Fact-Check Central

Did Joe Biden call American women "lazy?"

Status: False

In October 2016 an article titled "Biden Blames 'Lazy American Women' For The Economy" went viral on social media. According to the author, Biden believes that women "sit around on their behinds, doing nothing and squandering their days away when they could be improving the country that has given so much to them... we need to get them off their lazy behinds and get them into their workplaces."

The version that was shared to my Facebook timeline two days later was linked from a website called EndingTheFed. The speech in question had occurred two days earlier at a Chatham University (Pittsburgh) campaign event for Hillary Clinton. Google searches only turned up references to EndingTheFed, TheRightists, FreedomDaily, & similar websites--no major news outlets. So let's get this straight... the Vice President of the United States claims that American women are lazy, during a campaign stop for a woman POTUS candidate... and in two days not one mainstream news source reacts to it... What's wrong with this picture? ;) A Snopes search immediately returns the story as False & indicates that it originated with The Rightists--the 3rd or 4th source returned in my Google searches (Emery, 2016). A check of their About Us page reveals the following,

This is HYBRID site of news and satire. part of our stories already happens, part, not yet. NOT all of our stories are true! (TheRightists, 2017 - Emphasis in the original)

Further searches reveal EndingTheFed to be a fake news website run by one Ovidiu Drobota, a 24 year old Romanian Trump supporter & conspiracy theorist who created the site as "a hobby" because "I liked him [Trump]... & I thought I can help him to win the presidency." Drobota, who is based in Oradea, Romania maintains a Facebook profile identifying him as a Chicago resident (for the obvious reason, no doubt). He says a lot of his material comes from the Daily Caller & InfoWars... both of which are also known fake news sites (Zimdars, 2016; Townsend, 2016; FNC, 2017).

References

Emery, D. 2016. "La-Z-Girl." Snopes Oct 27, 2016. Available online at http://www.snopes.com/biden-blames-lazy-american-women/. Accessed Feb. 3, 2017.

Fake News Checker. 2017. "Untrustworthy 'Fake' News Sources." Fake News Checker Available online at http://www.fakenewschecker.com/. Accessed Feb. 6, 2017.

Townsend, T. 2016. "Meet the Romanian Trump Fan Behind a Major Fake News Site." INC Magazine Nov. 21, 2016. Available online at http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/ending-fed-trump-facebook.html. Accessed Feb. 6, 2017.

Zimdars, M. 2016. "False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and Satirical 'News' Sources." Merrimack College Available online at http://d279m997dpfwgl.cloudfront.net/wp/2016/11/Resource-False-Misleading-Clickbait-y-and-Satirical-%E2%80%9CNews%E2%80%9D-Sources-1.pdf. Accessed Feb. 7, 2017.