Imma coin a new term for these false "fact" checks: Fake checks.
This is a few days old.
But let's cover it now, because now Joe Rogan is talking about it, too.
The New York Times offered a baffling fact-check of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s claim that a popular breakfast cereal in the United States contains several artificial ingredients.
The former Democratic-turned-Independent presidential candidate endorsed President-elect Donald Trump after suspending his 2024 campaign in August. On Thursday, Trump announced he had nominated Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services in his incoming administration.
Kennedy has pledged to tackle chronic health issues facing Americans and take on "corruption" within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in order to "Make America Healthy Again."
In an interview on MSNBC after Trump's victory earlier this month, Kennedy suggested the second Trump administration could eliminate entire departments within the FDA: "In some categories, their entire departments, like the nutrition department in the FDA, they have to go. They're not doing their job. They're not protecting our kids. Why do we have Froot Loops in this country that have 18 or 19 ingredients, and you go to Canada, and it's got two or three?"
The New York Times published a report on Friday analyzing Kennedy's views on artificial food ingredients that specifically fact-checked the Trump nominee for his claims about Froot Loops using different ingredients in their U.S. product versus Canadian product.
"Mr. Kennedy has singled out Froot Loops as an example of a product with too many artificial ingredients, questioning why the Canadian version has fewer than the U.S. version," the Times' report read. "But he was wrong. The ingredient list is roughly the same, although Canada's has natural colorings made from blueberries and carrots while the U.S. product contains red dye 40, yellow 5 and blue 1 as well as Butylated hydroxytoluene, or BHT, a lab-made chemical that is used 'for freshness,' according to the ingredient label."
Is that all?
According to a statement given to the Washington Post by Kennedy spokesperson, Stefanie Spear, Kennedy was referring to the differences in food dyes in the American and Canadian versions of the cereal.
"We can all unify behind the goal of making American food the healthiest and most nutritious in the world," Spear said in her statement.
The NYT's strange fact-check, which seemed to prove rather than disprove Kennedy's point about artificial ingredients being included in the U.S. version of the cereal, drew critics to mock the paper.
"Spitting out my coffee after reading this NYT 'fact check' of RFK Jr.," X user Brad Cohn wrote in a post that drew over 4 million views on the social media platform.
He added in mockery, "'As you see, the ingredient list is just completely identical, except the US product contains formaldehyde, cyanide, and nearly undetectable levels of saxitoxin.'"
Okay that's a parody list of ingredients but it's True In Spirit.
It's worse than that, akshually.
Because if these Fake Checkers had bothered to check any actual facts, they'd have found, which I found by complete accident, that Yellow Dye Number Five is one of the chemicals that RFKJr. is most passionate about getting out of our foods.
And of course, right there in the ingredients list for the American formula for Froot Loops, is Yellow Dye #5.
Below, Kennedy rips adding tartrazine to foods intended for humans.
Tatrazine is more often known by the anodyne name "Yellow Dye #5" in American foods' ingredients lists.
Is Kennedy right that tartrazine is dangerous? I don't know, but I know that the corporate-owned FDA allows a lot of chemicals that a lot of western countries have banned for use in human food. I'd like to hear his evidence.
Unlike the NY Times, I don't automatically side with Big Food when it comes to the artificial ingredients they add into our food to hide the fact that this food looks and smells awful without the addition of chemicals.
How could the Fake Checkers have failed to turn this up in their Fake Check? Are they so ignorant they they did a "fact" check without doing the minimum possible amount of fact checking into RFKJr.'s agenda? Are they really completely ignorant of the fact that one of Froot Loops' ingredients is the one ingredient Kennedy objects to the most vociferously?
Or -- did they actually know but conceal this information from readers anyway, because Kennedy is now connected with Trump and no matter how reasonable, anything proposed by someone connected to Trump must be lied about and claimed to be the Devil's Work?
That's what Joe Rogan thinks is going on.
I don't know. I'd put my money on pure ignorance. Our "experts" are a shoddy, stupid lot, we're discovering more and more.
Joe Rogan ERUPTS on The New York Times for "fack-checking" RFK Jr. on toxic food ingredients while simultaneously proving him right.
"That made my brain hurt just reading it."
The "fact-check" in question all started when The New York Times claimed RFK Jr. was "wrong" about differences in Froot Loops' ingredients between Canada and the United States.
However, their own reporting admitted that the U.S. version contains harmful chemicals like Red Dye 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1, and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), while the Canadian version uses "natural colorings made from blueberries and carrots."
"So they're literally saying he was wrong, but he was right," Rogan scoffed. "That is the f--king dangerous chemicals banned in Canada that we're trying to get rid of in America!"
Rogan continued to question what possible motivation the The New York Times could have to "fact-check" RFK Jr.'s efforts to remove toxic ingredients from the food supply.
"Like, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to remove all leftover credibility? Are you trying to k*ll it all?" Rogan asked. "Are you secretly working for the Chinese? Like, what are you doing?"
Rogan's guest, Jimmy Corsetti, concluded, "It's probably backed by Monsanto or something."
The ingredients list is roughly the same, except much longer, and uses artificial, possibly poisonous dyes derived from coal tar instead of natural sources of coloration like blueberries and carrots.
But otherwise -- "roughly" the same!
As Rogan asks, rhetorically -- what is your target, New York Times? Zero credibility? Is very low credibility you already have weighing you down and you want to shed it like it's extra fat around the middle?