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the Highest Bidding Companies." 

In a post-script to our story, the Department of Energy announced last month that it had awarded the final contracts as part of the president's March directive. The oil deliveries are taking place this month. In all, the U.S. sold 180 million barrels of crude oil from the strategic reserve from May through December. 

Wrapping Up

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

• "Blood Transfusion Doesn’t Transfer COVID-19 Vaccine": A blood transfusion from a vaccinated person doesn’t transfer the inoculation to an unvaccinated person. But high-profile purveyors of misinformation have been promoting the long-standing false claim that it does. 
• "Biden’s Claims About an Increase in Exports Ignore Larger Growth in Imports": Under President Joe Biden, U.S. exports of goods and services have increased, but U.S. imports have grown even faster. However, on multiple occasions, Biden has given the false impression that rising exports means declining imports and fewer U.S. jobs being outsourced to foreign countries.
• "Bernie Sanders Overstates Number of Americans Without Health Insurance": Explaining why he is likely to vote against an $858 billion defense spending bill, Sen. Bernie Sanders wrongly said there are “85 million Americans who have no health insurance.”
• "FactChecking GOP’s Censorship Claim in Arizona Over Deleted Tweets": Republicans claim Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs — who was recently elected to become the state’s next governor — used her government office to censor free speech on Twitter to benefit her election effort. But there’s less here than meets the eye. 
• "Human Error, Not Fraud, Shown in Fox Election Coverage of Georgia Runoff": In a clip from Fox News' coverage of the Georgia Senate runoff, the vote tallies for both candidates briefly drop by thousands of votes. Social media posts use the clip to falsely claim election fraud. The Associated Press, which provided the data to Fox, said the clip shows a brief overestimate of votes caused by human error.