PolitiFact: Senior White House Officials Exist (Contrary to What Trump Said)

Apparently PolitiFact is beyond understanding why people regard news and fact-checking skeptically.

PolitiFact and The New York Times provided a handy 'Splainer of the problem, if they would only pay attention to themselves.

The New York Times reported that "senior White House official" said Trump's summit with North Korea, which Trump had called off, would be "impossible" to keep on its original date.

The Times used that reporting as part of a story supporting a narrative of administrative infighting within the Trump White House.

Trump went to Twitter in response:

The Failing @nytimes quotes “a senior White House official,” who doesn’t exist, as saying “even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.” WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.

PolitiFact fact checked Trump's claim, noting that even if the Times went too far with its paraphrase that Trump did not complain about that. PolitiFact ruled Trump's claim "Pants on Fire" because the Times' source exists even if the source did not say what the Times claimed.

That's a Crazy Way to Check Facts, PolitiFact

PolitiFact reasoned (!) that if the Times had a source for its article even if the source did not say what the article claimed, then it was ridiculously false to say that the source did not exist.

Trump is wrong that the senior White House official cited by the New York Times "doesn’t exist" and is "phony." In fact, the official in question, Pottinger, gave an authorized background briefing to dozens of reporters in person and via phone.

The New York Times article that Trump criticized may have gone too far by paraphrasing Pottinger as saying that a June 12 summit would be impossible, since Pottinger didn’t use that specific word. However, Pottinger did express a significant degree of skepticism about the prospect of a June 12 summit.

If that was Trump's gripe, it isn't what he said. The White House source did exist. We rate Trump’s statement Pants on Fire.

PolitiFact admitted the Times might have "gone too far" with its paraphrase of the source and despite that rated Trump's claim "Pants on Fire."

But in the real world of political communication, Trump's point was clear: No representative of the White House said the meeting was impossible.

A real fact check of Trump could have noted that Trump said the Times "quoted" its source. The Times paraphrased its source instead of using a quotation, so Trump was wrong about that.

But Trump was right that having the summit on its original date was not deemed impossible. And, taken literally, Trump accurately claimed that the White House source of the "impossible" claim does not exist.

PolitiFact does The New York Times a solid

PolitiFact told its readers it was giving them a "transcript" of the audio journalists produced to support the Times' reporting. But PolitiFact's supposed transcript was missing a key line that helps make the story easier to understand.

We're using the transcript posted by Mollie Z. Hemingway at the Federalist, using bold emphasis for the parts PolitiFact left out. We emphasize that the audio posted at PolitiFact matches the Federalist's version:

REPORTER: Can you clarify that…the President obviously announced in the letter and at the top of the bill signing that the summit is called off. But then, later, he said it’s possible the existing summit could take place, or a summit at a later date. Is he saying that it’s possible that June 12th could still happen?

WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: That’s…

REPORTER: Or has that ship sailed, right?

WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: I think that the main point, I suppose, is that the ball is in North Korea’s court right now. And there’s really not a lot of time. We’ve lost quite a bit of time that we would need in order to, I mean, there’s been an enormous amount of preparation that’s gone on over the past few months at the White House, at State, and with other agencies and so forth. But there’s a certain amount of actual dialogue that needs to take place at the working level with your counterparts to ensure that the agenda is clear in the minds of those two leaders when they sit down to actually meet and talk and negotiate, and hopefully make a deal. And June 12 is in 10 minutes, and it’s going to be, you know. But the President has said that he has — someday, that he looks forward to meeting with Kim.

With the missing part of the transcript, one can see that the unidentified reporter was asking a leading question ("that ship sailed, right?"). The "White House Official" did not affirm the leading question in so many words, but the foregone conclusion appeared in the so-called paraphrase of that official.

That's how the journalistic sausage is made.

And PolitiFact hid that from its readers for some mysterious reason.

That's what we call fact-checking, right?

That, PolitiFact, is why people distrust you and The New York Times. You don't tell the whole story and you don't tell it straight.

PolitiFact rewrites the Logan Act

We know that PolitiFact is non-partisan because it doesn't make mistakes like this.

A May 22, 2018 PolitiFact article (with no "Truth-O-Meter" rating) by John Kruzel looked at allegations of a secret meeting at a Paris restaurant between former secretary of state John Kerry and Iranian representatives.

PolitiFact judged that no solid evidence supported the allegations. More interestingly, PolitiFact framed its article as a defense of Kerry from charges he violated the Logan Act.

And that's where PolitiFact slipped up. Badly.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added):

Trump and right-wing backers challenged Kerry’s actions as violating the 18th century Logan Act, which prevents U.S. citizens from privately meeting with a foreign government to sway its decisions on matters involving the United States.

PolitiFact implies that because the private restaurant meeting probably didn't take place therefore charges Kerry violated the Logan Act have no basis in fact.

The problem? The Logan Act doesn't forbid U.S. citizens from privately meeting with foreign governments to make policy agreements on behalf of the United States. The Logan act prevents private citizens from conducting U.S. foreign policy on behalf of the United States.

The Logan Act:

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.

Making PolitiFact's fact check even more hilarious (and slanted), the paragraph preceding PolitiFact's erroneous description of the Logan Act describes Kerry meeting with various foreign officials, including an Iranian, regarding the Iran deal (bold emphasis added):

In the weeks before Trump’s May 8 decision to exit the deal and re-impose sanctions on Iran, Kerry had worked frantically behind the scenes to preserve the deal he helped craft in 2015, according to the Boston Globe. Ahead of the U.S. withdrawal, Kerry, who was secretary of state under President Barack Obama, met with Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, courted European officials and made dozens of calls to members of Congress in hopes of salvaging the accord.

PolitiFact's apparent effort to exonerate Kerry with its framing of the story ends up convicting Kerry, with the Logan Act properly understood.

How does a non-partisan fact checker make such a huge mistake?

Don't ask us.


Update May 23, 2018: Updated link to Internet Archive version of the PolitiFact article. The first version of that URL was somehow defective.

PolitiFact Wisconsin and the Worry-O-Meter

PolitiFact Wisconsin had no representation in our article on the worst 17 PolitiFact fact checks of 2017.

A May 18, 2018 fact check of Republican Leah Vukmir should help ensure PolitiFact Wisconsin makes the list for 2018.

Vukmir, a Republican looking for an opportunity to run against Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) in the 2018 election cycle, has used a hyperbolic ad campaign to paint Baldwin as weak on terrorism. Vukmir said Baldwin worried more about the architect of the 9-11 terrorist attacks than confirming Gina Haspel to head the CIA.

The key to Democrat opposition to the Haspel nomination stemmed from Haspel's involvement in the enhanced interrogation program, which included the technique of waterboarding. The CIA released a disciplinary review saying Haspel had no involvement in the decision to use enhanced interrogation, but that she simply carried out the orders she was issued.

PolitiFact Wisconsin adroitly skipped over all that and took the liberty of re-interpreting Vukmir's claim:

Does U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin have so much more concern for a 9/11 terrorist, compared to the president’s nominee to run the CIA, that she would vote against the nominee?

Vukmir's claim was more simple than PolitiFact Wisconsin's creative paraphrase (source: PolitiFact):

Tammy and her party are more interested, and they’re more worried about, the mastermind of 9/11 -- the individual that plotted and ultimately killed over 3,000 Americans on our soil. And she‘s more worried about those individuals than to support a very strong woman with a track record to be the head of the CIA.

Note that Vukmir did not say anything about what motivated Baldwin to withhold support for Haspel.

We suspect PolitiFact Wisconsin counts as a minority for its inability to figure out Vukmir's message: Opposing Haspel's nomination based merely on her following orders within the CIA hampers the CIA's ability to do its job effectively. Imagine working at the CIA and thinking one must second-guess the orders one receives to have a realistic shot at one day leading the CIA.

PolitiFact Wisconsin's fact check spent not a word on that angle of the story, sticking instead to its own idea that Vukmir must show that Baldwin personally showed significant worry about Khalid Sheik Mohammed in order to earn a rating better than "Pants on Fire."

Farcical Fact-Checking

To fact check what Vukmir actually said, PolitiFact Wisconsin would have needed evidence not only showing Baldwin's level of worry for Mohammed but also her level of worry for Haspel's nomination. Otherwise there's no baseline for determining one is greater than the other.

After all, Vukmir clearly made a claim comparing the two.

And how does one assess levels of worry without asserting an opinion? One might go by what a person said, but that assumes an entirely forthright subject. We don't know the answer. And PolitiFact offered no evidence it has an answer.

PolitiFact's approach was preposterous from the outset. It showed no specific level of worry over Mohammed and no specific level of worry over the Haspel nomination. And yet concluded that one was not lower than the other.

Vukmir's statement was best interpreted as hyperbole expressing the damage to CIA operations stemming from refusing a leadership role to a fully qualified woman for nothing more than following orders associated with the enhanced interrogation program--a program that the CIA described to leading congressional members of both parties without apparent objection at the time.

PolitiFact says it grants license for hyperbole. Exceptions doubtless stem, as we've said before, from Republicans trying to use hyperbole without a license.

• Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.

PolitiFact says it doesn't rate opinions. We suppose PolitiFact is entitled to its own opinion.


After Vukmir made her claim about Baldwin, Baldwin ended up voting in opposition to the Haspel nomination.

PolitiFact Editor: "There Might Be Some Inconsistencies From Time to Time"

During a PolitiFact Reddit AMA, we asked about PolitiFact's defense of the Affordable Care Act's "cuts" to Medicare compared to its antagonistic reporting of GOP efforts to cut Medicare and Medicaid.

PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic Holan responded:

Angie here ... We talked about the reasons for that in the Medicaid check. The Medicare reduction was aimed at cost efficiency, while the Medicaid reduction was aimed at reducing the number of enrollees. Go back and look at the Medicaid checks and you should see that. With as many checks as we do -- more thant [sic] 13,000 -- there might be inconsistencies from time to time, but I disagree that there's any longstanding pattern.

Inconsistencies from time to time ... yeah, that's one way to put it.


(in what follows we lean heavily on our earlier analysis of this issue)

We added URLS to the quotations for emphasis and to lead to the source of the quotation. This survey helps establish beyond reasonable doubt that PolitiFact disagreed with the characterization that the ACA cut Medicare.

DEMOCRATS CUT MEDICARE GROWTH 

"The ad loses points for accuracy because the $500 billion aren't actual cuts but reductions to future spending for a program that will still grow significantly in the next 10 years."

"The new law would indeed slow the rate of growth of the broader Medicare program by roughly that amount over 10 years. But it's not a slam-dunk that this represents a cut."

"The ad conflates actual cuts with decreases in future spending, over the next decade for a program expected to expand, and it fails to mention any of the benefits to seniors under the new Medicare program."

"Boxer voted for the health care bill, but it didn't cut $500 billion out of the current Medicare program. Instead, it slowed growth over the next 10 years."

"That makes it sound like money out of the Medicare budget today, when Medicare spending will actually increase over the next 10 years. What Johnson labels a cut is an attempt to slow the projected increase in spending by $500 billion."

"The vote taken by Congress was not to cut Medicare but to reduce the rate of growth by $500 billion by targeting inefficiencies in the program."

"The $500 billion in 'cuts' are actually cuts to future increased spending, so we give Haridopolos some credit for not simply calling it cuts to Medicare as so many others have done."

"So while the health care law reduces the amount of future spending growth in Medicare, the law doesn't cut Medicare."

"But it incorrectly describes it as $500 billion in Medicare cuts, rather than as decreases in the rate of growth of future spending."

"The referenced $500 billion figure depends on a slowing in the pace of Medicare cost increases. That’s not the same as cutting back"

"But the law attempts to curtail the rapid growth of future Medicare spending, not cut current funding."


We could go on and on like this, for PolitiFact never seemed to tire of correcting Republican claims that the ACA cut Medicare. If somebody said the ACA cut Medicare, PolitiFact's formula was to say the ACA did not cut Medicare but instead cut the growth of spending.

PolitiFact has shown comparatively little interest in frequent claims from Democrats that Republicans are cutting/slashing/gutting Medicaid or Medicare.

REPUBLICANS CUT MEDICAID/MEDICARE

 

June 26, 2017 (checking Republican Kellyanne Conway):

"And on one level, she has a point, we at PolitiFact found. Future savings are not always 'cuts.'"

PolitiFact got around Conway's point by asserting that the BCRA cut Medicaid enrollment and that feature made the bill a cut. That's despite Conway's claim coming from a context that focused on dollars spent.


October 26, 2017 (PolitiFact New York checking Democrat Charles Schumer)

PolitiFact New York (bold emphasis added, hyperlink in the original):

The Senate Budget Committee has a point that Medicare spending will be going up, just not as fast as it would under the status quo. It also has a point that more modest cuts sooner could stave off bigger cuts later. (Experts have often told us that it’s presumptuous to assume significant economic growth impacts before they materialize.)

But we don’t find it unreasonable for Schumer to call cumulative reductions to Medicare and Medicaid spending in the hundreds of billions of dollars "cuts."

 When did it turn reasonable to call cumulative reductions to Medicare or Medicaid spending "cuts"?

September 13, 2017
February 20, 2018 (two "Trump-O-Meter entries at the same URL)

The 2017 entry (bold emphasis added, hyperlinks in the original):

The 2018 White House budget proposal released in May left Medicare benefits largely untouched compared with Medicaid, which would see a more than $600 billion decrease over 10 years compared to current spending levels. Still, Medicare spending would decrease by more than $50 billion in the next decade compared with current levels.

Is a decrease the same as a cut? If a decrease is the same as a cut, why doesn't PolitiFact inform its readers that the decrease happens relative to projected future spending and not current levels? Spending under the budget proposal goes up compared with current levels, contrary to PolitiFact's claim.

The 2018 entry (bold emphasis added, hyperlink in the original):

Over 10 years, Trump's 2019 budget proposal says it would cut Medicare spending by a cumulative $236 billion, including by reductions in "waste" and "fraud" and by changing the way drugs are priced and paid for in the program.

Again, PolitiFact finds it completely unimportant to distinguish between cuts to current spending and slowing the projected growth of spending.



March 29, 2018 (checking Democrat Paul Wyden)

Wyden claimed the GOP wants to take away Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. PolitiFact found that false. And PolitiFact pointed out that though the Trump budget cuts (PolitiFact's term) Medicare and Medicaid, it does not show a desire to take away those programs.

PolitiFact (bold emphasis added, hyperlink in the original):

For Medicaid, Republican-proposed cuts could lead to specific individuals losing their coverage.

Hey, PolitiFact, are those actual cuts or merely slowing the growth of the program's spending? Is it even important to distinguish between the two?


Summary

PolitiFact's framing of cuts to program growth changed systematically and dramatically, mostly (there are a small handful of exceptions) depending on which party was receiving criticism. The pattern over a period of years is obvious and irrefutable.


"Some inconsistencies from time to time." O-kay.

PolitiFact continues to botch the gender pay gap

We can depend on PolitiFact to perform lousy fact-checking on the gender wage gap.

PolitiFact veteran Louis Jacobson proved PolitiFact consistent ineptitude with an April 13, 2018 fact check of Sen. Tina Smith (D-Min.), Sen. Al Franken's replacement.

Sen. Smith claimed that women earn only 80 cents on the dollar for doing the same jobs as men. That's false, and PolitiFact rated it "Mostly False."

That 80-cents-on-the-dollar wage gap is calculated based on full-time work irrespective of the job type and irrespective of hours worked once above the full-time threshold. The figure represents the median, not the average.

But isn't "Mostly False" a Fair Rating for Smith?

Good question! PolitiFact noted that the figure Smith was using did not take the type of job specifically into account. And PolitiFact pointed out that Smith made a common mistake. People often fail to mention that the raw wage gap figure doesn't take the type of job into account.

PolitiFact's Jacobson doesn't precisely spell out why PolitiFact finds a germ of truth in Smith's statement. Presumably PolitiFact's reasoning matches that of its earlier ratings where it noted that the wage gap statistic is accurate except for the part about it applying to equal work. So it's true except for the part that makes it false, therefore "Mostly False" instead of "False."

Looking at it objectively, however, it's just plain false that women earn 80 cents on the dollar for doing the same work. Researchers talk about an "unexplained gap" after taking various factors into account to explain the gap, and the ceiling for gender discrimination looks like it falls to around 5 percent to 7 percent.

Charitably using the 7 percent figure as the ceiling for gender-based wage discrimination, Smith exaggerated the gap by 186 percent. It's likely the exaggeration was far greater than that.

For comparison, when Bernie Sanders said 40 percent of U.S. gun sales occur without background checks, PolitiFact gave him a "False" rating for exaggerating the right figure by 90 percent.

The Ongoing Democratic Deception PolitiFact Overlooks

If a Democrat describes the 80 percent raw pay gap accurately, why not give it a "True" rating? Or at least "Mostly True"?

Democrats tend to trot out the raw gender pay gap statistic while proposing legislation that supposedly addresses gender discrimination. By repeatedly associating the raw wage gap with the issue of wage discrimination, Democrats send the implicit message that the raw wage gap describes gender discrimination. It uses the anchoring bias to mislead the audience about the size of the pay gap stemming from gender discrimination.

Democrats habitually use "Equal Pay Day," based on the raw wage gap, to argue for equal pay for equal work. But the raw wage gap doesn't take the type of job into account.

Trust PolitiFact not to notice the deception.

Fact checkers ought to assist in making Democrats clarify their position. Are Democrats in favor of equal pay regardless of the job or hours worked? Or do Democrats believe the demands for equal pay apply only to matters of gender discrimination?

If the latter, Democrats' continued use of the raw wage gap to peg the date of its "Equal Pay Day" counts as a blatant deception.

If the former, voters deserve to know what Democrats stand for.

Afters


It amused us that Jacobson directly referenced an earlier PolitiFact Florida botched treatment of the gender pay gap.

PolitiFact Florida couldn't figure out that claiming the gap occurs "simply because she isn't a man" is equivalent to claiming the raw gap is for men and women doing the same work. Think about it. If the gap occurs "simply because she isn't a man" then the reason for the disparity cannot be because she is doing different work. Doing different work would be a factor in addition to her not being a man.

PolitiFact Florida hilariously rated that claim "Mostly True." We wrote about it on March 14, 2017.

Fact checkers. D'oh.

PolitiFact's apples and oranges make Zinke a liar?

Fact checkers often mete out harsh ratings to politicians who employ apples-to-oranges comparisons to make their point.

Mainstream media fact checkers often find themselves immune from the principles they use to find fault with others, however.

Consider PolitiFact's March 19, 2018 fact check of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Zinke said a Trump administration proposal "is the largest investment in our public lands infrastructure in our nation's history."

PolitiFact found that Civilian Conservation Corps program under President Franklin Roosevelt would far exceed the proposed Trump administration spending if adjusted for inflation:

The CCC’s director wrote in 1939 that it had cost $2 billion; that was two-thirds of the way through the program’s life. And according to a Park Service study, the annual annual cost per CCC enrollee was $1,004 per year. If you assume that the average tenure of the CCC’s 3.5 million workers was about a year, that would produce a cumulative cost around $3 billion.

Such calculations "sound right — millions of young men, camps to house them, food and uniforms, and they were paid," said Steven Stoll, an environmental historian at Fordham University.

Once you factor in inflation, $3 billion spent in the 1930s would be the equivalent of about $53 billion today — about three times bigger than even the fully funded Trump proposal.

When a spokesperson for the Trump administration pointed out that the CCC included lands controlled at the state and local level, PolitiFact brushed the objection aside (bold emphasis added):

Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift pointed out that the CCC "also incorporated state and local land."

It’s true that the CCC created more than 700 state parks and upgraded many others, in addition to its efforts on federally owned land. Ultimately, though, the point is moot: Zinke didn’t say the proposal is the largest investment in federal lands infrastructure. He said "public lands infrastructure," and state and local parks count as "public lands."

The key to the "False" rating PolitiFact gave Zinke comes entirely from its insistence that Zinke's statement covers all public lands.

But the context, which PolitiFact reported but ignored, clearly shows Zinke was talking specifically about spending on federal lands (bold emphasis added):

"The president is a builder and the son of a plumber, as I am," Zinke told the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee. "I look forward to working with the president on restoring America's greatness through a historic investment of our public lands infrastructure. This is the largest investment in our public lands infrastructure in our nation's history. Let me repeat that, this is the largest investment in our public lands infrastructure in the history of this country."

Zinke specified that he was referring to the president's budget proposal, which would create a fund to provide "up to $18 billion over 10 years for maintenance and improvements in our national parks, our national wildlife refuges, and Bureau of Indian Education funds."

We note a pair of irreconcilable problems with PolitiFact's reasoning.

If Zinke had claimed the CCC spending was greater than the spending proposed by the Trump administration, he would be guilty of using an apples-to-oranges comparison. Why? Because the scope of the two spending programs varies at a fundamental level.

Any would-be comparison between spending on federal lands only and spending on federal, state and local lands qualifies as an apples-to-oranges comparison.

If Zinke's statement was interpreted in keeping with his comments on the scope of the spending--kept to "federal lands"--then PolitiFact simply elected to avoid doing the appropriate fact check. That is, measuring the CCC spending on federal lands against the proposed Trump administration spending on federal lands. Apples-to-apples.

PolitiFact bases its fact check on the apples-to-oranges comparison: CCC spending on federal, state and local parks against proposed Trump administration spending on federal lands only.

Objective?

Nonpartisan?

Not hardly.



Afters: Multiple flaky layers

In its fact check PolitiFact stresses the enormity of CCC spending under Roosevelt by expressing it as a percentage of the federal budget. And compares that to the tiny percentage of the total budget taken up by Trump's proposed spending.

Hello?

Has the federal budget increased over time (try as a percentage of GDP)? Medicare? Medicaid? Hello?

PolitiFact loves it some apples and oranges.

PolitiFact's Jolly problem

PolitiFact hired David Jolly at some point in February, with the hire date depending on whether his job title was "reader representative" or "Republican guest columnist."

PolitiFact said the hire was intended to build trust in PolitiFact across party lines. We've viewed the experiment with justified skepticism. And Jolly's work so far as the "Republican guest columnist" only solidifies our skepticism.

Jolly's first guest column was published March 2, 2018. We noted that Jolly used that column to address a subject tied to his own advocacy of "common sense gun control." We doubted many PolitiSkeptical conservatives would hear their voices in that column. We judged that Jolly was using his position at PolitiFact to essentially write an op-ed about one of his pet political issues.

Jolly's March 7, 2018 column followed that pattern.

Instead of critiquing PolitiFact, Jolly used his column to attack the target of a PolitiFact fact check. The target of that fact check? President Donald Trump.

Jolly (bold emphasis added):

As the nation continues to debate which gun policies might provide for the safety of our schools and communities, PolitiFact demonstrated in a single column the critical importance fact-checkers serve in both informing the American public as well as holding politicians and advocates on both sides of the debate accountable for their assertions.

Jolly played his gun control theme song in the background again and again we ask: How does Jolly's approach to his columns build trust among conservatives skeptical of PolitiFact? Does he think that just having a Republican say something like "PolitiFact is right" will budge the needle of partisan mistrust?

We'll go out on a limb and predict that approach has a snowball's chance in hell of working.

Conservative mistrust in PolitiFact stems primarily from two factors:

• Conservatives see PolitiFact turning a blind eye to conservative arguments
• PolitiFact commonly makes errors of fact and logic damaging to conservatives

Jolly's column serves as an example of both problems, despite his willingness to identify as a Republican.

Jolly reinforces PolitiFact's left-leaning bias

Jolly lauded PolitiFact for rating "False" the claim that an armed civilian might have stopped the "Pulse" nightclub shooting in Orlando (bold emphasis added):

"You take Pulse nightclub," Trump said. "If you had one person in that room that could carry a gun and knew how to use it, it wouldn’t have happened, or certainly to the extent that it did."

The problem for both the president and his theory is that an armed officer and 15-year veteran of the Orlando Police Department, Adam Gruler, was actually working security at Pulse that fateful night, and indeed engaged the shooter directly with gunfire. Forty-nine people still lost their lives.

PolitiFact rightly rated as False the president's statement that an armed security guard could have saved those 49 victims.

The conservative would have read the PolitiFact fact check looking for evidence of fair treatment of the mainstream conservative point of view. That view is absent, and when Jolly fails to notice its absence and celebrates PolitiFact's fact check in spite of that, the conservative cannot take Jolly's columns any more seriously than the fact check in the first place.

The problem with the fact check

What's the problem with PolitiFact's fact check?

The fact check pretends that the armed guard working security in the Pulse parking lot counts as "one person in that room that could carry a gun and knew how to use it."

Is the Pulse parking lot inside the Pulse nightclub?

Shouldn't that make a difference for non-partisan fact checkers and GOP columnists alike?

Note PolitiFact's description of armed guard Anthony Gruler's involvement in the Pulse incident (bold emphasis added):

The Justice Department in 2017 released a nearly 200-page report detailing the Orlando police response to the shooting. Here’s the report’s account of Gruler’s initial confrontation with Mateen:

"Outside, in the Pulse parking lot, (Gruler), who was working extra duty at the club — to provide outside security and to provide assistance to security personnel inside the club if needed — heard the shots that were being fired; at 2:02:17 a.m., he broadcast over the radio, 'Shots fired, shots fired, shots fired,' and requested additional officers to respond.

"The detective told the assessment team that he immediately recognized that his Sig Sauer P226 9mm handgun was no match for the .223 caliber rifle being fired inside the club and moved to a position that afforded him more cover in the parking lot. Two patrons attempted to flee through an emergency exit on the south side of the club. When the detective saw the suspect shoot them, he fired at the suspect."

According to an Orlando Police Department report, additional officers arrived on the scene about a minute after Gruler’s call for backup was broadcast. A second backup officer arrived about a minute after that.

 PolitiFact's conclusion, sadly, serves as an adequate summary of its argument:

Talking about the Pulse nightclub shooting, Trump said, "If you had one person in that room that could carry a gun and knew how to use it, it wouldn’t have happened, or certainly to the extent that it did."

An armed, off-duty police officer in uniform was at the club during the shooting, and exchanged gunfire with the shooter, who managed to kill 49 people.

We rate this False.

Notice that PolitiFact says Gruler was "at the club," not "outside the club."

The "False" rating gets its premise from the fiction that Gruler was in the same room with Mateen while the latter was murdering club patrons. Jolly, PolitiFact's voice of the GOP, signs on with that falsehood.

In this case the deception comes from PolitiFact and Jolly. Not from Trump.

PolitiFact demonstrated nothing false in Trump's statement, yet pinned a "False" rating on his statement.

Jolly cheered PolitiFact's work, missing the key discrepancy in its fact check.

That's all kinds of wrong.

How we made our meme mocking PolitiFact

Earlier this week we noticed PolitiFact making yet another hypocritical declaration. PolitiFact has ruled it misleading to use "cuts" to refer to reductions to a future projected spending baseline. In many cases a budget might increase year by year but the legislature "cuts" spending by slowing its increase.

In the past, we've pointed out how PolitiFact tended to rate Republicans "Mostly False" for claiming the Affordable Care Act cut Medicare by hundreds of millions of dollars. When President Donald R. Trump and the Republican Congress tried the same thing with Medicaid in 2017, PolitiFact discovered that the claim was "Half True" on the few occasion(s?) it noticed the Democrats' ubiquitous claim and then quickly lost interest.

Fast forward to 2018, and PolitiFact published a fact check of a Trump statement about protests over the United Kingdom's National Health Service, its universal care program. PolitiFact treated Trump unfairly by rating him on something he did not say, but what really knocked our socks off was a sentence PolitiFact reeled off in its summary:

While the NHS has lost funding over the years, the march that took place was not in opposition to the service, but a call to increase funding and stop austerity cuts towards health and social care.

The problem? You guessed it! Spending has gone up for the NHS pretty consistently. The fact checkers at Britain's Full Fact even did a fact check in January 2018 relating to NHS funding. It only reported spending going up.

Spending on the NHS in England has increased in real terms by an average of around 1% a year since 2010. Since the NHS was established spending increases have averaged 4% per year.

So the NHS hasn't "lost funding" except against baseline future spending. The austerity "cuts" PolitiFact reports are a decrease of the rate of future spending.

PolitiFact is making a claim it has rated "Half True" and worse in the past.

We don't appreciate that type of hypocrisy from a supposedly non-partisan and objective fact checker. So we went to work on meme.

First, we looked at PolitiFact's list of stories with the "Medicare" tag. We knew we'd find stories reporting on budget cuts to a baseline. And from those stories we looked for one with a summary that would fit the present case. It didn't take long. We found a "Half True" rating from PolitiFact Ohio that fit the bill:

"So-called cut reflects savings from slowing growth in spending." Doesn't that sound much better than "cutting Medicare"? Hurrah! It's savings!

Our next step was to replace the text and image to the left of the "Truth-O-Meter" graphic. We decided to pin the blame on PolitiFact Editor Angie Drobnic Holan instead of on the intern who wrote and researched the fact check. Holan had good reason to know PolitiFact's history on rating cuts to a future baseline.

We took Holan's image from her Twitter account.

We replaced the text with Holan's name and the outrageous quotation from the Trump fact check.

We credited our faux fact check to "PolitiFact National" on the day the Trump fact check came out. We skipped the em-dash this time since it takes a few extra steps.

And we put a big "PARODY" watermark on the whole thing to make clear we're not trying to trick anybody. The point is to mock PolitiFact for its inconsistency.

Our finished product:

Seriously: It's ridiculous for a national fact-checking service to do such a poor job of reporting consistently. Holan is the chief editor, and she doesn't notice this clear problem? She let the intern down by not catching it. And how long will it take to correct the problem? Eternity?

PolitiFact's past work on budget cuts is already so chaotic that one more miss hardly matters. We don't expect anything to change. PolitiFact will go right on giving readers a slanted view of budget cuts.

For that matter, we expect the other two of America's "elite three" fact checkers to independently follow the same misleading pattern PolitiFact uses. That's what happens when all three lean left.

Are fact checkers fact-checking opinions more? Blame Trump! (Updated)

The fact checkers at PolitiFact apparently can't keep themselves from allowing their opinions to seep into their work.

Fortunately, we can all blame President Trump. That way, the fact checkers need not acknowledge any error.

A Feb. 6, 2018  PolitiFact fact check took as an assertion of fact Trump's apparent opinion that the word "treason" might apply to Democrats who failed to applaud good news about the United States during Trump's State of the Union Address.

PolitiFact, in classic straw man fashion, insisted that "treason" had to refer to the type codified in law, and so rated Trump's claim "Pants on Fire" (bold emphasis added):

Trump said that at the State of the Union address, Democrats, "even on positive news … were like death and un-American. Un-American. "even on positive news … were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, ‘treasonous.’ I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not?"

There’s a good reason why not: Declining to applaud the president doesn’t come anywhere near meeting the constitutionally defined threshold of treason, which in any case can’t occur except in wartime. Rather, legal experts agree that it is a clear case of constitutionally protected free speech. We rate the statement Pants on Fire.

In fact, "treason" has a broader definition than PolitiFact allowed:

1. the offense of acting to overthrow one's government or to harm or kill its sovereign.
2. a violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or to one's state.
3. the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery. 

Failing to applaud good news about one's state would, in a sense, violate allegiance to one's state. And, more to the point, one can define words as one likes. One could, for example, choose to define the word "Rump" to refer exclusively to President Trump. One can do such things because words are ultimately just symbols representing ideas, and people can choose what idea to associate with what symbol.

Is it a good idea to use words in ways that run against their commonly understood meanings? That's a different issue.

Trump afforded his critics another marvelous opportunity to criticize his temperament and wisdom, but that criticism belongs in op-eds, not fact checks.

The dastardly Trump forced helpless journalists to abandon their objectivity.

How dare he.


Update Feb. 8, 2018

We weren't going to make a big deal of PolitiFact saying that Trump was suggesting that not applauding for him (Trump) might qualify as treason.

But then PolitiFact started emphasizing that misleading headline on Twitter:

Check out our new video fact-check of President Trump's claim that not applauding for him could be construed as "treason." (It got a Pants on Fire.) https://t.co/Mqf5sZaYBh pic.twitter.com/cuYcKcv09Y

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) February 8, 2018

That's just bad reporting, and it's a classic example of a biased headline. Trump says failing to applaud good news about the United States might pass as treason, not the failure to applaud President Trump.

Nonpartisan and objective journalists should be able to distinguish between the two.

Does "lowest" mean something different in Georgia than it does in Texas?

Today PolitiFact National, posing as PolitiFact Georgia, called it "Mostly True" that Georgia has the lowest minimum wage in the United States.

Georgia law sets the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour, the same rate Wyoming uses, and the federal minimum wage of $7.25 applies to all but a very few Georgians. PolitiFact National Georgia hit Democrat Stacey Evans with a paltry "Mostly True" rating:

Evans said Georgia "has the lowest minimum wage in the country."

Georgia’s minimum wage of $5.15 per hour is the lowest in the nation, but Wyoming also has the same minimum wage.

Also, most of Georgia’s workers paid hourly rates earn the federal minimum of $7.25.

Evans’ statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. We rate it Mostly True.

Sounds good. No problem. Right?

Eh. Not so fast.

Why is it okay in Georgia for "lowest" to reasonably reflect a two-way tie with Wyoming, but in Texas using "lowest" where there's a three-way tie earns the speaker a "False" rating?

How did PolitiFact Texas justify the "False" rating it gave the Republican governor (bold emphasis added)?

Abbott tweeted: "The Texas unemployment rate is now the lowest it’s been in 40 years & Texas led the nation last month in new job creation."

The latest unemployment data posted when Abbott spoke showed Texas with a 4 percent unemployment rate in September 2017 though that didn't set a 40-year record. Rather, it tied the previous 40-year low set in two months of 2000.

Abbott didn’t provide nor did we find data showing jobs created in each state in October 2017.

Federal data otherwise indicate that Texas experienced a slight decrease in jobs from August to September 2017 though the state also was home to more jobs than a year earlier.

We rate this claim False.

 A tie goes to the Democrat, apparently.

We do not understand why it is not universally recognized that PolitiFact leans left.



Correction/clarification Feb. 5, 2018: Removed unneeded "to" from the second paragraph. And added a needed "to" to the next-to-last sentence.

Imperious PolitiFact

PolitiFact decides who built what, and it's ridiculous

Back in 2016 we reviewed the "True" claim PolitiFact awarded First Lady Michelle Obama for her claim the White House was built by slaves.

Slaves definitely helped with the labor of constructing the White House, but to an unknown degree. Regardless of that, PolitiFact awarded Obama a "True" rating on its subjective "Truth-O-Meter."

We thought PolitiFact went too easy on the claim, given that one could use the same standard to claim it "True" that European immigrants built the White House. Including a word like "helped" allows either claim to rise to credibility.

Fast forward to 2018 and the State of the Union Address response from U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.).

Kennedy said immigrants built Fall River, Massachusetts.

Breitbart, a right-leaning news outlet, judged Kennedy's statement "Mostly False," reasoning that the establishment of Fall River by native-born descendants of English settlers made it reasonable to say the city was built, at least in part, by those native-born people. Breitbart added that the native-born population has always outnumbered immigrants in the county that contains Fall River.

PolitiFact apparently doesn't care for sharing credit. If one group helped build something then that group gets credit and other groups that helped do not get credit.

PolitiFact rated Breitbart's claim "False." Yes, that implies that immigrants who helped "build" Fall River by coming to work at factories established by the native residents were the ones who exclusively built Fall River.

Call us radical right-wingers if you like, but we think if the facts show that credit for building something should be shared, then a fact checker should acknowledge shared credit in its ratings.

Breitbart's "Mostly False" rating hints at an ability to make that type of acknowledgement.

PolitiFact's "True" and "False" ratings make it look more partisan than Breitbart.

PolitiFact masters the non sequitur

A non sequitur occurs when one idea does not follow from another.

A Jan. 23, 2018 fact check by PolitiFact's Miriam Valverde offers ample evidence that PolitiFact has mastered the non sequitur.

Valverde's fact check concerned a claim from a White House infographic*:

PolitiFact looked at whether it was true that immigrants cost U.S. taxpayers $300 billion annually. The careful reader will have noticed that the White House infographic did not claim that immigrants cost U.S. taxpayers $300 billion annually. It made two distinct claims, first that unskilled immigrants create a net fiscal deficit and second that current immigration policy puts U.S. taxpayers on the hook for as much as $300 billion.

Isn't it wonderful when supposedly non-partisan fact checkers create straw men?

As for what the White House actually claimed, yes the Washington Times reported there was one study--a thorough one--that said current immigration policy costs U.S. taxpayers as much as $296 billion annually.

We do not know the precise origin of that figure after looking for it in the study. Apparently PolitiFact also failed to find it and after mentioning the Times' report proceeded to use the study's figure of $279 billion for 2013. That figure was for the first of eight scenarios.

Was the $296 billion number an inflation adjustment? A population increase adjustment? A mistake? A figure representing one of the other groups? We don't know. But if the correct figure is $279 billion, $300 billion represents a liberal-but-common method of rounding. It could also qualify as an exaggeration of 8 percent.

What problem does PolitiFact find with the infographic (bold emphasis added)?

A consultant who contributed to the report told us that in 2013 the total fiscal burden -- average outlays minus average receipts multipled [sic] by 55.5 million individuals -- was $279 billion for the first generation of immigrants. But making a conclusion on that one figure is a mighty case of cherry-picking.

What?

What conclusion did the infographic draw that represents cherry picking?

That line from Valverde does not belong in a fact check without a clear example of the faulty cherry picking. And in this case there isn't anything. The fact check provides more information about the report, including some positives regarding immigrant populations (especially second-generation immigrants), but ultimately finds no concrete fault with the infographic.

PolitiFact's charge of cherry picking doesn't follow.

And PolitiFact's conclusion?

Our ruling

The White House claimed that "current immigration policy imposes as much as $300 billion annually in net fiscal costs on U.S. taxpayers."

A study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine analyzed the fiscal impact of immigration under different scenarios. Under some assumptions, the fiscal burden was $279 billion, but $43 billion in other scenarios.

The report also found that U.S.-born children with at least one foreign-born parent are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors, thanks in part to the spending by local governments on their education.

The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.

In the second paragraph PolitiFact says the fiscal burden amounted to $43 billion "in other scenarios." Put correctly, one scenario put the figure at $279 billion and two scenarios may have put the figure at $43 billion because the scenarios were nearly identical. The study looked at a total of eight scenarios, found here. It appears to us that scenario four may serve as the source of the $296 billion figure reported in the Washington Times.

Our conclusion? PolitiFact's fact check provides a left-leaning picture of the context of the Trump White House infographic. The infographic is accurate. It plainly states that it is picking out a high-end figure. It states it relies on one study for the figure.

The infographic, in short, provides readers alerts to the potential problems with the figure it uses.

That said, the $300 billion figure serves as a pretty good example of appealing to the audience's anchoring bias. Mentioning "$300 billion" predisposes the audience toward believing a similarly high figure regardless of other evidences. That's a legitimate gripe about the infographic, though one PolitiFact neglected to point out while fabricating its charge of "cherry-picking."


Afters

*I noticed ages ago that the Obama administration produced a huge number of misleading infographics. Maybe PolitiFact fact checked one of them?



Correction Jan. 31, 2018: Inserted the needed word "check" between "fact" and "provides" in the fourth paragraph from the end.

PolitiFact rubberstamps a claim from Nancy Pelosi

We say PolitiFact leans left and stinks at fact-checking.

We support our point with examples.

Here's another.

We admit at the outset that if House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's statement is true and leaves out nothing significant then it follows that our example does not show that PolitiFact leans left and stinks at fact-checking.

And we assert that our argument will permit no reasonable person to believe that Pelosi left out nothing of significance.

The key to PolitiFact's fact check comes straight from the Congressional Budget Office:

Why does CHIP save the government money? In short, it’s because the alternatives cost more.

According to CBO, "extending funding for CHIP for 10 years yields net savings to the federal government because the federal costs of the alternatives to providing coverage through CHIP (primarily Medicaid, subsidized coverage in the marketplaces, and employment-based insurance) are larger than the costs of providing coverage through CHIP during that period."

 PolitiFact has CBO on its side. Game over? PolitiFact wins?

Here's the problem: The quotation of the CBO report is itself at odds with the CBO report.

On one hand, CBO says "federal costs" of CHIP alternatives come out higher than providing coverage through CHIP.

But CBO's explanatory chart tells a different story. It says that costs for CHIP alternatives through Medicaid and subsidized individual market coverage go down by $72.4 billion (red ovals). Over the same 10-year period, CHIP costs go up by $78.9 billion (black oval).

On the expense side, CHIP reauthorization increases costs by $6.9 billion.

The expense side isn't the only side for the CHIP bill.

"Employment-based insurance" accounts for $11.2 billion (black rectangle) in revenue over 10 years. That plus another $1.6 billion from the ACA marketplace brings the total revenue increase from CHIP reauthorization to $12.9 billion. The chart lists $4.6 billion as "off-budget," suggesting to us that the revenue may come from the off-budget Social Security program.

The $11.2 billion in revenue accounts directly for the $6 billion "savings" Pelosi touted (red circle), after accounting for the increased outlays.

Apparently the "savings" do not come from lower expenses at all. The "savings" come from taking $12.9 billion more for CHIP from taxpayers.

And Pelosi's statement told the whole truth with nothing significant left out? We don't buy it.

We think any competent journalist should have noticed this discrepancy and addressed it in the fact check.


Afters

We're not sure if it accounts for any kind of defense for PolitiFact fact checker Louis Jacobson, but his fact check did not directly cite the very clear CBO chart we used above. Jacobson cited a more complex chart (Table 3, Page 4) showing many billions in lost revenue from the suspension of a handful of ACA taxes such as the medical device tax. Even so, how does a fact-checker miss out on the relevance of CBO's plain identification of increased revenue from CHIP re-authorization?

After Afters

Zebra Fact Check picks up the ball PolitiFact dropped by asking CBO to explain to the public the origins of CHIP revenue.

PolitiFact vs Ted Cruz

PolitiFact demonstrates the wrong way to fact check

When we criticize PolitiFact's subjective rating system, we often see responses like "I don't pay attention to the ratings."

We tend to respond that PolitiFact reasons poorly, offering fact check consumers yet another reason to avoid PolitiFact. PolitiFact's January 22, 2018 fact check of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) helps illustrate the point. The fact checkers use equivocal language and straw man argumentation to support their conclusion.

Cruz claimed he has consistently opposed government shutdowns, which PolitiFact contrasted to "popular belief":

With an end to the federal government shutdown in sight, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tried to argue that, contrary to popular belief, he was not the driving force behind the previous government shutdown in 2013.

Should we excuse PolitiFact from supporting its claim that most think Cruz was the driving force behind the 2013 shutdown?

The 2018 shutdown originated in the Senate, which had a funding bill but no attempt to force cloture before the funding deadline. A cloture vote would have reportedly failed, meaning the Democrats had a modern filibuster going. The 2013 shutdown stemmed from disagreement between the GOP-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate.

PolitiFact tells part of the story, sending a misleading message in the process (bold emphasis added):

Back in 2013, Cruz -- then a junior member of the Senate’s minority party -- had tried to end funding for the Affordable Care Act. He pushed for language to defund Obamacare in spending bills, which would have forced then-President Barack Obama to choose between keeping the government open and crippling his signature legislative achievement.

As the high-stakes legislative game played out, Obama and his fellow Democrats refused to agree to gut the law, and the Republicans, as a minority party, didn’t have the numbers to force their will. Following a 16-day shutdown, lawmakers voted to fund both the government and the Affordable Care Act.

Cruz was widely identified at the time as the leader of the defunding effort.

We have two types of defunding going on in PolitiFact's explanation. First, we have Cruz's effort to defund the ACA. Then we have general defunding of the government.

See what PolitiFact did there? PolitiFact asserts that most believe Cruz led the effort to defund the government, and slips in the line "Cruz was widely identified at the time as the leader of the defunding effort." Yes, Cruz was the leader, in the Senate, of the attempt to defund the ACA. But defunding the ACA is not the same thing as defunding the government.

PolitiFact then included a little tidbit about a Cruz speech on the Senate floor using portions of Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs & Ham." So it was a Cruz filibuster? Maybe PolitiFact wants its readers to think it was a Cruz filibuster. But it wasn't.

“This is not a filibuster. This is an agreement that he and I made that he could talk,” (Senate Majority Leader Harry) Reid said Wednesday.

Is there any good excuse for a journalist to offer such a sketchy account of history?

What PolitiFact got right

PolitiFact was right when it reported that Cruz's proposal to defund the ACA would have forced President Obama to choose between signing a bill that undercut the ACA and allowing a government shutdown. It follows that Cruz was playing the politics of government shutdown, though his method placed the onus on Mr. Obama, and of the two options Cruz would plainly prefer defunding the ACA to defunding the entire government.

So even though Cruz's effort to defund the ACA turned out a dismal failure, the effort carried a silver lining for Cruz: Cruz never needed to advocate or support shutting down the government.

... and what PolitiFact got wrong

Given that Cruz voted against the funding bill that eventually ended the 2013 shutdown, PolitiFact had what it needed to show Cruz supporting a government shutdown at least in some form.

Instead, PolitiFact opted for a hilarious overreach comparable to Cruz's failed plan to defund the ACA.

PolitiFact took the route of trying to show Cruz supported the shutdown according to his own standard:

However, even if, for the sake of argument, you accept Cruz’s line of thinking, his hallway comments offered a very specific definition of determining whether a lawmaker had "consistently opposed shutdowns."

In fact, Cruz offered a very specific definition of something else, as we see when PolitiFact picks up its narrative (bold emphasis added):

Specifically, Cruz said that "only one thing causes a shutdown: when you have senators vote to deny cloture on a funding bill." Cloture refers to a Senate vote to cut off debate and proceed to a bill; it’s a prerequisite for considering a bill, and these days, it typically takes 60 votes.

PolitiFact's notion that Cruz defined whether a lawmaker has consistently opposed government shutdowns counts as a fantasy, not a fact check. But for the sake of argument, let us accept PolitiFact's line of thinking.

Cruz said a shutdown only occurs when senators vote to deny cloture on a funding bill. In context, his statement obviously means enough senators opposed cloture for the cloture motion to fail. Why? Because over 30 senators can vote to deny cloture and find themselves overruled by the others. And in that case, no shutdown results.

But understanding what Cruz said in context will not allow PolitiFact's argument to succeed. PolitiFact can only stick the hypocrisy tag on Cruz if voting against cloture on a funding bill counts as causing a shutdown regardless of the outcome of the vote.

That's crazy. But that's PolitiFact's argument:

So did Cruz ever "vote to deny cloture on a funding bill"?

He did.

It came on the legislation to end the 16-day shutdown -- a bill that didn’t include the Obamacare defunding language that he had been seeking. If this spending bill didn’t pass, the government wouldn’t be funded and would have to remain closed. As it happened, the bill passed by a large bipartisan majority, but Cruz was one of 16 senators to vote against cloture. He was also one of 18 to vote against the bill itself.

Regardless of whether Cruz ever supported a government shutdown, taking Cruz's statement out of context is not the way to make the argument. It's simply a fact that one can vote against cloture on principle apart from a filibuster strategy. Cruz has plausible deniability going for him.

Cruz's was one of only 16 voting in opposition to cloture, and it could not be more obvious that such a vote does not meet Cruz's definition for what causes a shutdown. Sixteen senators voting against cloture cannot start a shutdown. Nor can they sustain a shutdown, as PolitiFact's example resoundingly illustrates.

PolitiFact altered Cruz's argument in its fact-checking process.

These fact checkers stink at fact-checking.

PolitiFact Texas transparency update

In a post we titled "PolitiFact Texas unpublished" we described how PolitiFact Texas published an article declaring Gov. Greg Abbott broke his promise to provide leadership training for principals of Texas schools. PolitiFact Texas published that article on Jan. 4, 2018. On Jan. 9, 2018, PolitiFact Texas announced it had taken down (unpublished) the article.

We’ve taken down this @GregAbbott_TX promise update. An agency just provided fresh information we need to review. https://t.co/UkvwzuwmRp

— PolitiFact Texas (@PolitiFactTexas) January 9, 2018

We checked and the article was gone from the PolitiFact Texas website. It was still available, and remains available, at Austin American-Statesman website, one of PolitiFact's partners for PolitiFact Texas.

And on Jan. 11, 2018, PolitiFact republished the old version of the story along with an updated version on the same page. PolitiFact Texas' actions make the temporarily unpublished version of the story look like a normal update, albeit the careful reader may notice that the second update followed just one week after the first one.

We think that's goofy.

Why do we think it's goofy? If the unpublished version of the update was just a normal update later updated with new information, then why unpublish it in the first place? It makes no sense.

In its current form, the story offers readers no hint at all that PolitiFact Texas unpublished the story for two days. Instead, PolitiFact Texas offers its readers this explanation:

Back when he was campaigning to be governor of Texas, Greg Abbott called for training school principals to be better leaders.

Legislative proposals to get such trainings off the ground floundered, however, leading us to rate this Abbott vow a Promise Broken.

But that was before the Texas Education Agency alerted us to other efforts focused on bolstering school leaders.

We decided to look afresh at progress on this promise.

Does PolitiFact Texas downplay the timing of its two updates or what? PolitiFact Texas does mention the date in an editor's note (not labeled as an editor's note) as part of an introduction to the earlier update:

The Abbott-O-Meter update below was posted Jan. 4, 2018. It's eclipsed by the update above:

If it's in italics maybe it automatically counts as an editor's note?

The finished product shows PolitiFact Texas rating a fulfilled promise as broken about a week before reversing itself to declare the promise fulfilled. But with no admission of any error and an incomplete description of what occurred.

PolitiFact thought it had erred, but was mistaken to think so?

We don't quite buy that.

More "True But False" fact-checking from PolitiFact

PolitiFact has always had a tendency to skew its fact-checking in favor of liberals and Democrats. But with speak-from-the-hip President Trump in the White House, PolitiFact has let its true blue colors show like perhaps never before.

A Jan. 5, 2017 fact check from PolitiFact's John Kruzel rates two true statements from President Trump "False." Why would a fact checker rate two true statements "False"? That's a good question. And it's one that the fact check doesn't really answer. But it's worth fisking the fact check for whatever nods it makes toward justifying its conclusions.

Framing the fact check

 

President Trump tweeted that he had not authorized any White House access for Michael Wolff, the author of the book "Fire and Fury" and that he had not spoken to Wolff for the book.

Right off the bat, PolitiFact frames Trump's claim as a denial that Wolff had access to the White House. With the right evidence, PolitiFact might have a case interpreting Trump's statement that way. But pending that justification, PolitiFact leads with a red flag hinting that it is more interested in its own interpretation of Trump words than in the words Trump used.

If Trump had meant to indicate Wolff had no access at all to the White House, he could tweet that in under 140 characters.  Like so:

Wolff had Zero access to White House. I never spoke to him. Liar! Sad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

See? Under 90 characters, including the multiple exclamation points.

Most people understand that when a writer or speaker burdens potentially simple statements with more words the extra words are supposed to mean something. For example, if somebody says "I never spoke to Wolff for book" and not "I never spoke to Wolff" then it strongly hints that the speaker spoke to Wolff but not for the book.

Can PolitiFact explain away the importance of all those words Trump used?

Leading with the fact checker's opinion

From the first, we have said PolitiFact mixes its opinion in with its supposedly objective reporting. PolitiFact and Kruzel have opinion high in the mix in the introduction to the story (bold emphasis added):

The Trump administration has scrambled to control damaging headlines based on Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which was rushed to shelves Jan. 5 over threats from President Donald Trump’s attorneys.

For his part, Trump sought to undermine Wolff’s credibility by calling into question the author’s access to the administration’s highest levels.

Is Kruzel an objective reporter or a prosecuting attorney telling the jury that the accused has a motive?

Kruzel dedicates his first to paragraphs to the creation of a narrative based on Trump's desire to attack Wolff's credibility. As we proceed, we should stay alert from cues Kruzel might offer the reader about Wolff's credibility. Will Kruzel allow any indication that Wolff deserves skepticism? Or perhaps present Wolff as credible by default?

Dissecting Trump's tweet or ignoring what it says?

Trump's tweet:

I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist. Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018

Kruzel comments:

We decided to dissect Trump’s tweet by sifting through what’s known about Wolff’s White House access. We can’t know everything that goes on behind the scenes, but even the public record shows that Trump’s statement is inaccurate.

This had better be good, given that the headline offers a skewed impression of Trump's tweet.

Kruzel defeats a straw man

PolitiFact and Kruzel deal first with the issue of White House access. Whereas Trump said he authorized no access for Wolff, PolitiFact creates a straw contradiction by pointing out some might believe Trump was saying Wolff had no access to the White House at all.

How we wish we were kidding (though this is by no means a first for PolitiFact):

Wolff’s access to the White House

Trump’s tweet could give the impression that Wolff was denied access to the White House entirely. But as Trump’s own press secretary has acknowledged, the author had more than a dozen interactions with administration officials at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

What if instead of fact-checking people's false impressions fact checkers instead explained to people the correct impression? But that's not PolitiFact's way. PolitiFact dedicates its fact check to showing that misinterpreting the claim shows that Trump wasn't telling the truth.

Kruzel concludes the first section:

So, while it may be the case that Trump did not personally grant Wolff access, his own press secretary says the author had access to administration officials at the White House.

Our summary so far:

1. PolitiFact finds "it may be the case" that Trump did not authorize Wolff's access to the White House (as Trump said)
2. No indication from PolitiFact that Wolff should be regarded as anything other than reliable
3. Proof that the misinterpreted version of Trump's statement is false (straw man defeated)

Kruzel defeats another straw man

With the first straw man defeated, PolitiFact and Kruzel deal with the burning question of whether Trump spoke to Wolff at all.

Yes, you read that correctly. The fact check focuses on whether Trump spoke to Wolff, not on whether Trump spoke to Wolff "for book."

Did Wolff and Trump talk?

To the casual reader, Trump’s tweet could give the impression that he and Wolff never spoke — but that’s far from the case.

Never fear, casual reader! PolitiFact is here for you as it is for no other type of reader. And if PolitiFact has to create and destroy a straw man or two to keep from helping you improve your reading comprehension, then so be it.

Kruzel follows immediately with his conclusion (explaining after that the details behind the defeat of the straw man):

While it may be the case that Trump never talked to Wolff with the express understanding that their discussion would later be incorporated into a book, the two men certainly spoke, though the length and nature of their conversations is not entirely clear.

And we review and add to our summary:

1. PolitiFact finds "it may be the case" that Trump did not authorize Wolff's access to the White House (as Trump said)
2. Still no indication from PolitiFact that Wolff should be regarded as anything other than reliable
3. PolitiFact proves that the misinterpreted version of Trump's first claim is false (first straw man defeated)
4. PolitiFact finds "it may be the case" that Trump did not talk to Wolff for the book (as Trump said)
5. PolitiFact proves that the misinterpreted version of Trump's second claim is false (second straw man defeated)

Whatever one thinks of Trump, that's awful fact-checking

Trump made two claims that were apparently true according to PolitiFact's investigation, but because casual readers might think Trump meant something other than what he plainly said, PolitiFact rated the statements "False."


That approach to fact-checking could make virtually any statement false.

Is Wolff reliable? Who cares? PolitiFact is interested in Trump's supposed unreliability.

This PolitiFact fact check ought to serve as a classic example of what to avoid in fact-checking. Instead, PolitiFact's chief editor Angie Drobnic Holan edited the piece. And a PolitiFact "star chamber" of at least three editors reviewed the story and decided on the rating without seeing anything amiss with what they were doing.

Welcome to the "True but False" genre of fact-checking.

You can't trust these fact checkers.