Appearing at a friendly CNN town-hall event yesterday, President Joe Biden dropped a string of untruths on issues both large and small. One of the president’s most egregious falsehoods was the claim that “we didn’t have [the vaccine] when we came into office.” The first shot was administered back on December 14, 2020.

Glenn Kessler, lead fact-checker for the Washington Post, quickly jumped into action on Twitter, explaining that this was merely a “verbal stumble, a typical Biden gaffe, as he had already mentioned 50 million doses being available when he took office. Ex Trump officials should especially cool the outrage meter, as it just looks silly.” Castigating those who pointed out the lie is a weird thing for someone charged with verifying factual information to do.

It was a strange coincidence, indeed, that Biden’s “verbal stumble” corresponded perfectly with the concerted administration-wide effort to mislead Americans regarding the president’s new vaccination plan. Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris had herself accidentally stumbled into numerous similar gaffes, saying there had been “no national strategy or plan for vaccinations,” that the new administration was “starting from scratch on something that’s been raging for almost an entire year,” and that there “there was no stockpile . . . of vaccines.”