PolitiFact Now Rating Claims That No One Ever Disputed to Make Republicans Look Bad

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Jul 25, 2018

In an obvious partisan effort to hurt Republicans reinforce leftist media bias, PolitiFact is now rating claims that no one ever disputed – but only if it hurts Republicans.

“In December of 2017, the Prince William board of supervisors had a meeting … (Corey Stewart) skipped that meeting to go campaign in Alabama for Roy Moore to be a U.S. senator … You haven’t disavowed Roy Moore’s name yet,” said Sen. Tim Kaine during a debate with GOP challenger Corey Stewart on Saturday.

No one disputed this fact, but PolitiFact took it upon themselves to fact-check the claim as “True” anyway, highlighting a fact that could hurt Stewart. When asked if they would be fact-checking obviously-True statements that Stewart made during the debate against Kaine, PolitiFact predictably dodged the question.

“We rate claims that we think would cause the average person to say, ‘I wonder if that’s true,'” PolitiFact editor Angie Drobnic Holan told Big League Politics, smugly directing us to PolitiFact’s “guidelines” page.

As an example, Stewart asserted several times during the same debate Kaine flip-flopped on his stance on offshore drilling when it was politically expedient. As reported by Big League Politics, Stewart’s assertion was obviously true. In fact, PolitiFact itself even acknowledged the flip-flop in 2016.

After Saturday’s debate, though, the average person might be wondering if that claim made by Stewart is true. Remember, that is supposedly one of PolitiFact’s criteria for fact-checking.

Holan – again, predictably – did not comment when asked specifically if readers could expect an article confirming Stewart’s claims about Kaine’s ever-changing position on offshore drilling as “True.”

Of course, whether a claim “would cause the average person to say, ‘I wonder if that’s true,'” is an entirely subjective assessment to be made by the PolitiFact staff, and that us just how they like it. It allows them to brush off claims that they do not want to “fact-check” (read: Democrat lies) by claiming that the average person would not wonder about the claim.

The entire premise of fact-checking websites like PolitiFact is a joke. They are simply weaponized partisan attack machines designed to move the political needle towards the left.