President Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly was the latest example of how our “independent fact-checkers” are better defined as Democrat-dependent messaging machines. Their selection bias is transparent.
PolitiFact was live-blogging, and throwing “Pants on Fire” rulings on their X account. For example, Trump claimed we were losing 300,000 Americans to fentanyl, which is exaggerated. Trump can’t say grocery prices are down. They’re up 1.9 percent in 2025.
CNN’s Daniel Dale was on speed dial from Canada for a televised pounce. Like the other “independents,” Dale couldn’t stand Trump taking credit for ending a list of wars, and then comes the nitpicking that some of these were disputes, not hot wars, and temporary ceasefires could be temporary. CNN's "Facts First" website is dedicated to attacking Trump.
One may certainly argue that an American president making a speech at the United Nations is a news event worth fact-checking. But it’s all in the targeting. Try to remember Daniel Dale or PolitiFact touching on President Biden’s speech to the UN last year. Biden was a “lame duck” in an election year, so why bother?
Kamala Harris is now going on a book tour. Does anyone think the ‘fact checkers” will get involved? On The Rachel Maddow Show, after being hyped as the "patron saint of 'I told you so,'" Harris uncorked a whopper about Trump.
“I called him at my speech on The Ellipse a tyrant. We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That's what we're dealing with right now in Donald Trump, and these titans of industry are not speaking up.”
Trump is a communist dictator? That’s what’s implied. Last year, PolitiFact threw a “Pants On Fire” when Trump called Kamala a communist. We can only guess that they won’t do the same in reverse. Democrats have routinely called Trump a “fascist” and compare him to Hitler and Mussolini, and PolitiFact and their ilk sit on their hands.
They don’t “fact check” Maddow and the rest of the cable-news hotheads. Maddow said to Kamala: “I feel like a lot of the defenses that we tried to build up in advance of this type of a sort of would-be authoritarian takeover were about warning people about how serious the threat was.”
You can say “authoritarian playbook” every 30 seconds and know the "fact checkers” will not point out that Trump and the Republicans were democratically elected.
Kamala then boosted Jimmy Kimmel: “As it relates to the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. We saw the power of the people over the last few days, and it spoke volumes, and it moved a decision in the right direction.” Kimmel can lie his face off about Charlie Kirk’s assassin being a Trump supporter, and the “fact checkers” didn’t ding the “comedian.” His heart’s moving in the “right direction,” so facts, schmacts.
Here again, PolitiFact was perfectly partisan. There was no fact check for Kimmel’s shameless lie. But they threw a “False” flag at Fox host Sean Hannity when he suggested "I can’t find a single, prominent conservative voice in the country that even remotely wanted or hoped or was pushing to get Jimmy Kimmel taken off the air.” He meant over the last few days. PolitiFact cried “False” – because Trump had previously tweeted that untalented Kimmel shouldn’t be on the air.
Jimmy Kimmel only has two PolitiFact checks over the 18 years of their existence. “Comedians” get a break when they lie. Trump has 213 “Pants on Fire” punishments. Trump’s attacks on liberals are very likely to be tagged as falsehoods, but almost everything is considered “fair game” when you attack Trump.