CNN’s star fact-checker Daniel Dale has made quite a splash during President Donald Trump‘s first 80 days in office, earning himself exponentially more air time in comparison to the same period under President Joe Biden.
Since Jan. 20, Dale has appeared on-air at least 23 times to fact-check Trump and members of his administration, according to Grabien transcripts reviewed by Fox News Digital.
Dale offered his first on-air fact-check of Trump just hours after he was sworn into office in response to remarks Trump made from the Oval Office. CNN anchors frequently have Dale on standby to refute Trump’s claims following major speeches like the one he gave to the World Economic Forum and his address to the joint session of Congress as well as Trump’s impromptu exchanges with reporters. On at least two separate occasions, Dale appeared on CNN three times in a single day.
The fact checks challenged Trump’s claims on a wide variety of topics from tariffs and trade policy, Ukraine aid, to his commentary about the California wildfires and the deadly airplane-helicopter crash at Washington, D.C.’s Reagan International Airport.
The same, however, cannot be said about Dale’s coverage of Biden in early 2021. During the same 80-day period, Dale offered just two on-air fact checks of Biden, according to transcript search results.
In fact, Dale appeared on CNN more often during Biden’s first 80 days to fact-check Trump, who was no longer in office, as well as GOP lawmakers, who at the time did not control either chamber of Congress.
During a February 2021 appearance on the now-defunct “Reliable Sources” program, Dale vowed he wouldn’t be “on vacation” during Biden’s presidency.
“We know Biden speaks less, he tweets less, and he lies less when he talks and tweets,” Dale told CNN’s Brian Stelter at the time. “Trump was a unique case, but that doesn’t mean Biden is perfect. He sometimes exaggerates, he sometimes embellishes.”
Dale later compared Biden’s “smattering of falsehoods” to “the daily avalanche we got from Trump” during Trump’s first term in office.
The “smattering” and “avalanche” of falsehoods correlate with the amount of access (or lack there of) Trump and Biden have given, including in their first 80 days in office. Trump regularly makes public appearances and constantly takes questions from reporters, while Biden limited his visibility and curtailed his interactions with the press.
Still, there was certainly less of an urgency for Dale to appear on-air to fact-check Biden in 2021 versus Trump in 2025.
While Dale appeared on CNN to fact-check Trump on Inauguration Day earlier this year, it wasn’t until March 25, 2021, more than two months after Biden was sworn into office, to fact-check him on air over his false claim that his administration was turning away migrant families at the southern border.
The second fact-check during the same 80-day period came on April 3, 2021, over what Biden had said about Georgia’s election reform bill. Meanwhile, Dale spent more airtime fact-checking Trump about Jan. 6 and his 2020 election denial claims as well as Republicans on Capitol Hill over their comments on government spending.
“Biden has been generally factual so far, especially in scripted remarks,” Dale wrote on X in March 2021. “Where he has been inaccurate, it has often been when he has been attempting off the cuff to refer to numbers he doesn’t have nailed down.”
This disparity also occurred in Dale’s online coverage for CNN.com. Dale wrote at least 26 fact-checks against Trump during his first 80 days, dwarfing the eight fact-checks he dedicated to Biden at the same point in 2021. Notably, Dale fact-checked Trump before fact-checking the sitting president, published on Biden’s Inauguration Day.
For both Biden and Trump, Dale offered a recap of their falsehoods to mark their first full month in office. For Biden, Dale’s headline was “Fact check: Breaking down Joe Biden’s first month of claims” while Trump’s was “Analysis: Trump’s 13 biggest lies of his first month back in office.”
Dale previously shed light on his fact-checking methodology when it came to Trump and Biden during the 2020 election cycle, telling Stelter that Trump “makes the same false and misleading claims over and over” while suggesting it isn’t as obvious for Biden.
“If Trump lies, you probably know it,” Dale said in August 2020. “If Biden were to lie, you might not know it because it might be new.”
A spokesperson for CNN declined to comment.
