Misleading Ad Targets Biden on Fossil Fuels, Fracking

A TV ad from a Republican super PAC uses video of Joe Biden inaccurately explaining his climate plan against him. Biden’s campaign has said he would not completely ban fossil fuels, specifically fracking, as the ad appears to show him saying.

The ad, from America First Action, which supports the reelection of President Donald Trump, shows a clip from a July 2019 CNN debate in which Biden said, “we would make sure it’s eliminated,” when asked if there would be a place for “fossil fuels, including coal and fracking” if Biden becomes president.

Biden’s campaign later clarified that he supports ending subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, and transitioning, by 2050, to a clean energy economy with net-zero emissions. That’s what the plan he released in June 2019 also says he would do.

Later in the ad, a graphic shown on screen says, “Joe Biden could cost Pennsylvania 600,000 jobs.” But that figure comes from a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study of a nationwide ban on fracking for oil and natural gas, which Biden’s campaign said he actually doesn’t support.

America First Action released the ad on June 4, attacking Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, for proposed policies that would have an impact on energy jobs. The pro-Trump group has so far spent more than $230,000, according to Advertising Analytics, to run the 30-second commercial in at least five TV markets across Pennsylvania — a key electoral swing state.

The ad starts with this abbreviated exchange between Biden and CNN’s Dana Bash during a Democratic presidential candidates’ debate the cable news network hosted last summer: