The Patriot Post® · The Left's 'Fact-Check' Farce

Dennis Prager has made many astute observations in his life, but perhaps none of them more perspicacious than this: Leftism destroys everything it touches.

It’s true. You name it, and the Left has likely ruined it. As Prager points out, leftists have destroyed our universities by making them “laughingstocks of intolerance.” They’ve debased the arts by turning them from a pursuit that elevates us to one that seeks simply to shock. As for literature, they’ve canceled Shakespeare in favor of a more “diverse” lineup of authors, poets, and playwrights. Once-funny late-night TV is now unfunny “Left-night TV,” religion has been poisoned by hard-left politics, free speech is now “hate speech,” and on and on.

The Left even wrecks the words we use. Take the word “fact,” for example. According to the ol’ Funk and Wagnalls, it means: Anything that is, is done, or happens; an act; deed; truth; reality.

Fact = reality. Got it? Got it.

But no more. A fact, according to the Left, is now contingent on context. For example, when we point out the fact that a lot of Democrat politicians are preaching one thing while practicing another — telling us to stay home to stop the spread of COVID while they sneak into a tony San Francisco salon, or slink off to some hifalutin French restaurant in Napa Valley, or jet off to a timeshare in Cabo San Lucas — the Leftmedia can now run a “fact-check” headline telling us that “politicians on both sides of the aisle have flouted COVID-19 guidelines” and that our claim “lacks context.”

Republicans are doing it, too! scream the “fact-checkers” at USA Today.

And indeed they are, from President Donald Trump on down. But there’s one yuuge difference: hypocrisy. The Republicans are on the opposite side of the “lockdown” argument, and they haven’t been shuttering their constituents’ businesses and sanctimoniously telling them to stay home. The Democrats have.

Lots of folks can stomach onerous rules and regulations. Nobody, though, likes a hypocrite. And when it comes to hypocrisy, the list of pro-lockdown Democrats who’ve broken their own COVID-19 guidelines is a long one: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Governor Gavin Newsom, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, and Austin Mayor Steve Adler, to name some of the leading culprits.

In a similar vein last week, USA Today “fact-checked” the claim that Jen Psaki, Joe Biden’s nominee for press secretary, posed for a picture with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Stooge John Kerry while wearing a stylishly pink Cossack hat with the Russian hammer and sickle on it.

Remember: This is the same USA Today that recently “fact-checked” as true the claim that the eagle on an “America First” shirt was actually a Nazi symbol.

This hammer-and-sickle thing would seem to be the easiest of claims to check. Either Psaki was wearing the hat or she wasn’t. And she was, as this photo makes abundantly clear. Or so we think.

See if you can make sense of USA Today’s “fact-check” ruling: “Jen Psaki, recently named White House press secretary for President-elect Joe Biden, is seen in a 2014 photo … wearing a pink hat with a hammer and sickle emblem, which was a gift from the Russians that she returned. At the time, Psaki was spokesperson for the U.S. State Department. The image is real, but claims that the hat was anything more a gift or that Psaki was with Russian officials in any capacity beyond her official role are MISSING CONTEXT.”

Who cares whether it was a gift? And who cares whether she returned it? Did she wear the hat or didn’t she?

Clearly, we’ve entered a strange new world. As the Washington Examiner’s Becket Adams notes, “Fact checks are supposed to review claims for factual accuracy, not downplay them with a ham-fisted attempt at bothsiderism. … This is not fact-checking. This is damage control. This is advocacy.”