U.S. President Joe Biden said, “Wait until you see our plan for the destruction of Taiwan.”
On Feb. 22, 2023, Chinese state media accounts began sharing the claim that Biden suggested the United States had a “plan for the destruction of Taiwan.” As reported by the Polygraph.info — a fact-checking website produced by Voice of America — the claim originated from a dubious viral tweet:
Chinese state media accounts started circulating news about the alleged Biden “plan for the destruction of Taiwan” on February 22. Their source? Pro-Beijing Taiwanese politician Alex Tsai. But where did Tsai learn about this so-called “plan”? From a satirical tweet.
On February 21, Tsai, a former Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) legislator, shared and translated a February 15 tweet from Garland Nixon, a Washington, DC-based radio show host and critic of U.S. foreign policy, whom Tsai referred to as “a prominent radio show host” in the American capital.
The tweet in question came from Garland Nixon, who has a verified badge through the Twitter Blue paid subscription service.
In an hour-long broadcast titled in part, “Why My Destruction of Taiwan Tweet Went Viral,” Nixon brags about the international incident his tweet caused while eventually explaining that it was “satire.”
“Here’s the bottom line,” Garland says around the 13:00 mark of that video. “Anybody who follows my timeline knows that I do satire.” He explained that his “breaking news” tweets in particular were satirical tweets. “One of the things I’m known for on Twitter,” he said, “is my breaking news tweets.”
Because the claim originated as a baseless tweet without any satire disclosure, we therefore rate this assertion as “False.”