PolitiFact Tries to Protect Dem Candidates, Exposed For Bogus ‘Fact-Checking’

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Oct 19, 2018

PolitiFact, which is absolutely a non-partisan “fact-checking” organization (and don’t you dare suggest otherwise, you looney conspiracy theorist) was forced to retract a bogus ruling that sought protect Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) from a Republican attack ad.

“You know, that’s one thing the United States has that nobody else has, is the freedom to fly around and be affordable where a normal person can afford it,” a constituent told McCaskill at a 2017 town hall.

The constituent was referring to his own own private plane, which McCaskill confirmed to Free Beacon at the time.

“Will you remind them when they come after me about my husband’s plane that normal people can afford it?” McCaskill responded to her constituent.

But when the Senate Leadership Fund ran an ad attacking McCaskill for being out of touch with her constituents for thinking that “normal people” can afford private planes, it struck a chord with the arbiters of truth over at PolitiFact.

“Did Claire McCaskill say normal people can afford a private plane? No,” the organization said definitively, attaching a link to its story.

Shortly thereafter, they unpublished the story, claiming that they received “new evidence” that may not support their “False” rating of the original story.

To be clear, that “new evidence” was readily available before they published the original story – they either chose to ignore it, or did not properly research the evidence before publishing their story. After all the hoopla, PolitiFact issued a new “fact-check.”

This time they labeled the ad “half-true,” claiming that it “exaggerated” McCaskill’s statements.

This is the second time that PolitiFact has run cover for a Democrat candidate this week. Earlier in the week, they labeled an objectively true claim made by Rep. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) as “mostly false.”

McSally is running against Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) for U.S. Senate.

“While we were in harm’s way in uniform, [Sinema] was protesting us in a pink tutu and denigrating our service,” McSally, a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, said at a rally.

While acknowledging the truth in McSally’s statement, PolitiFact still called her a liar. Here is thier explanation:

McSally in a campaign ad said, “While we were in harm’s way in uniform, Kyrsten Sinema was protesting us in a pink tutu and denigrating our service.”

McSally retired from the Air Force in 2010 after 26 years of military service. After 9/11, Sinema led protests against the war in Iraq. At a 2003 rally called “No War! A Celebration of Life and Creativity,” Sinema wore a pink tutu. Media reports of the rallies in 2002 and 2003 quote Sinema as opposing the war and the Bush administration’s policy, but we found no evidence of her disparaging troops.

McSally’s statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

Attending the anti-war rally was not, in itself, “disparaging” enough for McSally to even receive a “half-true” rating from PolitiFact. The fact-checking jokers based their entire case against McSally not on the fact that the claim of Sinema’s anti-war protesting was inherently true, but rather on definition of the word “disparaging.”

At what point can we all agree that “fact-checking” sites like PolitiFact are simply leftist public relations entities?

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