The Washington Post and New York Times have been fact-checking statements at the DNC. It’s not going well. For example, one speaker jokes that “Trump is rich only in stupidity” — and one “fact checker” felt the need to say that was inaccurate, Trump is really rich.
Speakers say Trump will kill the Affordable Care Act and ban abortion. Fact-checker: well, this is speculative: sure, Trump tried to kill it in his first term but it’s not guaranteed he’ll try again. Or that he’ll ban abortion (spoiler: yes, he will). And Bill Clinton says since the end of the Cold War, job numbers improve under Democratic presidents and tank under Republicans. Fact-checker: technically true but um … uh … well, it’s just wrong!
I fully expect bullshit like this out of outlets such as Newsmax, which complains polls showing Harris surging ahead are election tampering (I will bet solid money host Rob Schmitt didn’t say the same when polls favored Trump over Biden). There’s no excuse for it from the main-stream media.
Some bloggers speculate they feel they have to criticize the Democrats — after all, if they only pointed out Trump’s and Vance’s lies, that wouldn’t be balanced (for example Trump, who constantly whines about judges, complaining that criticizing pro-Trump judges should be illegal). Or that the publishers or owners ultimately feel better about a Trump victory. Or that a second Trump term won’t be that bad — I mean, the Jan. 6 coup didn’t succeed, right, so what’s the worry?
There’s a lot to worry about because it will be very, very bad (given my criticism of their fact-checking, I will also give the NYT credit for this op-ed).
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