AP FACT CHECK: Trump's torrent of falsehoods, Biden missteps

WASHINGTON (AP) — Playing defense on his handling of the coronavirus, President Donald Trump is letting the falsehoods fly.

Over the weekend, he railed against cases of voting fraud that didn’t exist, asserted that COVID-19 was “rounding a corner” despite what his top health advisers say and blasted Joe Biden for supposed positions on energy and health care that his Democratic rival doesn’t hold.

As the rhetoric flew during the past week, both Trump and Biden exaggerated accomplishments — Trump about himself and Biden about his son, Beau — as well as their own influence in reviving the auto industry.

A recent sampling:

VIRUS

TRUMP: “We are rounding the corner." — remarks Sunday at a Latino roundtable event in Las Vegas.

TRUMP: The coronavirus "is rounding the turn, rounding the corner.” — remarks Saturday to reporters in Reno, Nevada.

THE FACTS: To be clear, that's not what his top health advisers say.

“I’m sorry but I have to disagree with that,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious diseases expert, told MSNBC on Friday, calling the current coronavirus levels seven months into the pandemic “disturbing.”

He expressed concern about a potential spike in cases following the Labor Day holiday beyond a present rate of 40,000 cases a day and 1,000 deaths.

“What we don’t want to see is going into the fall season, when people will be spending more time indoors — and that’s not good for a respiratory-borne virus — you don’t want to start off already with a baseline that’s so high,” Fauci said.

Fauci this past week also cautioned that people should not “underestimate” the pandemic and they will “need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter because it’s not going to be easy.” He and other health...