Few people in the Trump-supporting half of America believe the major “fact checking” websites are independent or nonpartisan. On their YouTube page, PolitiFact claims: “PolitiFact’s mission is to make the world a better place for facts. We’re a nonpartisan, independent newsroom dedicated to fact-checking journalism.”
But that’s not factual. NewsBusters analysts reviewed PolitiFact articles from January to May 2025 that evaluated a named politician or public official with a “Truth-O-Meter” ruling, and their tilted version of the "truth" shows that PolitiFact is not nonpartisan. It remains a “reliable” partisan asset for Democrats.
For President Trump and the Republicans, PolitiFact tagged them as “Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants On Fire” on 58 of 68 occasions (85.2 percent). That’s a dramatic contrast with the Democrats, who were rated “Mostly False” or worse in nine of 23 checks (39 percent). Donald Trump landed on the False side on all 24 occasions he was checked.
So it’s not just the percentage of falsehood warnings, but the sheer number. Republicans drew 58 red flags, and Democrats had nine. This count is not meant to imply that PolitiFact was wrong to evaluate the facts in each incident, but that their counts demonstrate an aggressive partisan targeting. Just in May, the Republicans drew 16 checks -- and all 16 were on the False side.
This is the full breakdown: from January through May, Republicans were rated “True” or “Mostly True” only six times, “Half True” on four occasions, and 58 times on the False side. By contrast, Democrats were rated as “True or Mostly True” eight times, “Half True” five times, and nine times on the False side. So in raw numbers, Democrats had more rulings on the “True” side overall than the Republicans, eight to six.
In the first five months of the year, PolitiFact tagged Republicans as “Pants On Fire” six times and the Democrats had a big fat zero. Three were “awarded” to Trump, one to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one to Attorney General Pam Bondi, and one for “special government employee” Elon Musk.
Trump is unparalleled in drawing the “Pants On Fire” rating – a staggering 207 flamers over the history of PolitiFact. That’s 19 percent of his 1,095 “fact checks.” That’s more than his 122 ratings of “True” or “Mostly True.” Overall, Trump was identified as “Mostly False” or worse in 847 of 1,095 checks, or 77 percent.
Compare that record to PolitiFact’s evaluations of Barack Obama since they were founded in 2007 just as Obama first ran for president. Out of 603 “fact checks,” Obama has been flagged on the False side on 151 occasions, or 25 percent. He's been considered “True” or “Mostly True” in 289 articles (48 percent).
In our previous survey – of January through September 2024 -- the disparity between the two parties was similar, but slightly less: 82 percent “Mostly False” or worse for the GOP (88 of 107) compared to 41 percent for the Democrats (31 of 75).
In the fourth quarter of 2024, the number of fact checks decreased dramatically in November and December. Because October was the last full month of the campaign, both parties drew a larger percentage of “False” warnings. For the quarter, Republicans were tagged on the False side in 36 of 40 articles (90 percent), and the Democrats were surprisingly flagged on the False side on 12 of 19 occasions (63 percent).
But notice again, the disparity in False flags in the fourth quarter was 36 to 12. Republicans were tagged as "Pants On Fire" five times, and Democrats again drew zero.
This year, Donald Trump landed on the False side on all 24 occasions he was checked. In our previous survey of the first nine months of 2024, it was 57 to zero. Trump drew one "Mostly True" in October, but in the fourth quarter the False/True ratio was 11 to 1. So from January 2024 through May 2025, Trump's False/True ratio was 92 to 1.