Don't call PolitiFact an "independent fact-checker." When they assemble to select their "Lie of the Year," they have singled out Donald Trump in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020 and 2021. No Democrat has been tagged with this dishonor since Trump arrived on the scene.
It was Trump again this year, as PolitiFact tweeted: "A lie marked a town and its residents in the name of campaign rage. It was absurd. It was consequential. Our Lie of the Year goes to Donald Trump and JD Vance for false claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pet dogs and cats."
This was an unproven accusation in a presidential debate. It's also exactly the pick you expect if you only poll liberals. Everything in the "fact-checking" racket is about target selection. Republicans are "fact-checked" more, and get harsher ratings for dishonesty.
PolitiFact reported "eating the pets" won in a "landslide" in their readers' poll, with 54%. The second-place finisher was also Trump: the argument that FEMA is spending its disaster dollars on illegal migrants drew 17%. In fact, if you look at the 10 items PolitiFact listed for readers, the Trump side -- including Vance, Elon Musk and Marjorie Taylor Greene -- drew 88% of the votes!
"Joe Biden won't pardon Hunter Biden" was on the ballot, and it drew 6%. But they don't call that a lie. That's a "Full Flop."
Now let's list a bunch of blatant falsehoods the Democrats will not put on a Lie of the Year ballot:
Joe Biden is sharp as a tack, the best version of Biden ever (see Joe Scarborough).
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Inflation is "falling." (Prices haven't.)
Donald Trump was found "liable for rape" by a Manhattan jury.
Kamala Harris was never the "border czar."
Jan. 6 was "the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War" (see Kamala Harris).
Trump's election would coincide with the end of American democracy. Let's hope that will look like their Big Lie in the years to come. The Democrats abruptly replacing Biden with Harris would never be categorized as undemocratic.
PolitiFact's Maria Ramirez Uribe, one of the co-authors of the 3,500-word "Lie of the Year" report, was actually sent to Springfield, Ohio, in September. That article began with a sympathetic Haitian immigrant. "Vilbrun Dorsainvil said he fled his home country, Haiti, after someone tried to kidnap him. Three years later, he says he's afraid for his and his community's safety in the U.S." He feared a mass shooting.
The Left always smells racism and xenophobia whenever mass immigration causes anxiety among the natives. They naturally and staunchly side with recent migrants over native-born Americans. Uribe and her "Lie of the Year" co-author Amy Sherman touted a commenter to the United Way: "We choose love over lies. You are welcome here."
The Left was deeply invested in playing up "hate speech" and death threats. Uribe described "Dozens of bomb threats at schools, grocery stores, and government buildings. The police department sent an officer to protect churchgoers at a Haitian Creole Sunday afternoon mass. Haitian restaurant owners and schoolchildren heard taunts from people using Trump's words."
In other words, Trump spreads "racist tropes." This can sound more like Democrat campaign communication than "fact-checking." Uribe minimized all the social problems and taxpayer costs from massive immigration in Springfield as mere "growing pains," without questioning the wave and how Team Biden facilitated it.
"Fact-checking" is often spin-spoiling, and PolitiFact clearly hates the spin that mass importation is a serious problem that should be solved with mass deportation ... and they hate that voters favor mass deportation.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
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