Fact Check: WaPo Calls Romney Jeep Ad 'Correct'

The Washington Post Fact Checker has declared that Mitt Romney’s television ad about Jeep production being moved overseas, which has “hurt” the “feelings” of the Obama campaign and the left, is “factually defensible” and “technically correct.” 

Actually, the Fact Checker’s Glenn Kessler gave the Jeep ad four Pinocchios, somehow conveying a verdict of gross dishonesty, despite the fact that no statement in Romney’s ad is incorrect. But my headline conveys the “overall impression” of Kessler’s article–which is the standard he uses to attack Romney.

Here is the naked truth about Romney’s claims about Jeep. Romney was wrong to say, in a speech in Ohio last week, that Jeep is moving “all” production to China. That statement, even if it was just a slip, was worthy of correction. 

But the Jeep ad airing in Ohio makes no such statement. It says that Chrysler, Jeep’s parent, was sold “to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.” That is 100% correct, and has been since 2010, as Tony Lee pointed out yesterday. It is also true that “Fact checkers confirm that [Obama’s] attacks on Mitt Romney [on the auto bailout] are false” and that Romney “is supported by Lee Iacocca and the Detroit News.”

So what is the Fact Checker upset about? The “overall impression,” which is an entirely subjective judgment of whether Obama or Romney had the better of the argument about whose policy was best for the auto industry.

This is yet another example of the corruption of so-called “fact checkers” in the mainstream media, who routinely run interference for the Obama campaign. Kessler’s attack on Romney–for that is what it is–even resembles the complaints of Obama aides David Axelrod and Jim Messina on a call with reporters yesterday. 

No doubt the Obama campaign will work up a television ad featuring Kessler’s four Pinocchios–and the Washington Post will be in no hurry to remind readers that it acknowledged Romney was actually correct on the facts.