For the last 25 years the DC Media has openly and shamelessly marveled at how well Democrats, especially the Clintons and Barack Obama, lie. On top of portraying this talent for lying as the kind of savvy competence America needs in a leader, the DC Media then waits for or manufactures “GOP overreach” to rescue the Clintons and Obama from said lies.
“Overreach” doesn’t turn a lie into a truth. What it does, though, is give the DC Media the excuse it so desperately wants to change the subject and start attacking Republicans.
On the other side of the coin, in order to go on offense against Republicans, this very same media invented the objective “fact-checker.” For two presidential election cycles I have watched in horror as these dishonest, partisan, left-wing fact-checkers have been used mercilessly by the DC Media to attack, undermine, and lie about various Republican candidates, especially those who pose the biggest threat to Democrats.
Finally, after eight long years, the era of the Mainstream Media Fact-Checker is over.
Best of all, the death of the fact-checker can be ruled a suicide.
It is unfortunate it took this long for these fact-checking cretins to expose themselves as the partisan liars they are. The damage these left-wing activists caused is hard to total. Nevertheless, at long last, PolitiFact and that fraud at the Washington Post, are now seen by the public and the Republican candidates for what they really are: a branch of the Democrat National Committee.
This death by suicide happened for two reasons.
First, especially at PolitiFact and the Washington Post, these hacks got way too full of themselves and started to believe they were invincible. The result was ludicrously dishonest fact checks, many of them outright trolling.
The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler has spent the better part of this year making a serial-fool of himself. It was bad enough that during the 2012 election, the left-wing Kessler awarded Mitt Romney Pinocchios for accurately stating the black and white fact that President Obama had not visited Israel during his first term in office. This year, in service to Hillary Clinton, Kessler has apparently decided that he has some god-like power to manufacture truth.
Although Carly Fiorina started out as a secretary, Kessler branded her a liar for saying she started out as a secretary.
Look at all the back-filling Kessler has had to do after he smeared Donald Trump as a liar for a claim about thousands of American Muslims cheering 9/11 that has a basis in actual fact. Kessler wasn’t fact-checking here. Fact-checking means waiting for the facts. Kessler prematurely jumped on this to set the narrative, and in the end, exposed only himself.
This happened, despite the fact that in an earlier fact check attacking Trump, Kessler admitted he had not waited for the all the facts before calling Trump a liar.
Although we now know for a fact that Hillary Clinton lied to the American people and the Benghazi families, Kessler called Marco Rubio a liar for saying so — and withheld key facts to try and pull it off.
Back in March, Kessler told me that by the end of the year his fact-checks of Republicans and Democrats would even out. Then, six months later, he admitted they wouldn’t.
Although, the tax code is in fact longer than the Bible, Ted Cruz was still criticized by the Washington Post for saying so.
And this is just the tip of the Fraud Iceberg with Kessler.
PolitiFact doesn’t beclown itself as often as Kessler (actually, no one in the media does), but PolitiFact has been so desperate to attack the GOP, it fact-checked a joke told by Ted Cruz. Naturally, for fear of the harm it would do Hillary Clinton, PolitiFact refused to fact check the lies she told about her emails, but eagerly smeared Republican Ben Carson over the now-debunked claimed he misunderstood Thomas Jefferson’s role in crafting of the Constitution.
I could go on and on and on. But you get the idea. These fact-checkers aren’t just partisan charlatans, they are brazen, shameless liars. The mistake they made of late, though, is being so shameless about it… Which brings me to the second reason the era of the fact checker is over — the most important reason…
Republican politicians are no longer intimidated by these liars. Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio have all publicly dismissed media fact-checkers as partisan. Moreover, unlike what we have seen in the past, Republicans are not allowing these fact-checking frauds to alter their message or their attacks, or tie them up in knots.
Instead, when the DC Media attempts to use a fact check as the final arbiter of what is true, the candidate being interviewed laughs off the idea that a “fact check” means anything, and goes right back to getting their message out.
When you understand that the primary goal of these fact-checkers is to protect Democrats from effective Republican attacks, you understand just what a big deal this is.
On top of that, you have legions and legions of citizen journalists on social media challenging and debunking these fact-checking frauds. Skeptical citizens informed by how these fact-checkers operate, are now doing their own research. Then they get the truth out using their own social media network. The exponential effect of this is impossible to calculate. And I’ve never seen anything like it.
Within moments of a phony fact check being published, you can actually watch your Twitter feed and see the Internet go to work to get the truth out.
Through their own indefensible behavior, fact-checkers have lost all credibility and any ability to shape the narrative. And I can think of nothing that is healthier for our democracy or The Truth.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC