FACT CHECK: Gorsuch Didn’t Say the Seasonal Flu Kills ‘Hundreds of Thousands’ a Year

On Friday, conservative media called out the blatant lies of left-wing Supreme Court justices during oral arguments on Joe Biden’s federal vaccine mandates.

For example, Justice Stephen Breyer claimed that hospitals are at capacity because of unvaccinated Americans with COVID, and Justice Sotomayor falsely claimed that there are over 100,000 kids hospitalized from COVID. Both of these claims are false.

I suppose the liberal media wanted some revenge, but they couldn’t find any legitimate statement to fact-check from any of the conservative justices, so they literally made up a false claim.

According to Leftists on social media, Justice Neil Gorsuch claimed the seasonal flu kills “hundreds of thousands” every year in the United States.

There’s just one problem. He didn’t say that at all.

“The flu kills people every year, traditionally OSHA does not regulate in this area,” Gorsuch pointed out. “We have flu vaccines. Flu kills—I believe—hundreds… thousands of people every year.”

Gorsuch did not say “hundreds of thousands,” and that can be plainly heard in the audio of the relevant exchange:

Hey geniuses. You are falsely smearing Justice Gorsuch for a TRANSCRIPTION ERROR.

Listen carefully: "Flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year."

Correct and retract your false stories.

At 1:50:00 https://t.co/Pm3wZuB8kz pic.twitter.com/WfD21LrLWH

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) January 8, 2022

In fairness, even the official transcript got the quote wrong. However, anyone who actually listens to the audio can clearly hear the pause between “hundreds” and “thousands,” indicating that Gorsuch was implying a range from hundreds of deaths to thousands, not hundreds of thousands.

While random leftists on Twitter aren’t likely to review the audio, we would expect the media to verify the allegations. But Newsweek wrote an article criticizing Gorsuch for getting the figures of flu deaths wrong.