Trump on Biden

TRUMP: “Biden was asked questions at his so-called Press Conference yesterday where he read the answers from a teleprompter. That means he was given the questions.” — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic presidential rival, did not read answers off a teleprompter. Nor did the AP, which asked the first question at the briefing, submit questions in advance.

Biden used a teleprompter to read prepared remarks that took aim at Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, before the questions and answers started, at which point the teleprompter appeared to have been turned off.

Biden’s campaign gave him a list of news organizations to call on and he answered questions from reporters on that list as well as some he chose spontaneously. That’s not an uncommon practice when officials give news conferences.

Video footage shows that during nearly 30 minutes of questions and answers, Biden often looked directly at the reporter, not at the teleprompter. His answers were at times long-winded, without the practiced pauses typically heard in prepared speeches.

Biden campaign national press secretary TJ Ducklo called Trump’s allegation “laughable, ludicrous and a lie.”

Trump’s accusation reflected his tactic of trying to stir doubts about Biden’s mental acuity.

TRUMP: “He wants to defund and abolish police.” — interview Wednesday on “America This Week.”

Patrick Semansky

Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden listens to a reporter's question as he speaks at Alexis Dupont High School in Wilmington, Del., Tuesday, June 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

THE FACTS: Biden does not join the call of protesters who demanded “defund the police” after George Floyd’s killing.

“I don’t support defunding the police,“ Biden said last month in a CBS interview. But he said he would support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether “they meet certain basic standards of decency, honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community, everybody in the community.”

Biden’s criminal justice agenda, released long before he became the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, proposes more federal money for “training that is needed to avert tragic, unjustifiable deaths” and hiring more officers to ensure that departments are racially and ethnically reflective of the populations they serve.

Specifically, he calls for a $300 million infusion into existing federal community policing grant programs.

That adds up to more money for police, not defunding law enforcement.

Biden also wants the federal government to spend more on education, social services and struggling areas of cities and rural America, to address root causes of crime.