Said Glenn Kessler, WaPo's Fact Checker, rounding up the year 2016:
There has never been a serial exaggerator in recent American politics like the president-elect. He not only consistently makes false claims but also repeats them, even though they have been proven wrong. He always insists he is right, no matter how little evidence he has for his claim or how easily his statement is debunked."He always insists he is right, no matter how little evidence he has for his claim or how easily his statement is debunked." Can we get a fact checker on that statement of Kessler's? It can be tagged false if there is even one example of Trump admitting that he was wrong about something! You'd think Kessler would be more careful with a dangerous word like "always" — speaking of things "easily... debunked."
Here you go: Trump admitted he was wrong about seeing a video of American officials delivering $400 million to Iran:
The plane I saw on television was the hostage plane in Geneva, Switzerland, not the plane carrying $400 million in cash going to Iran!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2016
I'm not disputing that Trump has said a lot of things that lack factual support, like "I won in a landslide — and millions of people voted illegally for Clinton."
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As a result of all the "fake news" the media has generated over the past few months, I just assume now that anything the Washington Post says is bogus.
I'm not disputing that Trump has said a lot of things that lack factual support, like "I won in a landslide — and millions of people voted illegally for Clinton."
Seriously....am I the only person who remembers learning about hyperbole?
Liberal and progressive fact checkers elevate themselves high on a pile of political correctness; and award Pinocchios for the slightest deviation from liberal orthodoxy.
Sort of like a barnyard rooster crowing from the top of a dung heap.
I am not nearly as impressed with Mr. Kessler and his ilk as they are with themselves.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if millions of people voted illegally for Clinton.
Good to see the wording fixed. "Lacked factual support." Most descriptive terms used in the days after Trump made that claim (including on this blog) themselves lacked factual support.
Gahrie, it can't be hyperbole. If Trump won the legal popular vote, then millions must have voted illegally. Which, given what we know about our voting system, is unproven, but fully plausible.
"Said Glenn Kessler, WaPo's Fact Checker",
"Fact checker" is an oxymoron when it supposedly describes a WAPO reporter, as WAPO is the number one progenitor of "Real Fake News". There is no "News" in that "newspaper". Reporters simply copy "news" from other sources, which is why any news report is copied over and over-- just do a search of any "news" that has been reported; page after page of the same exact thing in search results. There are no "journalists".
The "Media" has not learned anything since they were roundly defeated and despised in this last election cycle. They continue to double and triple down on the lie, even as they are being tuned out by a great portion of the populace. They were caught lying and colluding for the benefit of the most criminal POTUS candidate in history, and now they are spreading, along with the Usurper and the criminals in Congress, that Russia was responsible for the Crooked Old Lady's loss.
Yesterday a very powerful case was made at a press conference held by Sheriff Arpaio, that the "Birth Certificate" that is shown on the WH website itself, of the Usurper Hussein Obama, is a complete fraud. Investigators on 2 continents came to the same conclusion, and one of the document experts, Reed Hayes, has 40 years experience, and is used by Obama's lawfirm, Perkins Coie, as an expert witness. They showed conclusively how elements of a real birth Cert. from 16 days later were lifted whole cloth, and placed on the fraudulent one.
All AP could do was put out a few lines about Arpaio talking about a "debunked theory"-- which of course was simply copied by every "newspaper" in America.
"He earned plaudits from Donald Trump and became one of the nation's leading voices on the debunked controversy over Obama's birthplace. Arpaio closed his yearslong investigation Thursday, ending a chapter that critics denounced as a shameless ploy to raise money from his right-wing base".
The AP "reporter" Jacques Billeaud, certified propagandist, made NOT ONE MENTION of the facts presented at the news conference.
Here it is see for yourself. It is powerful evidence of fraud, committed by the Usurper:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk3KRxTfkLM
It is in fact an editorial page, not actual verification of actual facts. WaPo discloses this fact.
And with that admission of a mistake, Trump again called attention that Obama paid a terrorist nation a ransom for hostages. Along with a nuke free Iran for about six weeks.
Let's focus on the substance of what Obama did. Not a filn (sic) clip. Fact checker indeed.
AllenS
The MSM says there is no evidence of illegals voting! But they refuse to do their job and investigate the claim. The NYT or LAT could assign ten reporters to the task and in one month there would be plenty of evidence.
What happens when the "fact checkers" used by sites like Facebook are behind pay walls?
Blogger rehajm said...It is in fact an editorial page, not actual verification of actual facts.
A distinction without a difference.
The easy solution to Glenn Kessler is to subtract two Pinocchios for every fact check about a Republican, and add two for those about Democrats. Watching "fact checkers" at work is amazing; they'll take anything a Republican says and nit pick it to death, but then go all "but what they really meant" for a Democrats.
The Washington Post (aka правда) is but an arm of the DNC. Itself has earned a over-supply of “Pinocchios”.
Unfortunately, we see little indication that this pattern will change during his presidency.
Which pattern? The one of Trump exaggerating or the one of the press interpreting whatever he says in the worst way possible?
"During the campaign, Trump earned 59 Four-Pinocchio ratings, compared with seven for Hillary Clinton."
The problem the press is running into is that their "norm," Hillary Clinton, is not normal at all. She lies constantly, all the time, over and over, huge whoppers. To say with a straight face that Donald Trump is eight times more dishonest than Hillary Clinton is ridiculous. This is a woman who could easily have gone to prison for all the lies she told.
There has never been a serial exaggerator in recent American politics like the president-elect.
Except for the Clintons, you idiot.
The Washington Post embarrassed itself with it's attempt to prop up Hillary Clinton as honest and trustworthy. It's not the 59 Pinocchios that make the WaPo look ridiculous. It's the seven. Or rather, it's the contrast between the 59 and the seven.
There is a difference between lying and factual support.
The Washington Post has a list of all the 4 Pinocchios that Donald Trump received during the campaign.
Here's a HIllary Clinton 3 Pinocchio: "everything I did was permitted."
The English language is rich in hyperbole and metaphor, yet professionals who write for a living can't recognize it.
Mike said...
The English language is rich in hyperbole and metaphor, yet professionals who write for a living can't recognize it.
12/16/16, 8:07 AM
____________
Neither apparently can many Althouse commenters.
I'm beginning to think that Kessler never will write a fact-checking article about the Clinton claim that Trump has caused an increase in school bullying.
All together now "who cares what the democrat media lies about".
All together now "who cares what the democrat media lies about".
"There has never been a serial exaggerator in recent American politics like the president-elect."
Yet they see nothing of the sort in the press-whipped hysteria surrounding the possibility that Russia was the source of the leaked DNC emails?
From Trump's PoV, he's going to be called "serial exaggerator" (and worse) by MSM "fact checkers" and others no matter what he says, so, what's the upside in trying to earn forever-just-beyond-reach fact-check ratings of "true"?
Fact checkers were fakes news before fake news was a thing.
Fun fact: Fact checkers are largely fact-free in their pursuit of journ-O-listic glory.
And yet Politifact will be one of the new gatekeepers of fake news at Fakebook. Yet another indication that irony is dead and you can't write satire anymore. Satire relies on a more real reality to compare...
The WHOLE media complex gets a big fat Pinocchio for spreading the lie that the Usurper is a natural born Citizen eligible for the Presidency, and that the "Birth Certificate at whitehouse.gov is a real document:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk3KRxTfkLM
Just yesterday, it was proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Birth Certificate of the Usurper Hussein Obama is a fraud.
Anne's example is terrible. "Lacking factual support" should not get 4 Pinocchios; that should be reserved for cases where you can tell that the person lied on purpose, not that you think they're wrong.
No one knows how many invalid voters there are. Some believe more, some less. There isn't much straight evidence, just people consulting their mental models.
Molly Hemingway does a good job of exploding the 'fact checkers here. I think the most interesting figure in her piece is that 80+% of those polled felt they could differentiate between fake and real news without help.
@Bob The WaPo absolutely! I have been watching their internet front page during the entire election cycle. The WaPo is clearly being written and edited by a bunch of crazies.
The one I love is "if you like your doctor..." that was turned back upon the critics when a "factchecker" said criticism of Obama was a "lie" worthy of Pinocchios-on-fire or something. Then later that exact same phrase was deemed the "lie of the year" with no apparent awareness of the dichotomy in those two positions.
They really think we are stupid and will buy all the BS they can shovel. You'd think that when the paper of record is so short on capital it sells half itself to a Mexican monopolist oligarch they would get a clue that their brand is slipping. You'd think.
If you don't actually look to see if Hillary is lying, you don't find examples.
MadisonMan said...
If you don't actually look to see if Hillary is lying, you don't find examples.
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Exactly!
The metric is absurd.
"I checked on Trump's lies and Hillary's lies in a pattern of my own choosing. And look! I found the one I checked more, lied more" Science!
Let Trump lie, bloviate, hyperbolicize, deplorably, as much as he wants.
So far he has nominated excellent cabinet secretaries and is organizing a staff for his administration that will run things properly in DC.
And Trump doesn't do the one thing that Obama does constantly, which is use straw man arguments. god, that is annoying! "Some people on the other side want to kill old people and starve babies, but my (insert idiotic leftist program here) proram won't let them do that!
All politicians lie. The national news media and, to an extent, the public has tolerated a certain amount of lying as acceptable. This applies to both the quantity of lies and even the importance of the lie. Trump vastly outperformed Hillary in the number of lies during the campaign but the importance of the lies is hard to discern. Trump could lie 50 times to
Hillary's 5 lies, but Hillary's 5 lies might be more important. For example, she kept lying that there was no classified info on her email server. When that was shown to be a lie, she said their was no info marked as classified on her server. When that was shown to be a lie, she blamed her aides.
The Clintons have been shown over the last 25 years to be serial liars. Trump
has just accelerated the post-truthiness the Clintons helped create.
Guys like Harry Reid take to the Senate floor and slander Mitt Romney claiming he didn't pay income taxes. The media didn't care. Obama didn't denounce Reid.
The media watches the Dems build this weapon of lying as political art and then gets pissed when Trump grabs the weapon and turns the dial up to destroy mode. What did they think was going to happen?
The media, etc., do not seem to be able to understand that Trump is baiting them. And that the reason he is President Elect is that they cannot resist the bait. The more the Democrats and the Press are distracted by random Tweets and "lies", the less energy they will have to oppose what Trump is actually doing, which seems to be pretty well thought through (for better and worse.) Ordinary people know what's going on.
"WaPo's fact checker". LOL! Hillary has proven over and over her 'lie-ability'.
I think I am almost done with worrying about "the media."
There isn't any "the media" anymore.
There is the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and NBC, of course.
But now, "the media" includes the Fox News Channel, and the Wall Street Journal. "The media" also includes Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter. "The media" also arguably includes Breitbart and Alex Jones.
The only place that "media" wars interest me anymore are the ones concerning NPR and PBS. Bastions of liberalism (and exceptionally well-produced) and publicly-supported. Conservatives will be vilified if we try to de-fund them. The better thing would be to force them into more conservative inclusion, and then fairness.
Trump's statement is not a lie. We KNOW illegals voted. Did they vote in the millions? Who knows? Its unproven since its unknown how MANY illegals voted.
We could easily find out how many illegals voted in rough numbers, if the Democrats would cooperate or the MSM really wanted to investigate - but they don't. They seem to be strangely incurious - and prefer to screech about Russian Hacking or TRUMP LIES!
Its an obvious sore spot with the MSM/DNC. They don't want to investigate how many illegals voted because it would cost the Democrats votes. Better to screech LIAR or hand wave and eye roll whenever anyone brings it up.
Trump's statement is not a lie. We KNOW illegals voted. Did they vote in the millions? Who knows? Its unproven since its unknown how MANY illegals voted.
We could easily find out how many illegals voted in rough numbers, if the Democrats would cooperate or the MSM really wanted to investigate - but they don't. They seem to be strangely incurious - and prefer to screech about Russian Hacking or TRUMP LIES!
Its an obvious sore spot with the MSM/DNC. They don't want to investigate how many illegals voted because it would cost the Democrats votes. Better to screech LIAR or hand wave and eye roll whenever anyone brings it up.
Trump's statement is not a lie. We KNOW illegals voted. Did they vote in the millions? Who knows? Its unproven since its unknown how MANY illegals voted.
We could easily find out how many illegals voted in rough numbers, if the Democrats would cooperate or the MSM really wanted to investigate - but they don't. They seem to be strangely incurious - and prefer to screech about Russian Hacking or TRUMP LIES!
Its an obvious sore spot with the MSM/DNC. They don't want to investigate how many illegals voted because it would cost the Democrats votes. Better to screech LIAR or hand wave and eye roll whenever anyone brings it up.
Turn the Washington Post building into a warming center.
More "REAL FAKE NEWS" from the Usurper and from all of the MSM. Multiple sources, including Assange and insiders of the NSA itself are throwing cold water on the "Russia hacked the election" BS narrative (peddlin' fiction).
“If [the CIA] are going to allege something like that they should show the trace route, and the path it went and how, and through which path those packets went from the DNC to the Russians to WikiLeaks. They failed to do that. That tells me that what they are saying is a pack of crap. They are just concocting these things to support the existing administration and to also support the move toward a new Cold War.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-16/nsa-whistleblower-destroys-obamas-russia-narrative-hard-evidence-points-inside-leak-
Trump is a bullshitter forcing the mediaswine to do their jobs while pretending to take the bullshit seriously.
Obama and Clinton are serial liars enrolling the mediaswine in circle jerks while taking the lies seriously.
Yes, but if WaPo applied the same standards to Clinton as it did to Trump, she would (I am guessing) have at least 30 of those 4-Pinocchios).
Trump trolls and they say he lies. Clinton lied and they said you just have to interpret it correctly.
To quote Harry Reid when asked if he was proud of having lied about Mitt Romney's taxes: "He lost, didn't he?"
btb, I didn't just look that up, so while I am sure that was the gist, I might have a detail wrong. WaPo would give me 4 Pinoccios for that because they supported Obama over Romney, and Reid is a Democrat.
Just for the sake of comparison, how many 4-Pinocchio's was Obama awarded for repeated claims that:
1. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor
2. Insurance costs will fall
Etc.
That must have been in the thousands, or did the Post fail to fact-check these?
Chuck defends the status quo?
Shocked face!
I wish Trump wouldn't say things like "millions of illegals voted", but that's a small change issue.
There are supposedly responsible people going around trying to de-legitimize the President-elect before he takes office. They started by claiming that the votes had been counted wrong and Hillary! really won; turns out that Hillary! and Jill were just as wrong about the vote counts as Trump's remark about the illegals. How many
Pinocchios does that get? Right now they are talking about how the Trump electors should ignore the voters who elected them and vote their "conscience" for someone (anyone!) else. They are claiming that Putin "hacked" the election, so Trump was elected as a "Manchurian candidate".
Look, I didn't vote for Trump, and in comments here I used to refer to him as "Tromp", which I thought suited his style. But he was elected, and I think he should be given a chance to show that he'll be a good (or at least OK) President -- unlike, say, Carter and Obama.
I suppose I trust the WSJ more than any other major newspaper. And there are NO televised news networks I trust.
The only people at the WaPo with any credibility are the Volokh crew and media blogger Erik Wemple.
"I won in a landslide — and millions of people voted illegally for Clinton."
Correct on both counts!
The media all got on the wrong train--the one that ran off a cliff. But they seem not to realize it yet.
And Trump doesn't do the one thing that Obama does constantly, which is use straw man arguments. god, that is annoying! "Some people on the other side ...
Gawd yes! Every time he says, "Some people say...." I want to scream, "What people? Name them or STFU!".
Of course the reporters covering the POTUS could ask that question, politely, but then....
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