Tipsheet

Did You Notice Newsweek's Evolution of their Fact-Check on Ted Cruz's Claim About COVID Relief Checks?

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  March 11, 2021 9:30 PM

Leave it to Sen. Ted Cruz with the zingers, especially when he’s there to remind folks that he’s right, and he’s been right all along. Cruz warned that the $1,400 stimulus checks from the COVID ‘relief’ bill were going to go to illegal immigrants.

These comments, which, again, turn out to bed true, led to a huge showdown with Majority Whip, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who has also served as the Minority Whip. Durbin emphasized on the Senate floor that the claims were “just plain false.” The exchange occurred during the vote-o-rama over the weekend, before the bill ultimately passed. 

While Sen. Cruz tried to ask a question on the Senate floor, Durbin shot him down. “No, I won't," Durbin said.” It is not true, and we know what's going on here. They want to be able to give speeches that say the checks go to undocumented people."

Cruz had sought an amendment which would prevent the stimulus checks from going towards illegal immigrants.

The spat didn’t stop on the Senate floor, but continued over Twitter, with Durbin claiming that “Sen. Cruz's claim is only meant to rile people up over something that's not true.”

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A March 8 fact-check from Newsweek was quick to claim that Cruz’s point was “mostly false.” They were then forced to issue a correction, and changed their ruling to “true.”

The fact-check now acknowledges that:

Immigrants who overstay their visas no longer are lawfully in the country but retain their Social Security numbers and therefore are eligible to receive a check.

In “The Ruling” section, which now says “True,” Newsweek writes:

Cruz's claim that millions of illegal immigrants would receive stimulus payments is true, given the amount of people who have overstayed their visas over the years. Once they overstay, they technically are considered "illegal."

For some reason, Newsweek needs the Customs and Border Patrol to confirm for them that once someone overstays their visa they are here illegally. 

Just as Cruz isn't, we're not expecting Durbin to apologize either. It’s not merely the Daily Beast though that owes Cruz an apology for not acknowledging he told the truth. Then again, it is fitting that the senator would focus on this specific outlet. The story appears as part of a “Rile People Up” section for the Daily Beast. Even just a basic search shows that they are obsessed with Cruz, with the outlet covering the senator multiple times a day, especially late last month.

In case the senator is looking for more outlets to correct the record, he might wish to keep Mediate, the San Antonio Current, and Business Insider. 

The Recount on Twitter was also way too excited to retweet a video of Durbin. The original tweet comes from Daniel Uhlfelder, who is as equally over enthusiastic to "Remove Ron" DeSantis as governor in Florida come 2022.

Cruz mentioned over Facebook that “I want to commend Newsweek for doing the right thing and making the responsible journalistic decision to correct their story.” 

It likely was a painstaking move for Newsweek to have to issue such a correction; they appear to be no fan of Cruz either. Newsweek failed to issue a correction for their a March 7 piece, though, which mentioned that Sen. John Barrasso's (R-WY) also made similar points about illegal immigrants. 

As Sen. Cruz reminds us, though, “facts are stubborn things.”

After passing both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, the bill was signed into law on Thursday by President Joe Biden, a day earlier than initially announced.