VICTOR JOECKS: Biden misled Americans about his ability to stop the coronavirus. The media isn’t interested.

President Joe Biden and his administration have already told numerous whoppers. But you wouldn’t know it from the fawning media coverage.

Start with the coronavirus. One of Biden’s big campaign themes was that he, unlike Donald Trump, was going to be able to stop the coronavirus pandemic. “I’m not going to shut down the country,” Biden said in an October speech. “I’m going to shut down the virus.”

This never made sense. You can’t eliminate a novel virus via executive order. But instead of pressing him for details, the national mainstream media lapped up his claims about how he would “follow the science.”

Turns out talking points aren’t effective in shutting down a contagious virus.

“There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months,” Biden said Jan. 22. Now, he tells us. That’s a long way from his previous braggadocio.

Last week, the Biden White House leaked a story that the Trump administration didn’t leave a functional vaccination plan. “We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” an anonymous source told CNN.

Two problems. First, at the time of the story, more than 16 million vaccines had been administered. The Biden administration was implying that happened by accident. Second, Dr. Anthony Fauci contradicted that claim just hours later. “We certainly are not starting from scratch,” he said.

Then Biden set his vaccination goal at 100 million doses in 100 days. The White House COVID-19 Response Team labeled that an “ambitious goal.” No mention of the fact that the U.S. was on pace to reach that mark the day Biden took office.

Any of those stories could — and should — have generated significant media pushback. But the national mainstream media gave them scant attention.

Contrast this with the first few days of the Trump administration in 2017. Then-press secretary Sean Spicer got into hot water for falsely claiming the Trump inauguration had generated a record-breaking crowd. It is still mentioned in news reports.

The media were correct to fact check Spicer four years ago. But it’s doubtful Biden’s coronavirus falsehoods, which helped him win the presidency and involve the lives of millions, will even be mentioned four days from now. The disparity is glaring.

A chyron CNN used about new press secretary Jen Psaki encapsulates this double standard. It read, “Psaki promises to share ‘accurate info’.” How refreshing.

Then there’s the two-step Biden is doing on school openings. He simultaneously claims that “science will always guide by administration” and that schools need an influx of money before reopening.

On Wednesday, Biden spun his climate change executive orders as being motivated in part by creating good-paying jobs. That’s quite the claim when his shutdown of the Keystone pipeline killed more than 10,000 jobs.

Some of this is normal political spin. Some of these statements are outright falsehoods. None of them, however, is receiving anywhere near as much media scrutiny as Trump would have for making comparable statements.

Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Opinion section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.