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WATCH: Trump Tells Fox ‘News’ That Fact Checker Is ‘Totally Left-Wing’
December 22, 2015Marc Belisle News
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Fox “News” called up Republican presidential front-runner and human whoopee cushion Donald Trump on Monday to strategize ask him about the fact checker, PolitiFact’s year-end rankings of false statements. Trump had won PolitiFact’s highly coveted “Lie of the Year” award for 2015.
PolitiFact said that Trump had the most lies of the greatest severity of any politician. The only challenge for the fact checker was choosing which of The Donald’s lies was the worst, since Trump had no competitors for his triumph in mendacity. Ultimately, PolitiFact chose Trump’s statement that he saw “thousands and thousands” of American Arab Muslims cheering in New Jersey when the twin towers came down on 9/11.
Fox Newskitten Elisabeth Hasselbeck began the call with Trump by bashing Hillary Clinton. She then asked Trump what he thought of the award. He responded,
“Well Politifact is an example, you know, I’ve been proven right. You look at Breitbart, they talk about, you know, when I said they were dancing on rooftops, dancing in the streets, I’m right about that. There are many articles that say they were in New Jersey. And there are many articles that say that’s true. And PolitiFact, which is, by the way, a totally left-wing group. They are bad news, I mean as far as checking. You can tell something 100% and they will make it out to a lie, if you’re a certain person. So, PolitiFact didn’t like the idea that I said, ‘dancing on rooftops, dancing in streets,’ but that’s been confirmed by hundreds of people.”
Trump made certain to really emphasize “a totally left-wing group” in his vapid shouting way, likely for the benefit of his supporters watching. Trump has been challenged about this lie over and over. He claims that hundreds of people agree with him, and there are “many articles” about it, but he can’t produce any such evidence. Surely, if thousands of Arab-Americans had been celebrating on 9/11, that would have been a huge story. He’s using the lie to slander innocent American Muslims, endangering them, to court the mindless bigotry of his supporters.
This is not the first time the GOP presidential front-runner has landed in hot water with a political fact checker. In 2012, the Mitt Romney campaign ran an ad falsely claiming that President Barack Obama had “gutted” the work requirement for welfare. Just like Trump’s lie, this targeted a vulnerable minority with slander to pander to gullible bigots. When pressed on how inaccurate the ad was, Romney pollster Neil Newhouse retorted, “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” And indeed, they did not.
The idea that PolitiFact is unjust or partisan is ridiculous. The site is run by the Tampa Bay Times, a 130-year-old newspaper with a slew of Pulitzers and other awards. Under the auspices of PolitiFact, it also runs a fact checker just for keeping the president honest. The “Obameter” keeps track of whether President Obama is upholding or breaking specific campaign promises, and it doesn’t pull any punches.
Trump’s idea that a political fact-checker is “left-wing” calls to mind another absurd conservative. In 2006, when The Colbert Report was a young satirical phenomenon, the White House incredibly invited Stephen Colbert to the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. Colbert proceeded to feign admiration for the president while roasting him mercilessly to his face. During his monologue, Colbert taunted that facts can’t be trusted because “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
Fox “News” should call Trump back and let him know that if the fact-checkers are “left-wing” it could be because of reality’s liberal bias.
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