The fact chucking industrial complex
By 
The consensus of the major political press, in a radical departure from 8 years ago, that nothing in the internal communications of the Trump campaign is news would be easier to take if fewer reporters were assigned to the “invent tortured reasons why it’s a lie for Democrats to quote Trump verbatim” beat:
The NYT would genuinely be doing the worst fact checking job all time this week, and are only not because the Washington Post is doing an even worse job pic.twitter.com/lhVGslO99H— Basil☀️ (@LinkofSunshine) August 21, 2024
Let’s leave aside the dubious enterprise of pedantically fact-checking jokes and address the more substantive issue. It’s “exaggerated” to say that Trump and Vance wanted to repeal the ACA even though they both supported repealing the ACA and it passed the House but failed by one vote in the Senate? To review, the dramatic moment where McCain was delayed and had to get the attention of the clerk to vote out of order when the ACA repeal failed? The reason for the delay was that TRUMP WAS LITERALLY ON THE PHONE WITH HIM URGING HIM TO VOTE TO REPEAL THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT! For his part, J.D. Vance wrote an op-ed advocating the repeal of the ACA in a little newspaper called the New York Times. This is misinformation, not fact-checking.
The idea that you can’t talk about Trump and Vance’s position on healthcare because they (barely) failed to get their way once and because Trump lies a lot reminds me of the Savvy media consensus that because through some flukes and contingencies Republicans had failed to get Roe overruled that meant they didn’t really want to and it was out of bounds for Democrats to mention it. We all know how that worked out.
Similarly, because of the Both Sides Do It imperative that professional fact-checkers consider more important than actually checking facts, Glenn Kessler keeps coming up with inane pedantic criticisms that don’t even rise to the level of technical accuracy:
Even so, Kessler was required to stretch the concept of fact-checking to absurdity — sometimes mangling facts himself — to fill out his fact check for the first night of the DNC. For example, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s claim that Vice President Kamala Harris “won’t be sending love letters to dictators.” As Kessler notes, Clinton was referring to 2018 comments by Trump claiming that he “fell in love” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un through letters. “We fell in love, okay?” Trump said. “No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.” Kessler, however, dings Clinton. He says that “[t]here is no evidence that Trump sent such letters” and “Clinton is making a bit of a leap to suggest that Trump has written ‘love letters’ to dictators.” According to Kessler, “[w]e do not know what Trump wrote to Kim — or other dictators, for that matter.”
Kessler’s fact-check is not only pedantic, it is false. Bob Woodward, the legendary Washington Post reporter who still holds the title of “associate editor” at the paper, reported on 27 letters exchanged between Trump and Kim in his book “Rage” — including letters sent from Trump to Kim. “Like you, I have no doubt that a great result will be accomplished between our two countries, and that the only two leaders who can do it are you and me,” Trump wrote to Kim on December 28, 2018. On June 30, 2019, Trump told Kim in a letter that “[b]eing with you today was truly amazing.” Trump included a copy of the front page of the New York Times, which featured images of Trump with Kim, adding, “[t]hese images are great memories for me and capture the unique friendship that you and I have developed.”
After Media Matters’ Matt Gertz noted Kessler’s error, the article was corrected. But Kessler did not remove Clinton’s claim from the article and continued to suggest it was false or misleading. The correspondence between Trump and Kim, Kessler claims, “are mostly an exchange of negotiating positions on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.”
The “love letters” claim was one of several issues with Kessler’s fact-check article. Kessler also criticized Congressman Robert Garcia (D-CA) for claiming that Trump “told us to inject bleach into our bodies.” In an April 23, 2020 televised press conference, Trump suggested that people infected with COVID-19 could be treated effectively “by injection” of a “disinfectant.” The prospect, Trump said, “sounds interesting to me.” Kessler said that Garcia’s claim was “exaggerated” because “Trump did not say people should inject bleach into their bodies” and was simply suggesting it as a possibility for further medical research. That is not how everyone interpreted Trump’s remarks was recieved. Clorox released a statement clarifying that its products should not be injected or ingested. The Michigan Poison and Drug Information Center reported that, following Trump’s comments, “people acted on Trump’s advice and ingested chemicals, including bleach, across the country.”
Nothing like “fact-checking” that leaves the public less well-informed about the relevant issues. And it’s a consistent pathology, going back to the fact-chucker consensus that accurately describing Paul Ryan’s views about Medicare was the LIE OF THE MILLENNIUM.