Glossy, polished – and mostly truthful.
That’s how Jon Greenberg described the four nights of speeches at the almost completely virtual Democratic National Convention.
He’s the senior correspondent for the fact-checking website, PolitiFact.
“Democrats, for the most part, were staying fairly factually accurate. They pushed the envelope here and there. There were no glaring errors, but they would mislead from time to time because that's the nature of political speech,” Greenberg told Spectrum News.
One moment of envelop pushing came Thursday night when Presidential Nominee Joe Biden proposed a three-month federal mask mandate to combat COVID-19 infections.
Greenberg says Biden would not have the authority to make states fall in line.
“There are a number of legal hurdles that Biden would run into that could get in the way,” Greenberg explained. “Now states could sort of voluntarily cooperate, but there are a number of laws and elements in the constitution that could give them the perfect right to say, 'no we're not going to do that.’”
Another questionable moment was when former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claimed the country’s richest people profited $400 billion during the pandemic.
“She was looking at the stock market at the very bottom of the trough and where we stand today,” Greenberg said. “But, if you went back a month before the bottom of the trough, then people were pretty much about in the same place today as they were then.”
Now, all eyes are on the Republican National Convention in Charlotte.
Greenberg says, from a fact-checking perspective, there will be some differences between the two political extravaganzas.
“One thing that there's an indication of is that there's going to be more live presentations. A lot of the Democratic Convention was in the can. We're definitely hearing that Trump doesn't like that, so I suppose that that creates a possibility for unexpected statements if people go off script.”
President Trump is expected to deliver his official acceptance speech on Thursday from the White House law.