The Patriot Post® · Trump vs. the Fact-Checkers

During the vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz, one of the most notable lines of the evening came when Vance, speaking about the illegal immigrant crisis, called out CBS moderators Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan for “fact-checking” his statements and violating the rules they agreed to when taking the job.

“Margaret,” Vance said, “The rules were that you weren’t going to fact-check, and since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.”

The media took Vance’s protest as an indication that he didn’t want to be challenged. They applied it as another example (in their book) of how the Trump-Vance ticket wants to be able to launch unchecked criticisms against the media and the Biden-Harris administration without any accountability.

To further this idea, The Washington Post shared an entire article on the alleged agenda of the Republican duo to dodge the truth, citing Trump’s refusal to sit for an interview with the leftist schemers at CBS’s “60 Minutes” as proof. Similarly, they discussed the situation surrounding the lead-up to Trump’s appearance at a National Association of Black Journalists event, repeating the story told by their president, Ken Lemon, that he was hesitant to appear without the promise that they would not fact-check the presidential candidate’s comments. However, the reason for the delay has been debated, as a Trump campaign staffer reported that it was caused by problems with the audio.

Leftists have proudly made themselves primary advocates of checking facts, thereby anointing themselves as Defenders of the Truth, nobly protecting the American people from information that might lead to them making unfavorable decisions, particularly regarding political activism and voting.

However, as fact-checking has become ubiquitous across social media and in public discussion, it’s becoming clear that these arbiters of truth can’t be trusted. Otherwise, why do so many of the stories they have marked as “false” end up being true? Indeed, their long list of incorrect “corrections” has rendered the label of “fact-checker” itself a joke.

A significant lack of correction, however, came during the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, as Trump was highlighting the despicable abortion policies of today’s far-left Democrats. These involve access to this procedure up until the moment of birth and denying medical care to babies born alive from failed abortions.

Trump used the word “execute” in reference to babies who have been left to suffer until the moment of their own passing (something that is legal in states like Colorado and Minnesota). In response, ABC moderator Linsey Davis inserted herself as a third party in the debate, jumping in to counter Trump’s argument: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” According to Davis’s mixed-up sense of logic, denying life-saving care to a dying baby is not the same as actively ending that baby’s life.

Make it make sense. Among the many other stories that have been “fact-checked” by the Left:

Democrats have repeatedly accused Donald Trump of calling neo-Nazis “very fine people” during a 2017 protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, as aggressive crowds gathered to stand for or against removing a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Even Snopes finally debunked that lie … this year.

However, this didn’t stop Kamala Harris from repeating the lie during the debate between herself and Trump. Strangely, the “fact-checkers” failed to correct Harris — one of many times they stayed out of the conversation when their supposed objective of truth would have been useful.

Then there was the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story, which came out just before the 2020 election. The information on the device, which the FBI knew months beforehand to be authentic, might well have swung the election to Trump because of the depth of corruption it revealed in Joe Biden. So the Democrats and their friends in the intelligence services immediately “fact-checked” the story, labeling it as Russian disinformation.

Two years later, when the public had moved on, we were finally allowed to openly discuss the legitimacy of the laptop, the evidence of shady business dealings between the Bidens and Ukrainian oligarchs, and the people who intentionally hid the story from the public.

By then, nobody cared.

The Washington Post accurately described Trump’s boycott of this system: “Donald Trump and his campaign have waged an aggressive campaign against fact-checking in recent months, pushing TV networks, journalism organizations and others to abandon the practice if they hope to interact with Trump.”

Ironically, what needs to be verified now is the media narrative of Trump avoiding their fact-checkers because he’s afraid of the truth.