Checked elsewhere

Checks published by other fact-checking organisations. We did not do these checks. Each one names who did, shows their rating in their own words, and links to their full article.

Their rating
Alexander Downer, Former foreign minister

“There are 400 private jets ferrying delegations to the COP26 conference. @POTUS [US President Joe Biden] brought five. It is estimated they will emit in 24 hours as much CO2 as Scotland emits in a year!”

RMIT ABC Fact Check rated this: Nonsense

RMIT ABC Fact Check says: Mr Downer's claim is nonsense. The Scottish government's most recent estimate, from 2019, puts the country's annual emissions for that year at 47.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. It is not clear just how m…

Donald Trump, forme president

“Very sad that the RINOs [Republicans in name only] in the House and Senate gave Biden and Democrats a victory on the ‘Non-Infrastructure’ Bill, where only 11% of the money being wasted goes to real infrastructure.”

Washington Post rated this: Four Pinocchios

Washington Post says: Almost 40 percent of the bill would qualify as infrastructure under the standards used by Trump during his presidency.

Ted Cruz, Senator (R-Tex.)

“At a Senate hearing in May, Dr. Fauci said, ‘The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’ That was under oath, under testimony. On October 20th, the NIH principal deputy director in writing directly contradicted it.”

Washington Post rated this: Two Pinocchios

Washington Post says: Cruz is spinning an NIH letter as confirming what it does not say. He is welcome to offer an opinion about its meaning. But, so far, it’s not a fact that NIH has admitted funding gain-of-function research.

Social media posts

“President Joe Biden withdrew troops from Afghanistan “simply because of Trump Derangement Syndrome and they wanted to reverse any policy that Trump had implemented.”

PolitiFact rated this: False

PolitiFact says: President Joe Biden didn’t break with Trump on Afghanistan policy, except for pushing back the withdrawal by a few months. Trump set the U.S. troop removal in motion and Biden continued on that path.