Friday, September 13, 2024

One-Sided Fact Checking

During the debate, the moderators were Johnny on the spot to offer corrections to Trump but somehow never had any corrections for Harris.  Obviously, Harris didn't say anything that needed fact checking.  Right.  Interestingly, the moderators had some facts on hand for some of Trump's claims, showing they had done their research.  For instance, when Trump brought up the cats being eaten by Haitian immigrants in Ohio, David Muir revealed that ABC had contacted the city manager and could not confirm the claims.  Wow, that's an obscure fact to have already checked.  Impressive.  But then Harris brought up Charlottesville, stating that Trump viewed Neo-Nazis as "very fine people."  Neither David Muir nor Linsey Davis challenged the claim.  So it is true?

No, even Snopes, not known to be a right-wing organization, rated this false.  This is a 7-year-old story where you can watch the video or read the transcript.  It is clear that Trump was stating that the fine people were those who wanted to keep Robert E. Lee's statue and those who wanted to remove it.  He specifically condemned Neo-Nazis:

I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.

Trump offered this clarification in the same response where he said "very fine people, on both sides."  Yet somehow, 7 years after the event, this is still unknown.  The news does not inform, it propagandizes.  The Fine People Hoax was debunked as soon as it was reported, but somehow Muir and Davis didn't have this fact check ready.

Muir himself had questioned Kamala in the 2020 primaries about gun control.  She was in favor of it.  While Biden was saying her executive order plan wasn't constitutional, she suggested he say "Yes we can."  Now, she says no one is coming for your guns.  Muir didn't need to research since he was moderating when she said it.  Silence.

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