There’s a pretty interesting story about a recent fact-checking flip-flop involving President Biden and, of all things, a construction hard hat. Immediately, people claimed bias, but the debacles showed a little more than that.
President Biden was visiting union workers in Wisconsin, a pretty standard presidential affair, right? He’s there with Senator Amy Klobuchar, and there are photos. Now, in one of these photos, Biden is seen wearing a construction hard hat. But here’s the catch – it’s on backwards. Yes, you heard that right. The strap and the tightening knob, which are usually at the back of the hat, were right there on his forehead for everyone to see.
When the photo hit the internet, many mocked Biden for wearing the hard hat backward.
Is Biden’s hard hat on backwards? pic.twitter.com/vnXzCGIXwM
— E (@ElijahSchaffer) January 26, 2024
Initially, the well-known fact-check site Snopes jumped into the fray. They published a piece on Friday claiming that, no, Biden wasn’t wearing the hard hat backwards. They said that after comparing this photo with others from the same event, they concluded the hat was on correctly, bill to the front.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Social media users weren’t having any of it. They pointed out that hard hats universally have the tightening strap at the back. It’s a pretty standard design feature. So, after what I can only imagine was a deluge of comments and a storm on social media, Snopes had to backtrack.
They updated their fact-check, essentially saying, “Okay, you got us.” They admitted that if the hat’s owner had configured it with the bill and tightening knob at the back, then wearing it with the bill forward would technically be wearing it backwards. They acknowledged that in the photo, Biden indeed had it on the wrong way.
Now, to add a bit more context, other pictures from Biden’s Wisconsin visit showed the actual owner of the helmet wearing it correctly, with the strap at the rear. So, it wasn’t a case of a uniquely designed hard hat or anything like that.
In their correction, Snopes even thanked everyone who argued for this change. It’s a rare moment of humility and admission of error from a fact-checking site, and it’s pretty refreshing to see.
What the “fact check” reversal also showed is just how detached and out-of-touch writers for these left-wing sites are from the common American. Anybody who’s worked a construction job or had a significant other who worked a blue-collar job knew that hard hat was on backward, but the Snopes team had no idea what they were talking about.
What’s even more comical is that if Snopes had done two minutes of research, not only would they have learned the hard hat was on backward, but they could have come up with an easy defense of Biden.
OSHA regulations do permit workers to wear a hard hat backward.
On May 9, 2011, OSHA clarified regulations on how to wear a hard hat, stating they can be worn backward depending on their rating and construction.
How easy would it have been for them to say the claim about Biden is “partially true,” they do that. Stating yes, the hard hat was on backward, but OSHA regulations allow people to wear them backward, and the President was having fun on a campaign stop.
As a matter of fact, I looked up the OSHA regulations because I always thought you weren’t allowed to wear them backward. When I worked construction, we were never allowed to wear them backward, and for this post, I wanted to grab the link and was surprised by what I found.
Oh and just for fun I asked OPen AI’s Chat GDP how to correctly wear a hard hat and it gave me seven steps.
Note Step number two:
FYI, all this took me about two minutes.
The fact-check Snopes debacle reveals more bias. It reveals just how out of touch some of these left-wing writers are and how lazy they are.
