Donald Trump’s nomination and election in 2016 triggered an explosion in fact-checkers, and the Trump era has reportedly been a golden era for the industry. Trump’s rise made newsrooms decide that “the truth matters now more than ever,” as they put it — self-damningly.
It turns out, though, that the eagerness of our fact-checkers to check the Trump campaign's claims varies depending on whom his campaign is harming with its falsehoods.
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Politifact has waded into the weeds of the Florida curriculum and its treatment of slavery. The fact-checker totally agreed with Vice President Kamala Harris that in Florida, “middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery.”
It’s always important to remember that self-styled fact-checkers are opinion writers who use more citations than most. This opinion by Politifact is within the realm of reasonability, but I think Harris was being misleading.
Specifically, Harris’s statement implies that the curriculum claims a net benefit to slaves from being enslaved. The curriculum claims nothing of the sort. Again, Politifact is entitled to its own opinion and its own interpretation of Harris’s words.
The irony is that multiple politicians supporting Trump have taken that obvious implication from Harris and falsely claimed that the Florida curriculum asserts slavery was a “net benefit” to slaves.
.@RonDeSantis, #1: slavery was not CTE! Nothing about that 400 years of evil was a “net benefit” to my ancestors. #2: there are only five black Republicans in Congress and you’re attacking two of them.
— John James (@JohnJamesMI) July 28, 2023
My brother in Christ… ????????♂️ if you find yourself in a deep hole put the shovel… https://t.co/9DGZw4BI0o
And note the similarities here:
As the direct descendent of a slave, I have a hard time understanding Governor DeSantis’ position that transferrable skills learned in bondage are somehow a net benefit. https://t.co/XNj5nkhEQP
— Wesley Hunt (@WesleyHuntTX) July 28, 2023
Democratic congressional aides joined the game.
DeSantis called Black Republicans “Democrats” because they criticized him
— Tim Mack (@TimMackJ) July 28, 2023
for saying slavery was a net benefit for all.
Democrats have their problems, but that party is a mess.
But, that ain’t none of my business. pic.twitter.com/Hvn22vYPmp
This is totally false. The words James, Hunt, and Mack put in quotation marks, “net benefit,” are nowhere in the curriculum. So, surely, Politifact is checking this viral claim, right?
Not at all. Politifact regularly fact-checks Trump surrogates, but not in this case.
Nor did any of the other prominent mainstream fact-checkers. Daniel Dale, who made his career fact-checking the Trump campaign, did not fact-check the Trump campaign when it was making up stuff about DeSantis. The Associated Press fact-checker hasn’t checked the Trump campaign’s attacks on DeSantis.
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The Washington Post fact-checker has also ignored this story. So has FactCheck.org. I can’t find a single major outlet to fact-check the false claim about Florida’s curriculum.
It’s enough to make one suspect that the truth matters less if it might help a conservative politician.