This Is Not a Fact-Check
Fact-checks should be clarifying, not pedantic or offering counter-spin.
The political fact-check took off in 2015 thanks to Donald Trump’s tendency to spew lies at an astonishing rate. During his four years in office, The Washington Post found that he lied 30,573 times or an average of 21 lies per day. The sheer volume of work required to check his every sentence was a full-time job. Whether that job was useful was a matter of debate, but it was in the interest of major outlets to stand for truth, and fact-checking is ostensibly about truth.
But as seen from the first and second night of the Democratic National Convention, reporters for major outlets cannot figure out what “fact-checking” is in the sense of how it would be useful for readers. What becomes clear from reading some of the commentaries on the night from these self-proclaimed fact-checkers is that they’re not interested in establishing truth but trying to make sure that they appear balanced by saying that Democrats and Republicans both bend the truth. This has the benefit of flattering both the reporter and the reader who think that they can see The Matrix, unlike the rubes who believe in politics and desire particular outcomes.
Take for example this delightfully unhinged bit of “fact-checking” from Washington Post National Reporter Amy Gardner on Night One:
Now, perhaps Gardner has been in a coma for the last decade and has never read a single thing about Donald Trump. Maybe she really believes that Trump will graciously accept defeat if such a defeat is clear to him. Of course, everyone who was remotely conscious knows that’s absurd. Gardner isn’t doing a fact-check; she’s doing pedantry. Anyone who knows Trump’s M.O. knows it’s not in his character to say he lost. He’s still mad The Apprentice never won an Emmy.
Glenn Kessler, who doles out “Pinocchios” for claims that don’t pass his fact-check, was as ludicrous as Gardner in his assessment of the first night. Here’s how Kessler approached Trump’s comments on the violence in Charlottesville in 2017:
“I ran for president in 2020 because of what I saw in Charlottesville in August of 2017 … When the president was asked what he thought had happened, Donald Trump said, and I quote, ‘There are very fine people on both sides.’ My God, that’s what he said. That is what he said and what he meant.”
— President Joe Biden
Trump’s meaning is in dispute. The march on Charlottesville by white supremacists in August 2017 — and President Trump’s response to it — was a central event of his presidency. Over the course of several days, Trump made a number of contradictory remarks, permitting both his supporters and foes to create their own version of what happened.
Biden has frequently claimed that Trump said the white supremacists were “very fine people.” But the reality is more complicated. Trump was initially criticized for not speaking more forcefully against the white nationalists on the day of the clashes, Aug. 12. Then, in an Aug. 14 statement, Trump actually condemned right-wing hate groups — “those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
But Trump muddied the waters on Aug. 15, a day later, by also saying: “You had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.” It was in this news conference that he said: “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
Trump added: “There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones.”
The problem for Trump is that there was no evidence of anyone other than neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the Friday night rally on Aug. 11. He asserted there were people who were not alt-right who were “very quietly” protesting the removal of Lee’s statue.
It’s possible Trump became confused and was really referring to the Saturday rallies. But that’s also wrong. A Fact Checker examination of videos and testimony about the Saturday rallies found that there were white supremacists, there were counterprotesters — and there were heavily armed anti-government militias who showed up on Saturday.
The evidence shows there were no quiet protesters against removing the statue that weekend.
To kick off with “Trump’s meaning is in dispute” is already ceding the value of a fact-check. It says that since Trump said different things at different times, we don’t know if he thinks white supremacists are “very fine people.” But we do know that. We know that because Trump has a history of racist actions. We know that Trump’s inner circle contains Stephen Miller, a vehemently anti-immigrant advisor who cited the website of the hate group VDARE.
If you remove enough context, then sure, maybe Trump’s comments are some great mystery, and you can dispute the accusation that Trump thinks white supremacists are “very fine people.” But by that point, Kessler’s goal is clear. He isn’t here to check facts as much as he’s trying to make his coverage seem “balanced” even if it means bending over backward to give Trump the most charitable interpretation possible, at which point, you’re not doing journalism; you’re doing spin.
But let’s not single out The Washington Post because The New York Times was just as abysmal if not worse. Linda Qiu is the “Fact-check Reporter” for the Times, and she rattled off some gems including this one from Night Two:
— Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico
This is exaggerated.
Mr. Trump campaigned in 2016 on repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, but Republicans in Congress never succeeded.
Though Mr. Trump continues to criticize the health care law as an expensive “disaster,” his statements this campaign have been more ambiguous. And he has said he would retain protections for patients with pre-existing conditions.
“I’m not running to terminate the ACA,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media in March, adding that he would make the health care law “much, much, much better for far less money.” He echoed that message in a video in April.
Mr. Trump has not released any specific details on what this would entail. On his campaign website, he pledged to protect “patients with pre-existing conditions,” though this promise is at odds with his record.
So where’s the lie? Where’s the “exaggeration?” Don’t tell me Donald Trump didn’t try to repeal the ACA; we all saw it happen in 2017 and how it was only saved by an ailing John McCain giving a nay vote. Repealing the ACA is what Trump wants and if you’re only looking at the words of a known liar rather than his actions, then you have no business in trying to convey the truth.
Look, I don’t want fact-checkers to only say nice things about Democrats. If Kamala Harris gets up on that DNC stage on Thursday and says, “I’m the most popular Vice President of all time and I have never done anything wrong,” then the Post should call her out. Unfortunately for political reporters who think the highest good is appearing even-handed, there’s only one blowhard in this Presidential race.
Recommendations
I feel like it’s a little easy to glide past Casino in Scorsese’s filmography. After all, if you want an incredible Martin Scorsese gangster movie from the 90s starring De Niro and Pesci, Goodfellas is right there. But you shouldn’t sleep on Casino, which is yet another terrific entry from a master filmmaker about delusional men who can’t see past their own venal ends. Plus, Sharon Stone is fantastic in this, and she absolutely earned her Best Actress Oscar nomination. The film’s 4K is on sale on Amazon for $10.13.
Note: I receive a small percentage of sales made through my Amazon Associates links.
What I’m Watching
I finished watching The Queen’s Gambit, just a scant four years after it was a massive hit. But hey, at least that’s the upside to streaming where you can check out a show any time rather than only when it’s airing.
Even though I didn’t binge it (I started watching in May and then took a long break between episodes four and five for no good reason), I didn’t think there was a weak episode in the bunch. Not only was it beautifully made and knew how to capture the excitement of chess cinematically (not the easiest task when it’s just people moving pieces on a board!), but it’s also a great showcase for its cast. Lead actor Anya Taylor-Joy is one of our most exciting stars, and she made a meal of playing Beth Harmon without ever resorting to scenery chewing. You can see she’s an incredibly precise performer who uses her captivating eyes to convey a wealth of emotions. I also love that her co-stars also had the opportunity to shine (shoutout to Marielle Heller, who plays Beth’s adoptive mother, but who is better known as the writer-director behind Oscar-nominated movies like Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), and while Taylor-Joy holds everything together, there’s not a throwaway character in the piece.
While there was stuff in 2020 that gained attention simply because people were stuck at home during the pandemic (hi, Tiger King), I feel like The Queen’s Gambit is so good that it would have been a sensation at any time.
What I’m Reading
If I stick to a reading schedule, I can finish The Power Broker by early September. I’m over 800 pages into this tome, and I have so many (positive) thoughts about it, but I’ll save them for when I’m done reading the book.
In other reads:
‘The Blind Side’ Made Him Famous. But He Has a Different Story to Tell. by Michael Sokolove [The New York Times Magazine] - In this great piece of journalism, Sokolove gets to the heart of the conflict between ex-NFL linebacker Michael Oher and the family that claimed to have adopted him, the Tuoys—both sides can tell the same story and reach different conclusions. The Tuohys can see an impoverished young man, and feel like they were nothing but generous in taking him in and guiding him to their alma matter and ultimately the NFL. In this telling, the Tuohys are heroes except for one glaring matter that Oher gets to here: they erased his identity. He essentially becomes a prop in a story of Nice White People (and how “nice” they were is debatable considering they didn’t adopt him as they claimed but put him into a conservatorship despite Oher being both fully mentally and physically capable of taking care of himself), and his story no longer belongs to him, but becomes something the Tuoyhs can repackage and sell to their ongoing benefit.
Also, as an aside, I don’t think The Blind Side author Michael Lewis is ever going to get his credibility back. He burned a lot of it at the altar of Sam Bankman-Fried, and even here when confronted with hard facts that Oher wasn’t living in a trailer but a prefabricated house, Lewis replied to Sokolove, “You should ask the Tuohys about that,” he replied (I guess simply driving to a location and checking it was too much of a lift for Lewis in writing The Blind Side). This is on top of Lewis breezing past his pre-existing friendship with the family’s patriarch, Sean Touhy, and dismissing Oher’s recent claims as the result of C.T.E. essentially arguing that Oher is now too brain-damaged to be grateful. Anyway, buy the next Michael Lewis book at your own peril.
‘It Ends with Us’ Is a Movie About Domestic Violence, So Why Are Blake Lively and Colleen Hoover Acting Like It Isn’t? by Kate Erbland [Indiewire] - There’s much ado right now about the behind-the-scenes conflict of the new movie It Ends with Us. My friend Kate Erbland cuts through all of that to get to a more pressing issue about the gap between the marketing and the film’s subject matter. It appears that the film’s two most visible players—producer and star Blake Lively and the book’s author Colleen Hoover—decided to ignore the issue of domestic violence at the heart of the movie because that would be a downer, and they only showed they cared about the issue after the film had opened to a successful $50 million at the box office and therefore wouldn’t be a potential detriment to that valuable opening weekend number.
Racked by Pain and Enraptured by a Right-Wing Miracle Cure by Eli Saslow [The New York Times] - These next two stories are about the right-wing griftosphere, both in terms of the grifters and the grifted. On the one hand, I get the impulse to reject empathizing with any of these people. After all, they wholeheartedly support a guy who tried to overthrow the 2020 election, continues to claim it was stolen despite zero evidence, and whose platform for 2024 is deeply authoritarian. Do these people deserve any sympathy at all? Must we go to another diner to check in on their feelings?
This article by Eli Saslow makes an interesting case beyond simple political grievance. The dream of “medbeds” that can cure any ailment speaks to how grifters will fill a vacuum where the government fails. Reading the case of Michael Chesebro and those like him, I see people who still want government assistance (they believe a Trump election will roll out these medbeds to the masses), but right-wing grifters come in and say, “The liberals are denying you the thing they want, giving it to their buddies or undeserving populations, and if you give your money to me and my pals, we’ll hook you up. We are the ones who truly feel your pain.” Perhaps I’m being naïve, but this all makes me feel like the answer for Democrats is to be more generous with benefits rather than negotiate with the right wing on how difficult it should be to access said benefits. Making healthcare more onerous to obtain directs people to those pushing magic hyperbaric chambers and charging $85/hour to tell you to think positive thoughts while you’re in the chamber.
Men On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown by David Roth [Defector] - I like that Roth gets to a truth about online right-wing grifters like the Christopher Rufos of the world: they’re in the business of content. There is no political agenda here beyond finding various minorities and making their lives miserable. You can’t improve anyone’s life because that’s counter to the claim that government has a role to play. What you can do is seize on every possible grievance for precious engagement and clout, and that hustle starts to fall apart the second you note it for what it is: a weirdo’s con game. In this light, it’s not too surprising that the standard bearer for the Republican Party, Donald Trump, is a con artist and also a creepy weirdo.
Romeo and Juliet Was a Tragedy by Lila Shapiro [Vulture] - This article came out last September, but I finally got around to watching Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and it all ties back around to the Oher story about adults manipulating and abusing the trust of young people. Stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey suing Paramount over their mistreatment and exploitation on the set is part of a larger story of how grifters come into the actors’ lives and try to push them to their own ends. It’s just so damn sad because while the 1968 movie is great, I hate that Whiting and Hussey had to endure such terrible treatment through the decades, first from Zeffirelli and now from various predatory figures who seem to view the film’s stars as new marks for various ventures. I don’t think Whiting and Hussey have much hope of finding any justice in the legal system, but I hope they can find some kind of solace rather than sharks circling the waters.
What I’m Hearing
Barack Obama shared his summer playlist, and aside from being a collection of good songs, it’s just a nice thing. It feels relatable in a way that’s not asking for anything. Obama will never run for another office, and while he will seek to boost Democrats, there doesn’t seem to be an ulterior motive here. It’s basically, “Here’s what I’m listening to right now. Take it or leave it.”
What I’m Playing
Everything? I’ve been jumping around a lot, so I’ve been playing bits of The Last of Us Part II: Remastered, Grim Fandango Remastered, Hi-Fi Rush, and Sea of Stars. Will I drop all of this when Star Wars Outlaws comes out? Honestly, it depends on the reviews. The collection of previews from about a month ago were kind of mixed with some saying the gameplay was dry and uninteresting while others said it felt like Star Wars meets Red Dead Redemption, which is what I’m looking for. The game comes out at the end of the month, so we’ll see (although however it goes, I’m not getting the $110 “Gold Edition” because I refuse to pay $110 for a digital game; I don’t care how many bonuses it comes with).