PolitiFact vs the strawman version of Nikki Haley's claim about teen girls and suicide

 Strawmen are always in season at PolitiFact, particularly when a Republican speaks.

Broken quotations always count as a red flag worth investigating. PolitiFact's is especially worth investigating because the key part of the blurb doesn't come from Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley: "is a reason why."

So, did Haley say it was a reason?

Here's the relevant part of CNN's transcript of its Haley town hall (bold highlights added)

(APPLAUSE) TAPPER: So, woke, the word woke used to be used by progressives to talk about an awareness of inequities and historical inequities, but obviously it means something else to conservatives criticizing it. What does it mean to you? How do you define woke?

HALEY: There's a lot of things. I mean, you want to start with biological boys playing in girl sports. That's one thing. The fact that we have gender pronoun classes in the military now, I mean, all of these things that are pushing what a small minority want on the majority of Americans, it's too much. It's too much. I mean, the idea that we have biological boys playing in girls' sports, it is the women's issue of our time. My daughter ran track in high school. I don't even know how I would have that conversation with her. How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year. We should be growing strong girls, confident girls.

Then you go and you talk about building a strong military. How are you going to build the morale in a strong military when you're doing gender pronoun classes? Why is it that --

(APPLAUSE)

HALEY: Why is it that you have, you know, kids undergoing critical race theory where if a little girl's in kindergarten if she's -- goes into kindergarten if she's white, you're telling her she's bad. If she's brown or black, you're telling her she's never going to be good enough and she's always going to be a victim. All of these things have gone to where they are pushing, you know, and transgender, the whole issue of the transgender, it's not that people don't think in America you should live the way you want to live. I want everybody to live the way they want to live, but stop pushing your views on everybody else. That's the problem, is there starting to push everything on the rest of us. 

Considering the context, it makes sense to conclude Haley says pushing woke ideology on kids has contributed to the higher suicide rate and that she used biological boys in girls' locker rooms as an example of forcing woke ideology in school.

PolitiFact, however, focuses on its distortion of Haley's argument. Even though Haley did not say that having biological boys with the girls in the girls' locker room caused a higher suicide rate, PolitiFact insists that is what Haley claimed.

PolitiFact asked Haley's campaign to comment, apparently sending a "Have you stopped beating your wife" inquiry to the campaign:

When we asked Haley’s campaign spokesperson to cite research that supported her claim, he sent a statement by Haley that did not answer the question: "We have to grow strong girls, and that is being threatened right now. Whether it’s biological boys going into girls’ locker rooms or playing in girls’ sports, women are being told their voices don’t matter. If you think this kind of aggressive bullying isn’t part of the problem, you're not paying attention."

Note that the campaign's response accords well with our interpretation of Haley's remarks.

But PolitiFact sets its trap, asking for evidence specific to boys in the girls bathroom, with the plan in mind to invoke its fallacious "burden of proof" criterion and find Haley's supposed claim "False."

Teen girls today are experiencing rising rates of suicidal ideation. However, there is no research that suggests this is being caused by the presence of trans athletes in locker rooms.

Research points to other causes, including feelings of isolation or loneliness, feeling like a burden on others, difficulty navigating parental and family relationships and pressures from constant exposure to social media.

Pushing woke ideology on teen girls could not possibly contribute to feeling of isolation or loneliness, feeling like a burden on others, difficulty navigating parental and family relationships and pressures from constant exposure to social media. Right?

Fact checkers have no business putting their own spin on the words of others. Or that would be the case if the modern fact checker weren't in the business of crafting narratives instead of telling the truth.

PolitiFact inventinged a claim for Haley, committing a straw man fallacy, then smacked down its straw man based on the fallacy of appeal to silence. Those two fallacies in PolitiFact's hands add up to a "False" rating for Haley.

 

LIndsey Graham out of context

Here we go again. PolitiFact has had quite a run in 2021 when it comes to taking Republicans' claims out of context.

This latest one forced me to set aside other projects that have crow(d)ed out PolitiFact Bias posts.

Did Sen. Graham say the CBO says the "Build Back Better" Act would amount to $3 trillion in deficit spending. 

He did say that, but PolitiFact took it out of context.

PolitiFact explained to its readers that Graham was talking about a modified version of the "Build Back Better" Act (bold emphasis added):

Graham said the CBO predicted the Build Back Better Act would add $3 trillion to deficits over 10 years.

He’s referring to a bill that’s not the Build Back Better Act. At Graham’s request, the CBO looked at the impact of extending the temporary programs in the bill for a full 10 years. That is an assessment of a hypothetical situation, not the bill at hand. 

We rate this claim False.

What's the problem with PolitiFact's reasoning?

It was clear in context that Graham was talking about the CBO's scoring of permanent versions of the bill's temporary provisions. The Fox News interviewer, Chris Wallace, made that clear at the outset of the interview (bold for the portion PolitiFact may have relied on for its quotation of Graham):

WALLACE: You commissioned the Congressional Budget Office to project how much Build Back Better will cost over the 10 years, assuming that the programs that are in it, the spending programs that are in it, go on for 10 years and are not as in the case with child care just for one year.

GRAHAM: Right.

WALLACE: The CBO found, instead of adding $200 billion to the deficit, it will add $3 trillion to the deficit. But, Senator, the White House says that that's fake because if the programs are extended, they'll find ways to pay for them.

GRAHAM: Well, give me a plan to pay for them then. President Biden said the bill was fully -- fully paid for. Vice President Harris said it was paid for. Schumer, Pelosi, Secretary of Treasury Yellen. The CBO says it's not paid for. It's $3 trillion of deficit spending. It's not $1.75 trillion over 10 years, it's $4.9 trillion.

We doubt PolitiFact's headline version of Graham's statement qualifies as proper application of AP style for quotations. But the main point is that, in context, Graham would be understood to be talking about the added cost of making the temporary measures permanent. And PolitiFact affirms what Graham says about that CBO projection.

So how does Graham warrant a "False" rating if he wasn't trying to fool people into thinking the new CBO scoring was for the version of the bill with the temporary provisions?

PolitiFact's Twist on the Committee For a Responsible Budget

Also of note, PolitiFact's fact check takes the Committee For a Responsible Budget out of context, using a part of one of its articles to make Graham look out of line for citing the CBO's scoring of the bill with the temporary provisions made permanent:

Modified means the CBO scored a bill that’s different from the one on the table.

"These estimates do not reflect what is actually written in the Build Back Better Act nor its official cost for scorekeeping purposes," the deficit hawk group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote. "Lawmakers may choose to allow some provisions to expire, to extend some as written, and to modify some."

That's exactly what the Committee said, but it was in the context of explaining the CBO's alternative scoring and comparing that scoring to the Committee's own alternative scoring of "Build Back Better" with its temporary provisions made permanent (highlights for the portion PolitiFact cherry picked):

Importantly, these estimates do not reflect what is actually written in the Build Back Better Act nor its official cost for scorekeeping purposes. Lawmakers may choose to allow some provisions to expire, to extend some as written, and to modify some. To offset the cost of extending these provisions as President Biden has committed, they would need to more than double current offsets in the bill. Extending programs without these offsets would substantially increase in the debt. $3 trillion of new debt would increase debt to over 116 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2031, up from 107.5 percent under current law.

The Build Back Better Act relies on a substantial amount of short-term policies and arbitrary sunsets to reduce its cost, raising the possibility of deficit-financed extensions in future years. A more robust and fiscally responsible package would not rely on these gimmicks to achieve deficit neutrality.

The second paragraph in particular aligns well with Sen. Graham's criticism of "Build Back Better."

PolitiFact hid that also from its readers, along with the fact that Graham was obviously talking about the CBO's scoring of temporary provisions made permanent.

Such fact-checking is no better than lying.

Andrew Clyde out of context

If Republicans fail to make enough false statements, apparently PolitiFact has to invent them.

Is it to meet a quota?

PolitiFact is on a roll, lately, taking claims out of context to present them as false. Today's example involves Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.).

When PolitiFact gets around to showing what Rep. Clyde actually said, it creates an instant contrast with the sensationalistic presentation above. "Pants on Fire"! Oh, my!

(Bold highlights added to match what PolitiFact highlighted in its above misquotation of Clyde):

"Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall, showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures. If you didn't know the TV footage was a video from Jan. 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit," Clyde said at a May 12 House hearing.

 In context, Clyde appears to clearly talk about video of protestors passing through Statuary Hall. In other words, video like this:

We think any normal, competent fact checker should have no trouble at all figuring this out.

When PolitiFact repeatedly publishes material in this vein, it makes us suspect PolitiFact is not a normal, competent fact checker.

Would it surprise our readers to learn that PolitiFact awarded Clyde his "Pants on Fire" rating based on evidence that had nothing to do with video from the Statuary Room?

(H)ere is what a normal visit looks like for tourists: They go on guide-led tours of historic areas. They buy souvenirs at the gift shop. They view temporary exhibits. They dine in the restaurant. And they do it all without bringing in weapons (or even water).

Here’s what rioters did on Jan. 6. They forced their way through barricades and past law enforcement to breach the building. They smashed windows and broke doors. They ransacked offices. They chanted "Hang Mike Pence!" They attacked police officers. They caused the House and Senate to shut down for several hours on the day they were certifying the presidential election. One put his feet up on a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and left her a nasty note. None of these actions are things that tourists normally do at the Capitol.

Here's a list of things we do not see in the Jan. 6, 2021 video from Bloomberg News showing protestors making their way through the Statuary Room:

• forcing their way past barricades
• forcing their way past law enforcement
• smashing windows, breaking doors
• ransacking offices
• chanting "Hang Mike Pence!"
• Attacking police
• causing any apparent shutdown
• putting feet on the House Speaker's desk
• leaving nasty notes
  

PolitiFact's fact check counts as a ridiculous sham, based on a straw man reading of Rep. Clyde's words. We can imagine legitimate criticism of what Clyde said. For example, one might legitimately claim that by restricting his comments to the Statuary Room video he distracted from things the Capitol mob did elsewhere.

But PolitiFact's fact check succeeded in avoiding any legitimate criticism of Clyde's claim.

Afters I

PolitiFact appears to have handled its headline quotation of Rep. Clyde improperly, using AP Style as the guide:

A longer quotation might span multiple sentences. Use four ellipsis points (rather than three) to indicate any omission between two sentences. The first point indicates the period at the end of the first sentence quoted, and the three spaced ellipsis points follow.

The existing punctuation appears to credit (?) Rep. Clyde with a fragmentary sentence: "Watching the TV footage at the Capitol."  There was no such fragment in the actual quotation. Cutting and pasting the headline material shows a space between the first ellipsis point (probably intended as a period by the PolitiFact team) and the three ellipsis points that followed. Usage of the ellipsis following the AP Style blog instructions would have had four ellipsis points evenly spaced. That was not PolitiFact's approach.

For what it's worth, we're not sure how that supposedly correct format would help the casual reader understand that material was omitted before and after the period.

Afters II

In its concluding paragraphs, PolitiFact informed its readers that taking pictures or capturing video do not count as tourist activities (bold emphasis added):

Clyde’s spokesperson pointed to a few moments of video of people walking through Statuary Hall snapping photos or videos. But those people were not engaged in anything that resembles tourism. They were part of a group who had violently breached the U.S. Capitol. 

Color us skeptical.

Fact Checkers for Elizabeth Warren

Sen.Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) provided mainstream fact checkers a great opportunity to show their true colors. Fact checkers from the PolitiFact and Snopes spun themselves into the ground trying to help Warren excuse her self-identification as a "Native American."

Likely 2020 presidential candidate Warren has long been mocked from the right as "Fauxcahontas" based on her dubious claims of Native American minority status. Warren had her DNA tested and promoted the findings as some type of vindication of her claims.

The fact checkers did their best to help.

PolitiFact

PolitiFact ran Warren's report past four experts and assured us the experts thought the report was legitimate. But the quotations from the experts don't tell us much. PolitiFact uses its own summaries of the experts' opinions for the statements that best support Warren. Are the paraphrases or summaries fair? Trust PolitiFact? It's another example showing why fact checkers ought to provide transcripts of their interactions with experts.

Though the article bills itself as telling us what we can and cannot know from Warren's report, it takes a Mulligan on mentioning Warren's basic claim to minority status. Instead it emphasizes the trustworthiness of the finding of trace Native American inheritance.

At least the article admits that the DNA evidence doesn't help show Warren is of Cherokee descent. There's that much to say in favor of it.

But more to the downside, the article repeats as true the notion that Trump had promised $1 million if Warren could prove Native American ancestry (bold emphasis added):

At a July 5 rally in Montana, he challenged her to take a DNA test.

"I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian," Trump said.

Trump now denies saying that, but in any event, Warren did get tested and the results did find Native American ancestry.

Just minutes after PolitiFact published the above, it published a separate "In Context" article under this title: "In context: Donald Trump's $1 million offer to Elizabeth Warren."

While we do not recommend PolitiFact's transcript as any kind of model journalism (it leaves out quite a bit without using ellipses to show the omissions), the transcript in that article is enough to show the deception in its earlier article (green emphasis added, bold emphasis in the original):

"I shouldn't tell you because I like to not give away secrets. But let's say I'm debating Pocahontas. I promise you I'll do this: I will take, you know those little kits they sell on television for two dollars? ‘Learn your heritage!’ … And in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims that she is of Indian heritage because her mother said she has high cheekbones — that is her only evidence, her mother said we have high cheekbones. We will take that little kit -- but we have to do it gently. Because we're in the #MeToo generation, so I have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that kit, and slowly toss it, hoping it doesn't injure her arm, and we will say: ‘I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian.’ And let’s see what she does. I have a feeling she will say no. But we’ll hold that for the debates.

Note that very minor expansion of the first version of the Trump quotation torpedoes claims that Trump has already pledged $1 million hinging on Warren's DNA test results: "We will say." So PolitiFact's first story dutifully leaves it out and reinforces the false impression Trump's promise was not a hypothetical.

Despite clear evidence that Trump was speaking of a hypothetical future situation, PolitiFact's second article sticks with a headline suggesting an existing pledge of $1 million--though it magnanimously allows at the end of the article that readers may draw their own conclusions.

It's such a close call, apparently, that PolitiFact does not wish to weigh in either pro or con.

Our call: The fact checkers liberal bloggers at PolitiFact contribute to the spread of misinformation.

Snopes

Though we think PolitiFact is the worst of the mainstream fact checkers, the liberal bloggers at Snopes outdid PolitiFact in terms of ineptitude this time.

Snopes used an edited video to support its claim that it was "True" Trump pledged $1 million based on Warren's DNA test.

Fact Check: Did Trump offer $1 million if Elizabeth Warren could show Native American heritage?

The president denied making the offer, but video from a July 2018 speech seemingly demonstrates otherwise.

Full Report: https://t.co/gcsUAxBcNh @elizabethforma @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/mLZpz7kaJl

— snopes.com (@snopes) October 16, 2018

The fact check coverage from PolitiFact and Snopes so far makes it look like Warren will be allowed to skate on a number of apparently false claims she made in the wake of her DNA test announcement. Which mainstream fact-checker is neutral enough to look at Warren's suggestion that she can legitimately cash in on Trump's supposed $1 million challenge?

It's a good thing we have non-partisan fact checkers, right?


Afters

Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post Fact Checker

The Washington Post Fact Checker, to our knowledge, has not produced any content directly relating to the Warren DNA test.

That aside, Glenn Kessler has weighed in on Twitter. Some of Kessler's (re)tweets have underscored the worthlessness of the DNA test for identifying Warren as Cherokee.

On the other hand, Kessler gave at least three retweets for stories suggesting Trump had already pledged $1 million based on the outcome of a Warren DNA test.

So Kessler's not joining the other two in excusing Warren. But he's in on the movement to brand Trump as wrong even when Trump is right.

PolitiFact: "European Union"=Germany

PolitiFact makes all kinds of mistakes, but some serve as better examples of ideological bias than others. A July 2, 2018 PolitiFact fact check of President Donald Trump serves as pretty good evidence of a specific bias against Mr. Trump:

The big clue that PolitiFact botched this fact check occurs in the image we cropped from PolitiFact's website.

Donald Trump states that the EU sends millions of cars to the United States. PolitiFact performs adjustments to that claim, suggesting Trump specified German cars and specifying that the EU sends millions of German cars per year. Yet Trump did not specify German cars and did not specify an annual rate.

PolitiFact quotes Trump:

At one point, he singled out German cars.

"The European Union … they send us Mercedes, they send us -- by the millions -- the BMWs -- cars by the millions," Trump said.

Saying Trump "singled out German cars" counts as twisting the truth. Trump "singled out" German cars in the sense of offering two examples of German cars among the millions sent to the United States by the European Union.

It counts as a major error for a fact checker to ignore the clear context showing that Trump was talking about the European Union and not simply German cars of one make (Mercedes) or another (BMW). And if those German makes account for large individual shares of EU exports to the United States then Trump deserves credit for choosing strong examples.

It counts as another major error for a fact checker to assume an annual rate in the millions when the speaker did not specify any such rate. How did PolitiFact determine that Trump was  not talking about a monthly rate, or the rate over a decade? Making assumptions is not the same thing as fact-checking.

When a speaker uses ambiguous language, the responsible fact checker offers the speaker charitable interpretation. That means using the interpretation that makes the best sense of the speaker's words. In this case, the point is obvious: The European Union exports millions of cars to the United States.

But instead of looking at the number of cars the European Union exports to the United States, PolitiFact cherry picked German cars. That focus came through strongly in PolitiFact's concluding paragraphs:

Our ruling

Trump said, "The European Union … they send us Mercedes, they send us -- by the millions -- the BMWs -- cars by the millions."

Together, Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen imported less than a million cars into the United States in 2017, not "millions."

More importantly, Trump ignores that a large proportion of German cars sold in the United States were also built here, using American workers and suppliers whose economic fortunes are boosted by Germany’s carnakers [sic]. Other U.S.-built German cars were sold as exports.

We rate the statement False.

That's sham fact-checking.

A serious fact check would look at the European Union's exports specifically to the United States. The European Automobile Manufacturers Association has those export numbers available from 2011 through 2016. From 2011 through 2013 the number was under 1 million annually. For 2014 through 2016 the number was over 1 million annually.

Data through September 2017 from the same source shows the European Union on pace to surpass 1 million units for the fourth consecutive year.


Does exporting over 1 million cars to the United States per year for three or four consecutive years count as exporting cars to the United States by the millions (compare the logic)?

We think we can conclude with certainty that the notion does not count as "False."

Our exit question for PolitiFact: How does a non-partisan fact checker justify ignoring the context of Trump's statement referring specifically to the European Union? How did the European Union get to be Germany?

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.

Have Democrats ''never held up a Supreme Court nomination"? (Updated)

We said before that PolitiFact does not hold itself to the same standard it applies to others. Though perhaps PolitiFact's scarce adherence to any consistent standard makes that inevitable. Our example comes from a March 20, 2016 fact check of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Let's start with the misleading headline:

PolitiFact noted in its fact check that Democrats did, in fact, hold up the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, whom Reagan nominated in 1987. So how does it work out that Reid's statement is "mostly true" anyway?

It's tricky, in keeping with PolitiFact's tradition of convoluted and selective justification.

In context, Reid stipulated that he was talking about lame duck cases. That makes his statement literally true false (see Update below) under an expansive interpretation of "lame duck," since Bork was nominated before 1988, Reagan's final year in office.

Up through this point, one might argue PolitiFact is treating Reid unfairly by rating his true statement only "Mostly True."

But there's much more to this story, and PolitiFact leaves out important parts.

First and foremost, there is no historical parallel to the current situation with the Supreme Court. The Bork nomination is considered a prime turning point in the politization of the confirmation process, and there is no example of a lame-duck nomination since Reagan.

And the current situation during Obama's last year in office sets a new precedent because his choice would not replace a liberal justice but a conservative justice. With his choice of Bork, Reagan was trying to replace the Nixon-appointed Justice Lewis Powell.

PolitiFact's effort to help us understand the truth in politics completely omits any information about differences in the ways these nominations would affect the political balance on the Supreme Court. It's apparently unimportant context in PolitiFact's eyes.

PolitiFact almost makes it look like Democrats rolled out the red carpet for Bork compared to Obama's hapless nominee Merrick Garland:

Bork did face a hearing and a Senate vote, which he lost, but his confirmation process made the rules of the game more contentious.

What's left out? The Democrat-controlled Senate Committee that sent Bork's nomination to the Senate recommended the Senate reject the nomination. And Democrats had enough of a majority that Bork had no chance with 52 of 54 Democrats voting against him (four Republicans often associated with the acronym RINO also opposed Bork).

Why is this background important? Let's revisit the context of Reid's reply to Meet the Press host Chuck Todd. Todd played a clip from 2005 of Reid saying the Senate has no constitutional duty to vote on a Supreme Court nomination. Now Reid says the Republicans have that duty. Todd asked Reid what changed. What changed, Reid said, is that the Democrats have never opposed a lame-duck nominee--a history running right up through 1988, before Reid ever claimed the Senate has no duty to vote on a nomination.

Reid's answer to Todd was complete baloney, in context. PolitiFact's fact-check does nothing to emphasize that context to its readers. Instead, PolitiFact readers get a misleading headline sending the message that Democrats hardly at all obstruct the Supreme Court nominations of Republicans.

PolitiFact: Putting the Clintonian "is" in "nonpartisan" since 2007.

Update: "Lame Duck" Lameness

Jeff D. points out the elephant in the room.

PolitiFact:

Before we rule, we wanted to note a slight error in the second part of Reid’s statement that "since 1900 in a lame-duck session, there have been six (nominees) that have all been approved." We have found in a previous fact-check that since the early 1900s, there have been six Supreme Court nominees in election years, and all were confirmed. However, only one was clearly a "lame-duck" nominee, meaning the president making the nomination was no question on the way out (Reagan). The others were nominated by presidents running for re-election to serve another term (Herbert Hoover, William Howard Taft, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who nominated two people in 1916).

Reid's stipulation that he was talking about lame ducks makes his statement literally false, contrary to the charitable reading I gave it in the post above. Reid's statement was flat wrong, but PolitiFact arbitrarily determined that Reid's exaggeration of 500 percent (of the number of "lame duck" Supreme Court nominations) was a "slight error" that does not appear to count against Reid's eventual rating.

PolitiFact used tweezers to pull out the most truth it could from Reid's statement, leaving behind plenty of falsehood.

Nonpartisan.


Correction March 23, 2016:  Replaced "Mostly False" with "Mostly True" in referring to the rating Reid received from PolitiFact. March 31 update: Added strikethrough of "true" and added "false" to clarify the meaning.

NewsBusters: "PolitiFact's 'Half True' Evaluation of Fiorina Layoffs Claim Is Utterly False and Dishonest"

NewsBusters' Tom Blumer exposes PolitiFact's ongoing difficulty in evaluating context with his article "PolitiFact's 'Half True' Evaluation of Fiorina Layoffs Claim Is Utterly False and Dishonest."

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina made a statement in Forbes about layoffs she made at Hewlitt-Packard while she was CEO. A liberal site took the statement out of context. PolitiFact evaluated the out-of-context attack on Fiorina and found it "Half True."

Blumer:

On May 5, PolitiFact's Louis Jacobson kept with the alleged "fact-checking" web site's actual role as pack of leftist hacks by issuing a fundamentally dishonest "Half True" ruling on a statement made by CarlyFiorina.org's cybersquatter. I raise the matter now because the web site's critics, while raising most of the relevant points, haven't gone far enough in tearing apart Jacobson's work.

As his headline states, the cybersquatter "accuses Carly Fiorina of wishing she'd laid off 30,000 employees more quickly" during the Republican presidential candidate's tenure as Hewlett-Packard's CEO which ended a decade ago. The squatter is lying. She didn't make that statement in connection with HP's layoffs. That should have been the end of it, but Jacobson still pretended that the lie is "Half True" in his evaluation.

Blumer's article reminds us of another recent contextual failure by PolitiFact. This one we pointed out at Zebra Fact Check. Rep. Trey Gowdy, chair of the House Benghazi Committee, said on Fox News the committee had received "not a scrap of paper" in response to its requests for the emails of Secretary Clinton's senior staff. PolitiFact, ignoring the context, counted the release of some of Clinton's emails as papers contradicting Gowdy's claim.

We suggest bias might account for PolitiFact's difficulty in properly accounting for context.