The "No Kings" rally against President Donald Trump on June 14 featured several angry speeches from Democrats. Mediaite had this story: "Eric Swalwell 'Trump Is America's Hitler' Remark at Rally Sparks Viral Outrage." That gaseous D.C. speech was easily ignored by PolitiFact and those "independent fact-checkers."
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) says this repeatedly, and Mediaite added it's a regular line from Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.). Fox News host Neil Cavuto offered some mild pushback: "So you don't think that's a little hyperbolic?"
If we compared Clyburn to a mass-murdering dictator, would that be "a little hyperbolic"?
Two months ago at a similar "Hands Off" rally, Swalwell offered the same schtick to excite the leftist crowd: "This is what kicking the s--t out of fascism looks like!"
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz can rant at a law-school commencement ceremony that ICE is "Trump's modern-day Gestapo," and no one pounces on the Nazi smears.
You can put "Hitler" in the search engine at PolitiFact and you won't find them ever doing a fact check that says, "Trump is not a carbon copy of Hitler" or "our immigration law enforcement personnel are not the Gestapo."
However, on June 18, PolitiFact's Madison Czopek was throwing flags on Walz's behalf after the horrific assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home. The Patriot Oasis X account was ruled "False" that "Governor Tim Walz has DELETED every post he made praising Minnesota (assassin) Vance Boelter."
This built on a June 15 piece where Czopek took after "conservative X accounts" that linked Walz to Boelter: "We found no evidence that Walz and Boelter were closely acquainted nor any evidence that Walz was in any way linked to the shootings."
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In between those two posts, Czopek threw a "Pants on Fire" flag at Sen. Mike Lee for a "Based Mike Lee" X post that wisecracked about the Hortman killing: ""This is what happens (w)hen Marxists don't get their way." Lee later took this down.
Put aside for a second whether everything Czopek checked was "Pants on Fire." Clearly, her hair was on fire to defend Walz and the Democrats.
That wasn't all. On June 18, PolitiFact threw a "Pants on Fire" rating at "MAGA Michelle S," under the headline "Image of man wearing a 'Resist' shirt is not of Vance Boelter, but a Texas Democrat's husband." The shirt had a picture of a gun above "Resist." You can't claim Boelter was a Democrat, but you can claim Trump is Hitler.
In between these feverish accounts, PolitiFact awarded California Gov. Gavin Newsom a "Mostly True" for his statement, "California has lower homicide rates than Alabama, Arkansas and Oklahoma."
Louis Jacobson allowed that California's overall violent crime rate is higher, if you throw in the rapes and assaults -- hence the "Mostly" -- but "Newsom's comparisons are close to accurate, because he worded his assertions carefully to refer to the homicide rate."
In looking at PolitiFact checks on named politicians and appointees from January through May of this year, NewsBusters found PolitiFact tagged Republicans as "Mostly False," "False" or "Pants on Fire" on 58 of 68 occasions (85.2%). That's a dramatic contrast with the Democrats, who were rated "Mostly False" or worse in nine of 23 checks (39%). Notice the disparity in overall fact checks at 68 to 23.
After the Minnesota murders, discussions abounded about toning down the political rhetoric, which sounds nice. But Democrats have no fear that they will be hassled by "fact-checkers" when they uncork toxic smears about Republicans. They are neither the civility police nor the fact police.
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