Fact Checker

new cat 1/19

merri ok

moderation, but how effective?

abc fact check trump vph debate mult times

this is less general than correction, but more general than politifact; this is about orgs that declare themselves or are deputized to be arbiter of truth

see filterQA}:

ap assoc press, wapo? cnn?

see NYT Wapo

see CNN on fact check BS by gop TRUMP (but AN bias?)

BBC VERIFY

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AN 9 26

At a time when his network remains under assault by the administration, CNN's top fact-checker Daniel Dale received acclaim as he revealed his top takeaways after a full decade of covering and correcting President Donald Trump.

On Sunday morning, Dale published a new piece marking the notable anniversary, digging into the things he has learned over the years of sifting through Trump's "remarkable number of lies" during his time at the forefront of American political life.

“Ten years ago this month, in my old job as Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, I started what I believed would be a quick little side project: fact-checking underdog presidential candidate Donald Trump, who was telling a remarkable number of lies but was rarely being corrected. Like a lot of people, I thought Trump would lose the 2016 election,” Dale detailed. "I was very wrong. And Trump continued to be very wrong, about a dizzying variety of subjects, for the next decade.”

He added later in the piece: "The lies cause real harm. Some of Trump’s lies are so bizarre or trivial that I can’t help but laugh. On the whole, though, his lies have been deeply harmful to the country. People died because of the Capitol riot prompted by his lies about the 2020 election. His lies downplaying Covid-19 almost certainly led to deaths, too. Specific people targeted by his lies, including journalists, judges and election workers, have faced threats and harassment. His lies have worsened innumerable public debates around critical policy issues. And American democracy itself is worse off for all the lying, too."

The reaction to the piece across social media was largely glowing, with various colleagues and public figures hailing Dale's efforts and highlighting the particularly important points raised in his new piece.

"Thank you, Daniel Dale, for being one of the few political reporters who is willing to describe Trump's unmatched degree of dishonesty and lying more accurately and consistently," communications consultant Susan Bordson wrote in response to the piece on X, highlighting further a "Key excerpt re MSM press practices" in response to Trump's lies.

"Pro-Trump media entities have shown embarrassingly little interest in addressing his lies," Dale wrote in the passage she highlighted. "But more neutral outlets have regularly failed, too. On the last full day of Trump’s first presidency in 2021, I wrote, 'Too often, coverage of flagrantly dishonest Trump speeches still mentioned the dishonesty in passing or not at all. Too often, coverage still quoted the president’s lies without explaining that they were wrong.' More than five years later, these problems persist."

Brian Stelter, a professional colleague of Dale's and chief media analyst for CNN, highlighted some of what he saw as the key takeaways from the piece: "Dale's takeaways include: 'the bigger the crisis, the more Trump lies,' Trump 'is not only a supplier of bad information but a consumer of it,' 'the mainstream media doesn't handle Trump’s lying well enough,' and 'the lies cause real harm.'"

"That our nation has largely adjusted to having a habitual liar as president is shameful," Jennifer Erin Valent wrote. "Worse yet, he has been strongly supported by Christians who claim to honor the God of truth, who are meant to defy the father of lies, and who are commanded not to bear false witness."

"Everybody who supports or opposes Trump should read this, the thoughts of prominent factchecker Daniel Dale on the context and proliferation of Trump's lies," retired Chicago reporter Ray Long wrote.

"One of the heroes of American journalism is this Canadian, who has single-handedly researched and catalogued thousands of lies by our president," Daniel Boardman, dean of the Klein College of Media and Communications, wrote in a post about Dale.

"'Two months before Election Day in 2020… he was telling so many campaign lies that I’d become physically unable to look into all of them while living something loosely resembling a healthy life,'" senior CNN producer Shawn Reynolds wrote in a post quoting Dale's piece. "By then, I’d recorded more than 8,500 false claims since September 2016.”

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AN 2 26

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump sat down with NBC News reporter Tony Llamas for a wide-ranging interview on multiple subjects. However, Llamas often let the president lie without pushing back. Now, CNN is taking Llamas to task for not doing his job — while debunking Trump's lies.

In a Thursday article, CNN's Daniel Dale did a point-by-point fact-check of Trump's biggest lies, and admonished Llamas for doing little to counter what he called Trump's "rapid-fire dishonesty." The CNN fact-checker observed that while NBC published a fact-check of Trump's claims after the interview, Llamas himself frequently responded to Trump's outright falsehoods with "right" or "yeah," and sometimes "didn’t acknowledge them at all."

"Llamas’ hands-off approach to the president’s falsehoods left people watching the interview on television and through social media clips without immediate corrective information on a variety of pressing subjects," Dale wrote. "An exchange about inflation, for example, was littered with a bunch of inaccurate Trump figures and assertions that Llamas let pass by with the word 'right.' And in one case, when Trump claimed it’s only 'very few' product prices that have stubbornly refused to fall during this presidency, Llamas initially responded with a comment that made it sound like he was endorsing the false claim: 'Yeah, very few. I get it.'"

When it came to Trump's insistence about presiding over an increase in prices of consumer goods, Trump insisted to Llamas that the increases are limited to "very few" items. But Dale wrote that the Consumer Price Index was actually 2.7 percent higher in December 2025 compared to December 2024, and many more products have become more expensive since Trump's second term began than have become cheaper.

Dale also disputed Trump's claim to Llamas that he "inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country." The all-time highest inflation rate of 23.7 percent was actually set in 1920. And while former President Joe Biden saw the inflation rate jump as high as 9.1 percent under his watch in 2022, that was a 48-year high. Dale credited Llamas for telling Trump that Biden had to contend with the Covid-19 pandemic, which was the chief cause of high inflation rates.

Trump also told the NBC reporter that gas prices were "$1.99 a gallon" in 2026, though Dale found that the average price for a gallon of gas was $2.89 per gallon according to data published by AAA. GasBuddy head of petroleum analysis Patrick De Haan told CNN that out of more than 150,000 gas stations, only 18 to 34 offered gas prices under $2 per gallon. Dale reminded readers that Llamas' only response to Trump's claim was "yeah."

"An average over those dates would be 28 stations over the course of the week, or 0.018% of all U.S. stations. I think I’d rather find the needle in the haystack at that point," De Haan said.

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AN 1 26

Kicking off what is expected to be a weekly campaign-style tour of the nation to promote his agenda ahead of the November midterms, President Donald Trump engaged in what CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale described as an “alternative reality” of “piling lie upon lie” for his Iowa audience.

“You know, inflation we’ve solved; it’s done,” Trump told Fox News during the trip to Iowa. “We have it good where prices are coming way down. They were just saying, in Iowa the fuel is $1.95. Did you hear that? Somebody said $1.85. But it was $3.50, $4.50 just a year ago, a year and a half ago. You look at eggs, you look at groceries, it’s all down. Everything’s come down. Do you notice they don’t mention affordability anymore?”

According to Dale, it’s “true” that egg prices have fallen significantly, but the “rest of his narrative was thoroughly inaccurate.”

He continued his fact check: “Inflation is not over; prices continue to rise. Overall prices have gone up, not down. Overall grocery prices have gone up, not down. Iowa’s average gas price is much higher than $1.95. And Democrats have certainly not stopped mentioning affordability; in fact, it remains a key focus of their public remarks.”

Dale apparently wasn’t the only one fact-checking gas prices.

“In an unusual moment,” he writes, “Trump was fact-checked on this subject by an attendee at his Iowa speech on Tuesday. When he of gas in Iowa being $1.95 or $1.85 per gallon, someone in the crowd shouted, ‘No, $2.63,’ according to CNN’s Steve Contorno, who was on scene.”

According to Dale, “Overall consumer prices have increased during this presidential term; in December 2025, seasonally adjusted overall prices were 2.2% higher than they were in January 2025, and, again, 2.7% higher than they were in December 2024.”

He also noted that “It’s not true that ‘you look at groceries, it’s all down.’ In fact, the 0.7% increase in the Consumer Price Index for groceries between November 2025 and December 2025 was the biggest month-to-month jump reported in more than three years.”

And he added, “Iowa gas prices are generally much higher than Trump said.”

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AN 12 25

Karoline Leavitt's 'whopper' about a 'strong' job market shredded in blistering fact-check

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an 8 25

During Donald Trump's first presidency, CNN's Daniel Dale aggressively fact-checked him and found numerous inaccuracies or flat-out lies. Dale fact-checked former President Joe Biden as well, describing, at times, some of his statements as misleading. But Trump gave Dale a lot more material to work with.

In a fact-check published by CNN early Friday morning, August 29, Dale debunks ten claims Trump made in the course of only one week.

"President Donald Trump keeps saying the same false things over and over," Dale explains. "Trump's lying has always been notable for its audacity — his willingness to make obviously untrue claims that can be very quickly debunked. But it has also been distinguished by its repetitiveness — his unwillingness to stop deploying an exaggerated statistic, baseless accusation or fictional tale after months or even years of debunkings…. The president's recent public remarks have featured many old lies."

Dale adds, "In the interest of not letting them go uncorrected, here is a look at 10 debunked claims he repeated over the past week alone."

IFrame Content

Those debunked claims, according to Dale, include: (1) "imaginary sub-$2 gasoline," (2) "an impossible '1500 percent' reduction in prescription drug prices," (3) "no inflation amid continued inflation," (4) "The (non-)uniqueness of U.S. mail-in voting," and (5) "The water Trump says he sent to Los Angeles (he didn't) by turning a 'valve' (that doesn't exist)."

The other false claims Dale cites are: (6) "the 2020 election, again," (7) "that nonexistent monument law," (8) "a phony Ukraine aid total," (9) "a fictional story about Biden and South Korea," and (10) "a disproven tale Trump claimed had been proven."

The "disproven tale" in #10 is Trump's false description of a late 2024 post-election conversation with Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.

"Trump told a story on Monday, (August 25) in which he claimed a Democratic governor with whom he has been trading public barbs this month, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, told him during a behind-the-scenes conversation last year, 'Sir, you're the greatest president of my lifetime,'" Dale observes. "The story was disproven by Trump-friendly Fox News the very same day: it turned out that a Fox documentary show had recorded the conversation, in which Moore didn't say anything close to what Trump claimed."

Dale continues, "Trump was undeterred by the footage. He told a similar story on Tuesday, this time falsely saying Moore had told him, 'Sir, you're the greatest president' — and adding, 'They caught him on camera.' In reality, it was Trump who the camera had caught in a lie."

...

*Daniel Dale's full Donald Trump fact-check for CNN is available at this link.

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AN 7 25

CNN analyst Daniel Dale says the president lies. He lies a lot.

“President Donald Trump told a story on Monday about how he 'made a correct prediction’ about the outcome of the United Kingdom’s 2016 Brexit referendum while he was visiting his golf course in Scotland ‘the day before the vote,’” Dale said.

“It didn’t happen,” said Dale. Trump actually visited Scotland the day after the Brexit referendum, and he’d made no public predictions on the outcome of that vote.

It would be trivial if it didn’t happen all the time, said Dale, but it’s “part of a pattern – a long line of similarly fabricated tales from the president about his own history and world history.”

IFrame Content

Dale included an eight-point list of lies from just over the last two months, including Trump’s false claim that he issued a “don’t go in” warning against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, his lie about a supposed conversation with his late uncle about the Unabomber, and his dishonest claim that it was he who deployed the National Guard during civil unrest in Minneapolis in 2020, among many others.

“I actually did say, ‘Don’t go in [to Iraq], don’t go in, don’t go in.’ But I said, ‘If you’re going to go in, keep the oil.’ But they didn’t do that,” claimed Trump.

He didn’t, said Dale

“[Ted] Kaczynski [the Unabomber] was one of [my uncle’s] students,” said Trump, who then went on to fabricate an impossible conversation between Trump and his uncle about Kaczynski.

Dale said it was impossible because Kaczynski was not known to be the Unabomber at the alleged time of the conversation.

“That city was burning down, Minneapolis – it was burning down, it was gonna burn to the ground – and [Gov. Tim Walz] wouldn’t call the Guard. And I waited for a long time, and I called the Guard, and I saved it.” Trump claimed of civil unrest in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd by city police.

But it was Gov. Tim Walz, not Trump, who called out the guard.

And as for Trump’s claim that South Korea persuaded Biden to let it abandon paying for U.S. military protection from North Korea? Lies.

“In fact, Biden’s administration signed two cost-sharing agreements with South Korea, one in 2021 and one in 2024, that included South Korean spending increases – meaning South Korea twice agreed to pay more than it did during Trump’s first term,” Dale said.

So, why does he do it? Dale said the lies all serve the purpose of exaggerating Trump’s alleged expertise, embellishing his biography and his record and to “diminish his political opponents.”

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AN 6 25

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, recently gave a press briefing about Palestinians killed close to an aid distribution centre in Gaza on June 1. A key question, she suggested, was whether the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were really to blame, as had been reported.

“Unlike some in the media, we don’t take the word of Hamas as total truth,” she said. “We like to look into it when they speak, unlike the BBC.”

Given the explosive war of words that has broken out between US president Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, Leavitt’s accusation may now appear to be small potatoes. But it matters: this is the latest twist of Trump’s undermining of a free press that has been evolving since he first repeated the words back in 2016 that would shake the public’s belief in journalism: “Fake news!”

On inauguration day in January, my international journalism class and I were examining the seating chart for the White House press briefing room. We discussed the prime position of the Associated Press’s (AP) seat (front and centre) and the seats further back, where in the seventh row the BBC shared a position with Newsweek. We wondered if Trump might shuffle the pack, but decided that decisions were safely in the hands of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

Since then, the whole game has changed. Even an organisation as large and venerable as AP can be turfed out of the White House press pool on its ear. Meanwhile selected, right-wing newcomers like Brian Glenn of Real America’s Voice can throw a curve ball putting such an extraordinary question to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky during a White House press conference that it temporarily disturbs the course of a war.

The White House later decided to take away access given to other wire services such as Reuters and Bloomberg rather than allow AP to return to its previous access.

Media appearances and briefings for Trump are now purely performative. Friendly media companies get special invitations to Trump’s often explosive meetings with world leaders (such as that with Zelensky above), and “legacy media” have to keep raising their hands for access.

Leavitt, Trump’s young spokesperson, came out swinging at her briefing, brandishing a handy A4 printout of BBC online news stories on the shootings in Gaza on June 1.

As she waved her piece of paper – as curiously old-fashioned as Trump’s tariff whiteboard – she appeared. While referring to the page, compiled by a student activist on X,she announced that the BBC had edited “multiple headlines” about the death count, and changed claims about the deaths from being the result of tank fire to gunfire.

Without a hint of irony, she observed: “So we’re going to look into reports before we confirm them from this podium. I suggest that journalists who actually care about truth do the same to reduce the misinformation that’s going around the globe.”

Back in London, the BBC released a timely statement arguing that it updated its breaking stories throughout the events on June 1, saying this was “normal practice” and that all its figures were “clearly attributed”.

Meanwhile, the corporation’s analysis editor, Ros Atkins, put out a brief but carefully worded video, via BBC Verify, that concluded Leavitt’s accusations were “repeatedly false”. It affirmed that BBC reporters had quoted figures “with clear attribution” from the “the Hamas-run health ministry”. It also used sources such as the independent Red Cross and quoted the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in stories that day.The White House attacks the BBC for its coverage of Gaza.

Atkins refuted Leavitt’s claims that the BBC had taken down any of its articles and confirmed that they remained online. He said that BBC Verify had examined a separate online video posted on social media (not a BBC video) and deemed it unrelated to the aid centre deaths. He said that once again the student activist had “misrepresented what BBC Verify had done. The White House then repeated this misrepresentation.”

Interestingly, following the BBC Verify examination of the other video, the Israeli army has admitted responsibility for “a previously unacknowledged strike on the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza”, which reportedly killed at least one Palestinian and injured 30 others.

Two days after her initial briefing, Leavitt doubled down with similar accusations against the “fake news BBC”. However, it is Atkins’ final comment on his video that knocks out arguments that the White House is an arbiter of truth that is most chilling: “But in this case either the White House didn’t look into its claims about the BBC before bringing them to the podium or had no concern that they weren’t true.”

Part of Trump’s playbook involves sowing uncertainty among the public about the truth. He and his associates repeatedly hurl accusations, and then sit back and see what sticks. Going after one of the world’s most trusted media organisationsneatly serves this purpose, even though the BBC is a UK-based corporation and there are no straightforward domestic political gains in so doing.

This attack does however do a job of tarnishing the BBC’s reputation with some members of the public which can only please the Israeli government, whose own reputation within the international community could not be lower, according to the Pew Research Center. At the UN security council, this week, the US was the only country out of 15 to veto the draft resolution calling for an “unconditional and permanent” ceasefire in Gaza.

While British and international media correspondents are still calling for permission to enter Gaza to report on the situation, it is clearly not in the Israeli government’s interests to allow this. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has now confirmed he has authorised the supplying of weapons to another, purportedly anti-Hamas militia in Gaza, further muddying the waters of exactly who fired on whom.

Welcome to the latest twist in the Trump government’s media strategy that is designed to promote uncertainty while distracting from troubling events: “Oh look, a squirrel!”

Colleen Murrell, Chair of the Editorial Board, and Full Professor in Journalism, *Dublin City University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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AN 2 25

NO LNX

On Monday afternoon, February 3 — two weeks after President Donald Trump started his nonconsecutive second term — he spoke to reporters inside the White House. And Trump forcefully defended his new tariffs, which include 25 percent across-the-board tariffs on any goods coming into the United States from Canada or Mexico. For goods coming from Mainland China, Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff.

Following the press conference, CNN's Daniel Dale gave Trump a comprehensive fact-check — pointing out Trump's ability to build on his own exaggerations and false claims.

Dale told CNN hosts Brianna Keilar and Boris Sanchez, "There's a concept I think of as Trumpflation, where he makes a false claim — and then, it keeps getting falser and falser over time. The numbers keep rising."

READ MORE: 'Congratulations, America!' Trump mocked over his response to WSJ’s scathing tariff rebuke

Sanchez noted that Trump previously claimed that the United States, under former President Joe Biden, was sending $50 million to Gaza to buy condoms for members of Hamas — a number Trump increased to $100 million during the presser.

Sanchez told Dale and Keilar, "Trump actually exaggerated his own made-up, exaggerated claim during this. He doubled it." And Keilar added that the $100 million figure "is doubly incorrect."

Dale, during the fact-check, pushed back against Trump's claim that Canada and the European Union (EU) aren't buying as many U.S. exports as they should be buying.

Dale told his CNN colleagues, "He said, when talking about Canada: They don't take our agricultural products, for the most part. In fact, Canada is the third largest export market for U.S. agriculture: about $28 billion in purchases in 2023. There is a dispute about milk exports that he referred to, but in terms of agriculture as a whole, it's not true."

READ MORE: Donald Trump’s tariff wallop demonstrates the brute power of an imperial presidency

Dale continued, "He said that the European Union doesn't take our farm products. The European Union is the fourth largest export market, about 12 billion per year. He said we have about a $350 billion trade deficit with the EU — another gross exaggeration. It's about 125 billion. And he repeated this claim about aid to Ukraine that he repeatedly makes: He said that the EU provides way less aid to Ukraine than the U.S. does — they need to catch up and so on. In fact, according to the latest numbers we have, the EU has committed about double the aid to Ukraine during this war than the U.S. has."

READ MORE: 'Big government populist demagogue': Right-wingers slam Trump tariffs as markets plummet

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mma 10 24

Trump and right-wing media are still lying about FEMA, and CNN is still fact-checking them

Weeks after Hurricane Helene hit southern Appalachia, Trump and right-wing media are still spreading lies that are harming aid efforts and attracting extremist groups to vulnerable communities

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Published 10/24/24

On October 21 and 22, CNN News Central continued to debunk misinformation about FEMA that former President Donald Trump repeated at his October 21 visit to Swannanoa, North Carolina.

During the visit, Trump addressed victims of Hurricane Helene, which devastated western North Carolina in late September, including Swannanoa. He falsely claimed that FEMA’s “rescue effort was almost non-existent” in the state and that the Biden administration “spent a lot of money on bringing illegal migrants … so they don't have any money for the people that live here.”

Finally, Trump specified that the administration was spending money designated for rescue and recovery on “illegal immigrants … maybe so they could vote in the election.” Right-wing media have been amplifying these lies, and omitting the fact that in 2019, Trump used FEMA funds to respond to migrants at the border.

The rhetoric appears to have resonated, as a new poll released by Harvard's Center for American Political Studies and the analytics firms The Harris Poll and HarrisX, found that “two-thirds of Americans think the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should not provide housing to undocumented immigrants.” FEMA funds have never been diverted away from hurricane aid for any other purpose, including housing for migrants.

FEMA, local officials, and the White House have been responding to a flood of misinformation related to both the causes of the hurricane and FEMA’s response in the impacted areas. Driven in part by lies like the ones Trump has repeatedly amplified, such as claims that FEMA is willfully ignoring hurricane victims because they are Republican, threats against the agency, and other outlandish conspiracies have proliferated online. FEMA has faced at least two armed threats on the ground during its response to Helene, and the threats are ongoing.

The Washington Post reported on October 23 that Veterans on Patrol, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a “hard-right” antigovernment militia run by a Christian nationalist, set up a distribution site at a grocery store to help residents of Lake Lure, North Carolina, but ended up intimidating them.

One Lake Lure volunteer told the Post that she was afraid and not sleeping because of the behavior of the group's founder, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, after she questioned his intentions. “It turned into people calling me last night, like, be careful. Be careful. Really, he’s talking a lot about you,” she said.

Video

CitationFrom the October 21, 2024, edition of CNN's CNN News Central

On October 21, reporting from Concord, North Carolina, correspondent Kristen Holmes told hosts Brianna Keilar and Boris Sanchez on CNN News Centralthat Trump promoted “disinformation around FEMA.” She called out the false and dangerous claim that Democrats purposely spent FEMA money on migrant housing rather than relief efforts because they “want migrants to be voting in this election.” The accusation comes as Project 2025 allies are actively organizing to steal the election.

Holmes emphasized the network’s dedication to setting the record straight, saying that reporters had “fact-checked this before, we’ll fact-check it again.” She repeated that “we know that FEMA has different pots of money. They do have money that goes toward migrant housing, that does not come from disaster relief money.” She also added that while speaking with governors and state officials in places that Helene impacted, “None of them complained really about the federal response or about FEMA.”

Video

CitationFrom the October 22, 2024, edition of CNN's CNN Central

The next day on October 22, CNN followed up with another fact check on Trump’s most recent tirade, where reporter Daniel Dale clarified that FEMA does still have disaster relief money, that there has been “no sign that anything inappropriate’s happening” with the allocation of FEMA funds, and finally, that “it is not true that the Biden administration ran out of money.”

Doubling down on Trump and right-wing media’s assertions about where aid is going, Dale said that it’s “not true that FEMA improperly diverted disaster relief money to house migrants” and that “FEMA itself has already provided more than $100 million in individual assistance to North Carolina residents” as well as “more than $300 million to the state in general” from the Biden administration overall.

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an 10 24

Donald Trump's campaign team went on a behind-the-scenes meltdown mid-way through the former president’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, a new report revealed Monday.

As moderators fact-checked claims in realtime, his senior advisers began berating senior executives at the network, demanding the challenges stop.

Trump’s top aide, Suse Wiles, even made a call to ABC’s top president, the Washington Post reported.

“Trump’s advisers — including Chris LaCivita and Miller — erupted on ABC executives and journalists in the middle of the debate, according to the people familiar with the situation,” the Post reported.

“They implored the network to stop fact-checking for the rest of the event and said they had breached their promise, and a call was even lodged to the president of ABC News by Susie Wiles, the campaign’s top aide. At least one Trump adviser demanded to talk to the moderators during the debate.”

A contract signed by Trump’s team before the ABC debate and reviewed by the Post had no stipulation that he would not be fact-checked, according to the report.

But the team flipped as Trump received pushback over claims that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, with moderator David Muir interrupting to say the city manager “told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

ABC News did not comment on the Post’s report.

“Everyone who watched the ABC debate agreed that it was a 3-on-1 fight with 2 moderators who wrongly ‘fact-checked’ President Trump multiple times, but did not fact check Kamala Harris ONCE, even though she spewed multiple lies on the debate stage,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

“The ABC debate was widely viewed as one of the worst moderated debates in history, yet President Trump still won.”

The outburst from Trump’s handlers was unsuccessful at stopping the challenges, but it represents a clear move to make it acceptable for him to utter claims without expectations of fact-checking, the Post reported.

Earlier this month, he pulled out of a sit-down with CBS’ “60 Minutes” because, the show's producers said, he objected to being fact-checked.

“Within the political establishment on the right, it is now considered quite legitimate — and quite legitimate to say publicly and openly — that you disapprove of fact-checking,” Lucas Graves, author of “Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism," told the Post.

“Precisely because of Trump’s unusual relationship with the truth — even for a politician — it’s hardly surprising that he would object to it so volubly and so forcefully.”

===

abc fact check trump vph debate mult times

David Muir fact-checks Donald Trump on viral lie about migrants eating dogs after Harris challenges the size of his rallies

09/10/24 10:11 PM EDT

ABC’s Linsey Davis fact-checks Donald Trump’s lie that Democrats support “execution after birth

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an 8 24

Donald Trump called off an interview with a local newspaper during a visit to Michigan after he was asked to verify his claims about out-of-control crime in the area, according to a new report.

The Republican presidential nominee campaigned Tuesday in Howell, where he argued that a "crime wave" attributed to his Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris was occurring at levels "nobody has ever seen before," but he was unwilling or unable to cite evidence for those claims, reported *The Detroit News*.

"The Trump campaign had initially agreed that Trump would participate in an interview with The Detroit News on Tuesday," wrote state politics reporter Craig Mauger. "But after the newspaper began asking about the Michigan crime data before the event, a campaign aide said the presidential candidate no longer had time for an interview after the speech."

The recently convicted felon told supporters at his campaign event that in bigger cities, "almost all run by Democrats," Americans can't even "walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot. You get mugged. You get raped. You get whatever it may be."

"The amount of crime that we have is unbelievable," Trump said.

National crime data shows the rate of violent crime decreased from 2017 to 2019 during Trump's presidency before spiking in 2020 to 398.5 incidents per 100,000 people, while the violent crime rate dropped in 2021 and 2022 in the first years of Joe Biden's presidency to 380.7 incidents per 100,000 people.

The Trump campaign waved away that FBI data as "totally unreliable" because the statistics were based on "estimated crime numbers" for law enforcement agencies that didn't report numbers.

Michigan State Police reported that violent crime increased 12 percent in the state between 2019 and 2020, the last full year of Trump's presidency, and then another 1 percent in Biden's first year in office before dropping about 7 percent the following year.

"Why would Michigan want to go back to the higher crime rates of the Trump years?" asked transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who also challenged the former president's record on crime during a Fox News appearance.

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July 31, 2024, edition of CNN's *CNN News Central

DANIEL DALE (REPORTER): So the controversialness of the claims about Vice President Harris' identity will probably make the most headlines, but I think it's important to note that his claims on that subject are also false. You know, he said that Vice President Harris has only “turned Black” a couple of years ago and before that she was only promoting her Indian heritage. That is just not true. I quickly — just via Google and with the help of CNN's KFile team, Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck — found multiple examples of her talking about her Black identity going back decades.

Her biography on the official website of the San Francisco district attorney page identified her as an African American woman. I found an article in Politico that quoted her talking about her Black identity and speaking out against anti-Black racism in 1989, as a law student. So this is not some sort of sudden identity conversion, that's just completely fictional.

And then, guys, it was just a laundry list of old Trump false claims. So, his claim that — well, he said she didn't pass the bar exam. You addressed that. She passed on a second try and was admitted to the bar a year after she graduated law school.

He talked about Democrats allowing the death of babies after birth, suggesting that there's some sort of post-birth abortion. Again, not true, illegal in every state.

He said, “everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, this issue returned to the states. No, that's not true. Roe was overwhelmingly popular with about two-thirds of the American public.

He talked again about foreign countries opening up prisons to send people here as migrants — has never provided any proof of that.

Talked about people coming here from mental institutions over the border. Again, provided no proof of that.

And he exaggerated numbers even that could work for him. So, talking about inflation, yes, has been a problem under President Biden, Vice President Harris. He said worst inflation in 58 years and then he said actually over 100 years. Well, it's not even the worst in 20 years right now. It's about 3%. And when it did hit a high under Biden and Harris in 2022, it was a 40-year high. So, he could just say we hit a 40-year high — instead, he made a 58 and then 100-plus, none of which is true.

===

Newsmax's Greg Kelly: “Fact-checking is fake, and it's actually kinda dangerous”](https://www.mediamatters.org/greg-kelly/newsmaxs-greg-kelly-fact-checking-fake-and-its-actually-kinda-dangerous)

08/01/24 mma

July 31, 2024, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports

GREG KELLY (HOST): Speaking of President Trump, he went to the National Association of Black Journalists today in Chicago, and everybody lost their mind when Donald Trump spoke the truth. Now one thing first, the National Association of Black Journalists, NABJ, I don't like it right off the top. Let's see here. It was founded in 1975, stated purpose is to provide quality programs and services and advocate on behalf of Black journalists. I just -- something that divides us.

I mean, I don't know. The National Association for White Journalists, can you conceive of such a thing? No. Nobody could. White people don't have anything really in common. Black people don't have anything in common. We don't look at it that way. Faith, sports, neighbors, jobs, a million other things bring us together or divide us actually other than race. So, and in my experience, Black, white, Asian, the media, they're pretty much all jerks. OK? It really doesn't matter.

Just before Donald Trump took the stage, I had a feeling things were gonna go south because this person here, Rachel Scott is her name from ABC News, laid down the ground rules.

...

Oh my gosh. You can't fact check political speech, rhetoric, I mean, opinion. You can't fact check it. And as we know, Google and all the search engines have now been rigged against conservatives. It sounds great. You hear the audience going crazy. It's not. Fact-checking is fake, and it's actually kinda dangerous.

===

an 7 24

In just the first half of Sen. J.D. Vance's interview with "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker, the Ohio Republican waved his hands and snapped at her as she attempted to fact-check him.

During Vance's second outburst, the NBC host resorted to telling him, "I have to hit pause here."

What first set off the Ohio lawmaker, who is reportedly a finalist to be Donald Trump's running mate, was Welker pushing back at his claim that President Joe Biden is siccing the Department of Justice on the embattled Trump.

"The prosecution of Donald Trump in New York, which I think now has fundamentally been thrown in doubt by this immunity case, it was one of the main guys was a Department of Justice official of the Biden administration who jumped ship to join a local prosecutor's office to go after Donald Trump," Vance stated which led her to interrupt, "And yet the DOJ told Congress.." as he rambled, "...the legitimacy of the prosecution. That's a problem."

"Senator, that happens all of the time, people are appointed from Washington. The DOJ told Congress—, she instructed him just before he shouted over her.

"Are you really saying, Kristen, it happens all the time! That the number --," Vance exclaimed with Welker cutting him off and explaining, "Let me just finish this. It [Congress] reviewed all communications since Biden took office and found no contact between federal prosecutors and those involved with that case in New York. Can you stick to the substance of the question, though?"

In the second skirmish, Vance claimed the Biden administration wants to fund abortions up to birth, calling it "crazy," which led Welker to once again talk over him after putting him on "pause" and then explaining, "As you know abortions, very few abortions, take place later in pregnancy almost always because there is a medical emergency."

Watch below or at the link.

===

https://www.alternet.org/trump-jack-smith-indictment/

"Baseless conspiracy theories': NY Times fact-check tears apart Trump’s 2020 election lies

===

an 8 23 no lnx

Republicans’ 'untethered' Hunter Biden claims demolished by WaPo fact-checker

Alex HendersonAugust 17, 2023

A Washington Post fact check on Thursday took House Republicans to task as right-wing lawmakers "over hype" the House Oversight Committee's investigation into President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky) has been leading the Hunter Biden probe in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Post's Glenn Kessler gives Comer and his GOP colleagues an aggressive fact-check in his August 17 column.

"The House Oversight Committee, led by Comer, has been investigating business dealings of President Biden's son, Hunter, and other family members — and by extension, unverified allegations that the president was involved in his son's business as well," Comer explains. "The Committee has obtained thousands of bank records, and the Republican staff has issued three memorandums summarizing some of the findings. The memos are written in a partisan manner — ignoring or playing down contrary information — but an interesting pattern has emerged."

Kessler continues, "The memos themselves have careful language that is often hedged. Then, Comer and other GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), go on Twitter or speak to conservative media using hyperbolic language that goes well beyond what the memos say. Over time, the reporting on the memos in conservative media becomes untethered from the documentation in the reports."

House Republicans, Kessler emphasizes, typically exaggerate the amount of $20 million in payments that went to the Biden family because of Hunter Biden's business activities.

"As for the $20 million in payments," Kessler explains, "Comer and other Republicans invoke this figure often. A close reading of the memos, however, finds that only about $7 million can be directly attributed to Biden family members, mostly Hunter, while the rest went to 'associates,' according to the memos. Yet Comer and other lawmakers misleadingly suggest all of the money went to the Biden family or, as some label it, 'the Biden crime family.' No evidence has emerged that any of these funds can be traced to Joe Biden himself."

Kessler points out that Comer "often suggests that the Biden family used…. so-called shell companies to launder money." But that claim, according to Kessler, is "undercut by the list of 21 companies that appear in" a staff memo.

READ MORE: 'It's like a soap opera': These Republicans are weary of their colleagues' Hunter Biden obsession

The term "shell company," Kessler points out, has a dark connotation. But the companies Hunter Biden headed, he adds, "had legitimate business interests."

"Others had clearly identified business investments," according to Kessler. "Digging through the records, we find only three whose business purpose remains vague. One, Rosemont Seneca Global Risk Services, LLC, may not even be related to Hunter Biden, according to an e-mail found in Hunter Biden's laptop. The memos do not list any payments that flowed through these three companies."

READ MORE: Vivek Ramaswamy implies Hunter Biden is reason behind US aid to Ukraine: report

Glenn Kessler's full column is available at this link (subscription required).

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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===

an 3 23

no lnx

CNN fact checker knocks down more than a dozen false claims made by GOPers at CPAC

Meaghan EllisMarch 04, 2023

A CNN fact-checker recently slashed through more than a dozen false claims that derived from this weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) currently underway in Dallas, Texas.

On Saturday, March 4, CNN's Daniel Dale penned an analysis to offer insight and clarity on the claims. In his analysis, he began with a clear introduction about the false claims he intended to debunk.

Starting with the first day of the conference, Dale researched claims made by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and offered corrections to refute their inaccurate remarks.

READ MORE: Fact checker reveals Trump stole credit from Obama with 1 outrageous lie 56 times in 2019

"The members of Congress, former government officials and conservative personalities who spoke at the conference on Thursday and Friday made false claims about a variety of topics," Dale wrote.

"Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio uttered two false claims about President Joe Biden. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia repeated a debunked claim about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky," he added.

"Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama used two inaccurate statistics as he lamented the state of the country. Former Trump White House official Steve Bannon repeated his regular lie about the 2020 election having been stolen from Trump, this time baselesly blaming Fox for Trump’s defeat," he wrote.

Dale went on to address claims from Reps. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) and Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.)

READ MORE: 'Highly misleading': CNN brutally fact-checks Kevin McCarthy's latest series of unfounded claims

"Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida incorrectly said a former Obama administration official had encouraged people to harass Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina inaccurately claimed Biden had laughed at a grieving mother and inaccurately insinuated that the FBI tipped off the media to its search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence," he wrote. "Two other speakers, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, inflated the number of deaths from fentanyl."

In total, Dale debunked 13 misleading claims made by Republican lawmakers during the conference.

===

an bad 3 23

**U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene** (R-GA) and **U.S. Senator Mike Lee** (R-UT) are actively spreading anti-Ukraine disinformation, posting to Twitter a deceptively-edited video of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which they falsely claim means the Ukrainian President wants America's "sons and daughters" to die defending Ukraine.

Senator Lee complained his personal Twitter account was suspended at some point after he retweeted the video. It was recently restored and his post with the deceptively-edited video has not been removed.

The original Twitter sources of the video have warning labels that Greene and Lee appear to have ignored before posting. Greene posted it to her official U.S. government Twitter account.

That warning, in the form of a readers' note, says: "This quote is taken out of context. The full quote is :'If Ukraine loses, Russia is going to enter Baltic states, NATO states, then the U.S will have to send their sons and daughters exactly in the same way as we are sending our sons and daughters to war'."

The Associated Press also published a fact check on Wednesday noting the deceptively-edited video is "missing context." The AP states: "He was not suggesting Americans would have to fight in Ukraine."

But in the deceptively-edited video Greene and Lee tweeted, Zelenskyy (via an interpreter) says, "the U.S will have to send their sons and daughters exactly in the same way as we are sending our sons and daughters to war."

Zelenskyy goes on to say, "and they will have to fight because it's NATO that we're talking about. They will be dying, God forbid, because it's a horrible thing."

In the full video from February 24, Zelenskyy is urging Americans to not give up on Ukraine. The most important portion of Zelenskyy's remarks have been edited out in Greene's and Lee's version: "If Ukraine loses, Russia is going to enter Baltic states, NATO states."

Greene tweeted, "There's not a parent in America that wants their son or daughter dying defending Ukraine's border. When have Ukrainian & NATO sons and daughters died defending America's border?"

Lee tweeted, "Zelensky has no right to presume that our sons and daughters will fight his war. Shame on him. We've somehow sent the message that we work for him. Shame on us!"

The 19-second deceptively-edited video has been viewed nearly 400,000 times.

Zelenskyy's (via interpreter):

"I would like to thank the American people. I would like to thank all of the American people that are supporting Ukraine, the Congress, the President, the TV channels, the journalists, and everyone that has been supporting us, and that percentage of Americans, as you've mentioned is increasing. I can tell them only one thing. If they do not change their opinion, if they do not understand us, if they do not support Ukraine, they will lose NATO, they will lose the clout of the United States, they will lose the leadership position that they are enjoying in the world, that they are enjoying for a very fair reason, and they will lose the support of the country with 40 millions of population, with millions of children. Are American children any different than ours? Don't Americans enjoy the same things as we do? I don't think we're that different. And I'm actually very happy that we have bipartisan support, but we keep hearing those messages from time to time and they’re dangerous.

There are political leaders that are elected by people. And if this issue is raised, those political leaders need to be responsible and cautious because people are looking at them. Who wants a third world war? Would anyone risk would anyone be willing to accept that risk? The US is never going to give up on the NATO member states. If it happens so that Ukraine, due to various opinions and weakened and depleting of assistance, loses, Russia is going to enter the Baltic states, NATO member states, and then the US will have to send their sons and daughters exactly the same way as we are sending their sons and daughters to war and they will have to fight because it's NATO that we're talking about and they will be dying, God forbid because it's a horrible thing."

===

no lnx

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/17/bogus-allegation-that-putin-is-funding-california-environmental-charity/

Analysis

The bogus ‘allegation’ that Putin is funding a California environmental charity

By Glenn Kessler

Staff writer

March 17, 2022

“It has been alleged that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is using a San Francisco-based e-NGO, the Sea Change Foundation (Sea Change), to funnel money into U.S.-based environmental advocacy efforts designed to undermine American energy production. … Notably, reports suggest that your organization is one of the top e-NGO recipients of Sea Change grants since 2006.”

:{:{}:

— Letter signed by every GOP member of the House Energy Committee, written to several environmental groups, March 10

Note the passive voice in this letter — “it has been alleged.” There’s just enough smoke in the four-page missive to suggest there’s a raging fire. At Fox News, the resulting story was headlined: “House Republicans demand answers from environmental groups over allegation of collusion with Russia.”

The letter demanded answers by March 25 from three environmental groups — the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Sierra Club — on whether they have received funding from Russia or China and whether any funding from Sea Change, an environmental philanthropy, was used for anti-fracking advocacy. Sea Change contributes about $40 million to $50 million a year to a variety of environmental organizations.

“Provided the public reporting of Putin’s dark money influence in Europe and the concerns surrounding similar efforts in the United States, we write today to explore your connections with Sea Change,” the letter said. “Any action by President Putin, the Russian government, or Putin’s allies to undermine American energy security must be addressed.”

But upon inspection, the allegations crumble into dust. The flimsiest of dots are connected to make a case. What is even more astonishing is that, regular as clockwork, Republicans have been making these bogus claims every few years, even after credible explanations have been given. Small wonder — they keep getting the same favorable headlines from right-leaning media.

The Facts

This all started in 2014, when the Republican staff of the Senate Environment Committee published a report alleging that a group of “left wing millionaires and billionaires … directs and controls the far-left environmental movement, which in turn controls major policy decisions and lobbies on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).” The report focused on Sea Change Foundation, based in California, which it said “relies on funding from a foreign company with undisclosed donors.”

The president of Sea Change is Nat Simons, a son of billionaire hedge fund investor James Simons, who is one of the world’s richest people, with a net worth of almost $29 billion.The committee report conceded that Nat and his wife, Laura Baxter-Simons, “predominantly fund Sea Change through their own personal wealth, mostly attributed to their ties to Renaissance Technologies, a wildly profitably hedge fund.”

But the report also noted that “in addition to funding by the Simons, the only other source of its contributions derives from a Bermuda-based company called Klein Ltd.” In 2010, Kleincontributed $13 million to Sea Change, about half of Sea Change’s contributions that year, and in 2011 Klein contributed $10 million to Sea Change, about one-third of the contributions. The report decried the “lack of transparency” about Klein’s funding and said the company appeared to have been set up “for the sole purpose of funneling anonymous donations to Sea Change.”

There was not a word in the report about Russian money. But then, in December 2015, a group called the Environmental Policy Alliance issued a six-page paper titled “From Russia With Love?”

Note the question mark.It intended to raise allegations but provide plausible deniability. The paper — it’s too thin to be called a report — claimed it was building on the Senate report by examining the law firm that set up Klein.

That firm, Wakefield Quin, is one of Bermuda’s top law firms. The hyped discovery in the paper was that some of the lawyers at the firm held directorship positions in companies of some of their clients, including some linked to the Russian energy sector.One 2008 court case in the British Virgin Islands, for instance, resulted in a money laundering conviction against a client associated with an adviser to Putin. “While it is unclear who is funding Klein, the law firm controlling this shady offshore funder of the U.S. environmental movement has ties to Russian money laundering, a friend and advisor of Vladimir Putin, Russian oil production, and more,” the paper said.

Law firms, of course, often have many clients, sometimes with shared interests. But that does not mean the law firm is coordinating among its clients or funneling money between them. The dots are so poorly connected as to be almost nonexistent.

Moreover, there is a certain irony in theEnvironmental Policy Alliance issuing the paper. It’s one of the many “AstroTurf” organizations — faux think tanks — run out of the offices of Berman and Company, headed by GOP lobbyist Richard “Rick” Berman. The group’s webpage says it is devoted to “uncovering the funding and hidden agenda behind environmental activist groups.”

In 2014, the New York Times obtained a recording of a closed-door speech in which Berman bragged to a group of oil industry executives about how he kept corporate donations secret behind a wall of nonprofit groups that sponsor major advertising campaigns supporting industry objectives. “There is total anonymity,” he said. “People don’t know who supports us.”

Despite the dubious provenance and the flimsy reasoning, the claims made by Berman’s group keep circulating.

In 2017, when Russian interference in the 2016 election was in the news, two Republican lawmakers from Texas, Lamar Smith (since retired) and Rep. Randy Weber, issued an open letter asking the Treasury Department to investigate possible money flows from Putin to Sea Change.

The letter began by citing concerns raised about Russia’s opposition to fracking by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Rasmussen in 2014 was quoted as saying that Russia “engaged actively with so-called nongovernmental organizations — environmental organizations working against shale gas — to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.”He provided no proof and declined to say more, saying, “That is my interpretation.”

Clinton, in a private speech in Edmonton, Alberta, in 2014, alluded to Russian disinformation efforts. “We were up against Russia pushing oligarchs and others to buy media,” she said. “We were even up against phony environmental groups, and I’m a big environmentalist, but these were funded by the Russians to stand against any effort, ‘Oh that pipeline, that fracking, that whatever will be a problem for you,’ and a lot of the money supporting that message was coming from Russia.”

The speech was revealed when Russia hacked the account of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta and turned over his emails to WikiLeaks. But Nick Merrill, a Clinton spokesman, said she was not talking about Russia funding groups in the United States. “I remember this speech,” he said in an email. “She was talking about proposed pipelines in Europe that would have threatened Russian supply.”

One repeatedly cited statistic is that Russia invested $95 million in nongovernmental organizations to persuade European governments to stop shale gas exploration. The number appeared in a 2018 Senate committee report, sourced to the Wilfried Martens Center for European Studies. But the Wilfried Martens Center report does not explain how that figure was calculated and attributes it only to a 2015 “interview with anonymous contributor.” The report also is unclear about how much of this funding came from what are known as GONGOs (government-organized nongovernment organizations) or Russian oil companies themselves, as opposed to secret conduits of Russian money.

Finally, the letter referred to a national intelligence report issued on Jan. 6, 2017, about Russia’s efforts to influence the political debate in the United States. That report noted that RT, the Russian news channel, “runs anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health.”

In other words, concerns about apparent Russian efforts to use nongovernmental groups in Europe to undermine fracking were leveraged to suggest that the same problem existed in the United States. But the only direct intervention in the United States that has been identified was a Russian news network.[that is well known propaganda organ vs u.s. NGO?]

When Smith and Weber issued their letter, the Bermuda law firm issued a blistering statement denying any suggestion that it acted as a conduit for Russian funds. “The allegations are completely false and irresponsible,” the firm said. “Our firm has represented Klein since its inception, and we can state categorically that at no point did this philanthropic organization receive or expend funds from Russian sources or Russian-connected sources and Klein has no Russian connection whatsoever.”

Politico quoted a Sea Change spokesperson as saying that no money from Russia had been received and that none of its donations to environmental groups were earmarked for opposition to fracking — which was supposedly the point of the subterfuge. From our study of Sea Change’s tax filings, its contributions have been focused broadly on climate change mitigation, energy efficiency and clean-energy policies.

Finally, a year later, the Sea Change Foundation revealed the source of Klein’s funding — the Simons family wealth. It turns out it was just another trust for the family’s billions.

“I wish to clarify that press reports speculating that Klein has received funding from outside sources are factually incorrect and have no basis,” Nat Simons said in a 2018 statement to Inside Philanthropy. “Neither Klein nor Sea Change Foundation has ever solicited or accepted contributions from non-family related sources.” Simons said that the name of the Bermuda funding vehicle had been changed from Klein Ltd. to Sea Change Foundation International.

Yet, here we are, with a new letter.This new missive repeats, at the start, the same items as the earlier letter — such as quotes from Rasmussen, Clinton and the national intelligence report. It adds a 2019 quote from former Trump aide Fiona Hill, made during the first impeachment inquiry, that Putin “saw American fracking as a great threat to Russian interests.” (Hill told the Fact Checker that “this was only a general statement” as “Putin went on a rant about fracking that I personally witnessed in November 2011.”)

Then the letter claims that “it has been alleged thatPutin” is using Sea Change to advance his interests. No mention is made of Sea Change’s 2018 statement explaining the family wealth as the source of the money.

The letter is so stuck in a time warp that it’s out of date. Rod Forrest, a director and senior counsel at Wakefield Quin, told The Fact Checker that the law firm no longer represents Sea Change (or Klein) and has not done so for some time.“Wakefield Quin does not have any directorship positions with any investment or other group connected in any way to any Russian minister,” he added.

Nat Simons and Laura Baxter-Simons, in a statement to The Fact Checker, said: “We are disappointed to see false allegations of foreign influence through Sea Change Foundation resurface after this untrue assertion was fully refuted in a statement released in 2018. To state clearly, neither Klein nor Sea Change Foundation has or had any connection to Russia or Russian funds.”

The environmental groups also issued statements denying any links to Russian funds.

“We receive no funding from the government of Russia,” said Bob Deans, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s director of strategic engagement. “We answer to our independent leadership, and we don’t do the bidding of any government — foreign or otherwise — in our work to advocate for common sense environmental protections in the public interest. These allegations are rooted in a smear campaign orchestrated nearly a decade ago by fossil fuel interests and a right-wing think tank. They only serve now, as then, as a distraction.”

“This false conspiracy theory, invented by the same deceitful front groups paid to do polluters’ and Big Tobacco’s dirty work, has been repeatedly debunked over its nearly 10-year existence,” said Sierra Club Legislative Director Melinda Pierce. “The Sierra Club has no connections to Russia or China, and proudly fights for clean energy and climate action because this is what our planet requires, our families deserve, and what the overwhelming majority of Americans across the country demand.”

“This story is completely false and has been put to rest for years,” said David Willett, a League of Conservation Voters spokesman. “We have no connections to Russia, or China, and have been an effective advocate for environmental protection for over 50 years. These false and poorly-researched allegations are rooted in a nearly 10-year-old right-wing think tank and fossil fuel industry-funded smear campaign that gets revived every few years to serve as a distraction.”

Jack Heretik, a spokesman for the House Energy Committee’s GOP members, said: “If the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club have nothing to hide, then we look forward to seeing the evidence by March 25.”

Will Coggin, a Berman and Company research analyst associated with entities such as the Center for Consumer Freedom and the Environmental Policy Alliance, issued a statement defending the 2015 paper: “The NATO Secretary General said Russians were working with environmentalists to oppose fracking in other countries as a scheme to help Russian energy. Our report highlighted how a shadowy Caribbean-based organization gave $23 million to Sea Change and how the firm where that group was based had connections to Russian clients. The questions we raised are still unanswered, and this situation deserves a full, independent investigation.”

The Pinocchio Test

For years, it’s been clear that Sea Change Foundation has no connection to secret Russian money. After all, the foundation is associated with one of the world’s richest families. On top of that, we can find no evidence that money donated by Sea Change resulted in anti-fracking campaigns. The foundation might have been quicker to reveal that Klein’s funds were just more of the Simonses’ money, but in any case that has been known now for four years.

The lawmakers may pretend that they are just asking questions, but in reality they are recycling claims that have already been adequately debunked. It’s a smarmy way to earn some publicity during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They earnFour Pinocchios.

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229 Comments

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/republicans/

fact checkers ~ BS gas prices

---

ez to demagogue b/c ppl don't get it's a world commodity? supply and demand fundamentalism/reductionism?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/ted-cruz-fact-checked-gas/

also CNN ~ portman

===

3 22

Fact checkershreds Trump Jr.'s claim about 6 million military hours being spent promoting the 'woke' agenda

Donald Trump, Jr. speaking at the 2019 Teen Student Action Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C., Gage Skidmore

Meaghan Ellis March 03, 2022

A fact-checker is pushing back against Don Trump Jr.'s latest claim suggesting the military's last 6 million hours have placed an emphasis on the so-called "woke" agenda.

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler highlighted remarks made by former President Donald Trump's son when he appeared at theConservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla. At one point during his speech, he criticized the U.S. military.

“Our generals, the great woke leaders of our military that spent 6 million man-hours training our troops about wokeness — not fighting, not killing bad guys," Trump Jr., said on February 27. "They wanted to learn about White rage, a term none of us had heard of prior to him [Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff] testifying, right?”

[Donald Trump Jr. Bashes Biden Over Ukraine Crisis In Fiery CPAC 2022 Remarks | Full Speech

youtu.be]

Kessler pushed back with the facts about the military's hours spent. He noted that Trump Jr.'s remarks would only make sense to conservatives who rely on information from far-right influential platforms like Fox News and Newsmax. He went on to explain why.

After tracking down the six million figure, Kessler acknowledged that it derives from a letter written by Milley that was addressed to Sen. James M. Inhofe (Okla.), who is a high-ranking Republican official serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee. At the time, Inhofe had requested to know how much time had been dedicated to three key items as under the U.S. Department of Justice requirements. Those items, according to Kessler, are "an extremism 'stand-down' related to the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol, a climate change plan and a new diversity, equity and inclusion training program."

Although Trump Jr. claimed the military had spent a substantial amount of its time on the woke agenda,Kessler pointed out that they actually placed an emphasis on mitigating extremism.

"The biggest chunk of time was devoted to the extremism stand-down — nearly 5.4 million hours," Kessler explained. "Since nearly 2.5 million members of the military participated, that means about two hours per person, which Milley noted is “comparable to other Joint Force periodic training requirements.” The climate change plan (1,059 hours) and diversity training (529,711 hours) brought the total up to 5.9 million hours. But you can see that more than 90 percent of the total related to the extremism course."

Kessler also highlighted Trump Jr.'s attempt to bend words.

"Notice the sneaky trick that Trump Jr. plays here," he wrote.

The vast majority of the “6 million man-hours” and the “White rage” comment concerned the attack on the Capitol by supporters of his father — an attack that the former president has defended and even seemed to celebrate. But his son does not make that clear. Instead, he claims that this is all about a “woke agenda” imposed by the Biden administration. To some extent that might be a matter of opinion, but it seems like a real stretch."

He concluded saying that although the 6 figure number is an actual estimate of real-time hours, "there is no evidence that this relatively minor course detracted from any military training — and Trump Jr. entirely mischaracterizes what the training was for."

===

sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) is being lambasted by fact-checkers yet again for circulating false claims. A new piece published by The Houston Chronicle's Laura Schulte lays out the remarks made by the Republican senator and fact-checkers rebuttal torching his baseless claims.

This particular ordeal centers on Johnson's January 26, 2022, appearance on "The Charlie Kirk Show." At the time, Johnson and Kirk discussed COVID vaccines.

"We’ve heard story after story. All these athletes dropping dead on the field," he said during a conversation about the possible adverse effects of COVID vaccines. "But we’re supposed to ignore that. Nothing happening here, nothing to see. This is a travesty, this is a scandal."

Schulte immediately zeroed in on Johnson's exaggerated claim about athletes "dropping dead on the field."

"Is Johnson right?" Schulte asked as she immediately followed with a sharp answer to the question with a resounding, "No."

She continued, "Let’s take a closer look."

In wake of Johnson's outlandish remarks, he was asked to provide evidence of his claim. His spokeswoman Vanessa Ambrosini reportedly told The Houston Chronicle that Johnson "has been alarmed by stories he has heard of athletes dying on the field."

"The Senator’s point in raising these issues," Ambrosini said via email, "has always been that our federal health agencies should be concerned about reports on adverse reactions related to COVID-19 vaccines and they should fully investigate and make their findings available to the American people."

While Schulte did acknowledge the validity of those remarks, she argued the specifics of Johnson's remarks. "The claim was that there are stories about all sorts of athletes dying in the midst of competition, or at least while practicing," she specified.

Although Johnson has a tendency to cite information from the federal database documenting adverse events, Schulte noted that "the database itself notes the claims are not vetted to establish a cause between them."

Patrick Remington —a former epidemiologist for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and director for the preventive medicine residency program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison— offered a detailed explanation of what the CDC actually looks for: "causation, not just coincidence"

"The burden is on credible scientists to study whether vaccination could be associated with this outcome, and no credible science exists to say it is," he said. "We continue to do ongoing surveillance, the vaccine surveillance system is in place to study any possible associations that come up. But to date, I am not aware of any studies or any credible research that suggests that vaccines cause death in young athletes."

Ambrosini also provided a copy of an article published by GoodSciencing.com that suggests "hundreds" of young athletes have died as a result of vaccine complications. "We found no proof of a causal relationship in any of the cases between the vaccines and the injuries or deaths," the fact-check refuted Johnson's claim confirming there were 6 deaths.

Another fact check also broke the claim down. Schulte noted: "Days before Johnson took to the Charlie Kirk Show, former NBA All-Star John Stockton on Jan. 23 2022 claimed more than 100 professional athletes who were vaccinated have dropped dead "right on the pitch, right on the field, right on the court."

PolitiFact National along with a group of doctors, have also pushed back.

"PolitiFact National rated this False in a Jan. 26, 2022 fact-check. In it, Matthew Martinez, a sports cardiologist with the National Football League, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League and Major League Soccer and who is director of sports cardiology at Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey said he was not aware of a single COVID vaccine-related cardiac complication in professional sports."

The same report went on to address misinformation about the risk of myocarditis; a claim Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also misstated.

As for Johnson's false claim, The Houston Chronicle rated it as "false" and offered an explanation of why.

"There is also the obvious problem with those cases, as they relate to supporting Johnson’s claim, so far as that the two athletes are not, well, dead," Schulte wrote.

In conclusion, she wrote, "Finally, health experts have also said that no research shows the link between sudden death incidents in sports players and vaccines."

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/ron-johnson-s-vaccine-claims-busted-in-brual-fact-check/

===

NOT REAL NEWS: A Look at What Didn't Happen This Week

https://apnews.com/hub/not-real-news

Social media users shared a range of false claims this week, including erroneous information about vaccines and the infrastructure bill.

By Associated Press

Oct. 8, 2021

The Associated Press

FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2021, file photo, a health worker administers a dose of a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination clinic at the Reading Area Community College in Reading, Pa. On Friday, Oct. 8, The Associated Press reported on stories circulating online incorrectly claiming newly leaked emails among Pfizer employees show that the company’s COVID-19 vaccine contains fetal cells. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By The Associated Press

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

---

[Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine does not contain fetal cells, contrary to online claims

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CLAIM: Newly leaked emails among Pfizer employees show that the company’s COVID-19 vaccine contains fetal cells.

Political Cartoons

View All 393 Images

THE FACTS: A widely shared video by the group Project Veritas has led to a false claim online that purported emails among Pfizer officials show that the pharmaceutical company’s COVID-19 vaccine contains aborted fetal cells. But the video — an interview between Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and a self-identified Pfizer employee who claims to show internal emails from the company — does not support that erroneous conclusion. Instead, it shows that the company used a fetal cell line when testing the efficacy of its vaccine. Cell lines, which are key to medical research, are cloned copies of cells from the same source that have been adapted to grow continuously in labs.

Nevertheless, users spread the falsehood about the contents of the vaccine widely on social media. “You are mandated to inject dead babies into your body,” one Twitter account sharing the video falsely claimed. “Fetal cells in the vaccines yet they are denying people religious exemptions.” At the heart of the widely shared video spurring the false claims are purported emails among Pfizer officials from early 2021. The messages displayed show an alleged conversation about the company’s reluctance to publicize that testing of its vaccine — not production — used a cell line that was originally derived from fetal tissue.

One of the main emails cited specifically says, “Human fetal derived cell lines are not used to produce our investigational vaccine, which consists of synthetic and enzymatically produced components.” It adds: “One or more cell lines with an origin that can be traced back to human fetal tissue has been used in laboratory tests associated with the vaccine program.” The video also shows an email referencing the HEK293T cell line — or Human Embryonic Kidney 293 — which was first established in the early 1970s using cells from a kidney of a fetus. What’s not made clear in the video is that it is already public record that Pfizer’s vaccine was tested using such cells.

In a paper published in September 2020 detailing the vaccine’s development and success in mice and monkeys, Pfizer and BioNTech scientists said that the vaccine had been tested using the HEK293T cell line. And the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in a January document about the COVID-19 vaccines noted: “Neither Pfizer nor Moderna used an abortion-derived cell line in the development or production of the vaccine. However, such a cell line was used to test the efficacy of both vaccines.” The conference recommended that, in the absence of a vaccine with no connection at all to such a cell line, vaccines that use them “only for testing would be preferable to those that use such cell lines for ongoing production.”

Dr. Saahir Khan, an assistant clinical professor of infectious diseases at the University of Southern California, said about the Pfizer shot, “There are no components of fetal cells in the vaccine, and none used in manufacturing." Khan said it is very common to use such cell lines somewhere along the way in the research or development of vaccines and other medicine for humans. He said such cell lines, started decades ago, are grown in labs — so the cells being used for research are not the original cells.

One COVID-19 vaccine used in the U.S., from Johnson & Johnson, is produced by using an adenovirus that is grown using retinal cells that trace back to a fetus from 1985, according to the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.Vaccines for chickenpox and other diseases also use this type of process. But none of these vaccines contain fetal cells.Pfizer did not respond to questions about the Project Veritas video, but a spokesperson pointed out that information about the testing has been publicly disclosed through a number of sources and news reports.

— Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.

---

===

an 11 21

Far right wing columnist and talk show host Dennis Prager is now flip-flopping on his lie that gay men were not treated like "pariahs" during the height of the AIDS crisis, but now he claims Americans refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 are the "most hate group since slavery."

"There were 4000 "FU Dennis Pragers' just on one tweet last week because I had the chutzpah to say that the unvaccinated are pariahs, the way that gays were during the AIDS crisis," Prager said, as the video below shows.

Earlier this month Prager had falsely claimed, "During the AIDS crisis can you imagine if gay men and intravenous drug users, who were the vast majority of people with AIDS, had they been pariahs the way that the non-vaccinated are? But it would have been inconceivable and should have been inconceivable."

Prager's lie :{earned him a "}::{Pants on Fire" rating from Politifact}:, which among other examples cites "the near-passage of an AIDS quarantine law in California; calls by prominent commentators for banning HIV-positive people from certain jobs or even tattooing them; jokes made about the disease by White House officials."

READ: The dark Trumptopia we inhabit is the world science fiction warned us about]

Prager, apparently desperate to play the victim, that the left has "a monopoly on victimhood. There are no non-left wing victims. That's what they believe."

"However, I would argue that they're that the unvaccinated are bigger are bigger pariahs. Were AIDS – or gays or people with AIDS –banned from travel? Were they banned from restaurants? Were they fired from their jobs? Were they were they deprived of a way of feeding their family?" he asked.

The answer to all those questions and more is "Yes."

"The unvaccinated are the most hated group since, I would say since slavery," Prager continued, which is not only false but offensively so, given slaves were legally property and regularly raped, maimed, whipped, murdered, had their families stolen from them, and had no rights.

READ: Charlottesville defendants found liable for civil conspiracy and ordered to pay millions in damages]

"Make me, tell me who would be equivalent?" he continued. "You can say anything you want. You could wish us death. And we are wished death. That's exactly right. They should not be allowed to hospitals – Jimmy Kimmel basically said that."

Many Americans are at this point outraged that the pandemic continues for the sole reason that the unvaccinated are extending the life of the deadly, nearly two-year-old crisis.

Nearly 90,000 Americans on average are still being infected every day, a 16 percent increase over the previous week, according to the latest CDC statistics. More than 1000 Americans every day are dying from the disease, for which vaccines have been widely available for the better part of a year.

Watch:

===

see paris for fact check nedcm politico, UCS:

franta says same pts and economists used to ~ kyoto NERA?

Statement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT

Issued on: June 1, 2017

...

PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you. I would like to begin by addressing the terrorist attack in Manila. We’re closely monitoring the situation, and I will continue to give updates if anything happens during this period of time. But it is really very sad as to what’s going on throughout the world with terror. Our thoughts and our prayers are with all of those affected.

Before we discuss the Paris Accord, I’d like to begin with an update on our tremendous — absolutely tremendous — economic progress since Election Day on November 8th. The economy is starting to come back, and very, very rapidly. We’ve added $3.3 trillion in stock market value to our economy, and more than a million private sector jobs.

I have just returned from a trip overseas where we concluded nearly $350 billion of military and economic development for the United States, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. It was a very, very successful trip, believe me. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you.

In my meetings at the G7, we have taken historic steps to demand fair and reciprocal trade that gives Americans a level playing field against other nations. We’re also working very hard for peace in the Middle East, and perhaps even peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Our attacks on terrorism are greatly stepped up — and you see that, you see it all over — from the previous administration, including getting many other countries to make major contributions to the fight against terror. Big, big contributions are being made by countries that weren’t doing so much in the form of contribution.

One by one, we are keeping the promises I made to the American people during my campaign for President –- whether it’s cutting job-killing regulations; appointing and confirming a tremendous Supreme Court justice; putting in place tough new ethics rules; achieving a record reduction in illegal immigration on our southern border; or bringing jobs, plants, and factories back into the United States at numbers which no one until this point thought even possible. And believe me, we’ve just begun. The fruits of our labor will be seen very shortly even more so.

On these issues and so many more, we’re following through on our commitments. And I don’t want anything to get in our way. I am fighting every day for the great people of this country. Therefore, in order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord — (applause) — thank you, thank you — but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris Accord or a really entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers. So we’re getting out. But we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine. (Applause.)

As President, I can put no other consideration before the wellbeing of American citizens. The Paris Climate Accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers — who I love — and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.

Thus, as of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country. This includes ending the implementation of the nationally determined contribution and, very importantly, the Green Climate Fund which is costing the United States a vast fortune.

Compliance with the terms of the Paris Accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025 according to the National Economic Research Associates. This includes 440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs — not what we need — believe me, this is not what we need — including automobile jobs, and the further decimation of vital American industries on which countless communities rely. They rely for so much, and we would be giving them so little.

According to this same study, by 2040, compliance with the commitments put into place by the previous administration would cut production for the following sectors: paper down 12 percent; cement down 23 percent; iron and steel down 38 percent; coal — and I happen to love the coal miners — down 86 percent; natural gas down 31 percent. The cost to the economy at this time would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have $7,000 less income and, in many cases, much worse than that.

Not only does this deal subject our citizens to harsh economic restrictions, it fails to live up to our environmental ideals. As someone who cares deeply about the environment, which I do, I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States — which is what it does -– the world’s leader in environmental protection, while imposing no meaningful obligations on the world’s leading polluters.

For example, under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years — 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. Not us. India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries. There are many other examples. But the bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States.

Further, while the current agreement effectively blocks the development of clean coal in America — which it does, and the mines are starting to open up. We’re having a big opening in two weeks. Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, so many places. A big opening of a brand-new mine. It’s unheard of. For many, many years, that hasn’t happened. They asked me if I’d go. I’m going to try.

China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020. Think of it: India can double their coal production. We’re supposed to get rid of ours. Even Europe is allowed to continue construction of coal plants.

In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States, and ships them to foreign countries.

This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States. The rest of the world applauded when we signed the Paris Agreement — they went wild; they were so happy — for the simple reason that it put our country, the United States of America, which we all love, at a very, very big economic disadvantage. A cynic would say the obvious reason for economic competitors and their wish to see us remain in the agreement is so that we continue to suffer this self-inflicted major economic wound. We would find it very hard to compete with other countries from other parts of the world.

We have among the most abundant energy reserves on the planet, sufficient to lift millions of America’s poorest workers out of poverty. Yet, under this agreement, we are effectively putting these reserves under lock and key, taking away the great wealth of our nation — it’s great wealth, it’s phenomenal wealth; not so long ago, we had no idea we had such wealth — and leaving millions and millions of families trapped in poverty and joblessness.

The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries. At 1 percent growth, renewable sources of energy can meet some of our domestic demand, but at 3 or 4 percent growth, which I expect, we need all forms of available American energy, or our country — (applause) — will be at grave risk of brownouts and blackouts, our businesses will come to a halt in many cases, and the American family will suffer the consequences in the form of lost jobs and a very diminished quality of life.

Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree — think of that; this much — Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount. In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America — and this is an incredible statistic — would totally wipe out the gains from America’s expected reductions in the year 2030, after we have had to spend billions and billions of dollars, lost jobs, closed factories, and suffered much higher energy costs for our businesses and for our homes.

As the Wall Street Journal wrote this morning: “The reality is that withdrawing is in America’s economic interest and won’t matter much to the climate.” The United States, under the Trump administration, will continue to be the cleanest and most environmentally friendly country on Earth. We’ll be the cleanest. We’re going to have the cleanest air. We’re going to have the cleanest water. We will be environmentally friendly, but we’re not going to put our businesses out of work and we’re not going to lose our jobs. We’re going to grow; we’re going to grow rapidly. (Applause.)

And I think you just read — it just came out minutes ago, the small business report — small businesses as of just now are booming, hiring people. One of the best reports they’ve seen in many years.

I’m willing to immediately work with Democratic leaders to either negotiate our way back into Paris, under the terms that are fair to the United States and its workers, or to negotiate a new deal that protects our country and its taxpayers. (Applause.)

So if the obstructionists want to get together with me, let’s make them non-obstructionists. We will all sit down, and we will get back into the deal. And we’ll make it good, and we won’t be closing up our factories, and we won’t be losing our jobs. And we’ll sit down with the Democrats and all of the people that represent either the Paris Accord or something that we can do that’s much better than the Paris Accord. And I think the people of our country will be thrilled, and I think then the people of the world will be thrilled. But until we do that, we’re out of the agreement.

I will work to ensure that America remains the world’s leader on environmental issues, but under a framework that is fair and where the burdens and responsibilities are equally shared among the many nations all around the world.

No responsible leader can put the workers — and the people — of their country at this debilitating and tremendous disadvantage. The fact that the Paris deal hamstrings the United States, while empowering some of the world’s top polluting countries, should dispel any doubt as to the real reason why foreign lobbyists wish to keep our magnificent country tied up and bound down by this agreement: It’s to give their country an economic edge over the United States. That’s not going to happen while I’m President. I’m sorry. (Applause.)

My job as President is to do everything within my power to give America a level playing field and to create the economic, regulatory and tax structures that make America the most prosperous and productive country on Earth, and with the highest standard of living and the highest standard of environmental protection.

Our tax bill is moving along in Congress, and I believe it’s doing very well. I think a lot of people will be very pleasantly surprised. The Republicans are working very, very hard. We’d love to have support from the Democrats, but we may have to go it alone. But it’s going very well.

The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country’s expense. They don’t put America first. I do, and I always will. (Applause.)

The same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and, in many cases, lax contributions to our critical military alliance. You see what’s happening. It’s pretty obvious to those that want to keep an open mind.

At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us as a country? We want fair treatment for its citizens, and we want fair treatment for our taxpayers. We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be. They won’t be.

I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris. (Applause.) I promised I would exit or renegotiate any deal which fails to serve America’s interests. Many trade deals will soon be under renegotiation. Very rarely do we have a deal that works for this country, but they’ll soon be under renegotiation. The process has begun from day one. But now we’re down to business.

Beyond the severe energy restrictions inflicted by the Paris Accord, it includes yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund — nice name — which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments. So we’re going to be paying billions and billions and billions of dollars, and we’re already way ahead of anybody else. Many of the other countries haven’t spent anything, and many of them will never pay one dime.

The Green Fund would likely obligate the United States to commit potentially tens of billions of dollars of which the United States has already handed over $1 billion — nobody else is even close; most of them haven’t even paid anything — including funds raided out of America’s budget for the war against terrorism. That’s where they came. Believe me, they didn’t come from me. They came just before I came into office. Not good. And not good the way they took the money.

In 2015, the United Nation’s departing top climate officials reportedly described the $100 billion per year as “peanuts,” and stated that “the $100 billion is the tail that wags the dog.” In 2015, the Green Climate Fund’s executive director reportedly stated that estimated funding needed would increase to $450 billion per year after 2020. And nobody even knows where the money is going to. Nobody has been able to say, where is it going to?

Of course, the world’s top polluters have no affirmative obligations under the Green Fund, which we terminated. America is $20 trillion in debt. Cash-strapped cities cannot hire enough police officers or fix vital infrastructure. Millions of our citizens are out of work. And yet, under the Paris Accord, billions of dollars that ought to be invested right here in America will be sent to the very countries that have taken our factories and our jobs away from us. So think of that.

There are serious legal and constitutional issues as well. Foreign leaders in Europe, Asia, and across the world should not have more to say with respect to the U.S. economy than our own citizens and their elected representatives. Thus, our withdrawal from the agreement represents a reassertion of America’s sovereignty. (Applause.) Our Constitution is unique among all the nations of the world, and it is my highest obligation and greatest honor to protect it. And I will.

Staying in the agreement could also pose serious obstacles for the United States as we begin the process of unlocking the restrictions on America’s abundant energy reserves, which we have started very strongly. It would once have been unthinkable that an international agreement could prevent the United States from conducting its own domestic economic affairs, but this is the new reality we face if we do not leave the agreement or if we do not negotiate a far better deal.

The risks grow as historically these agreements only tend to become more and more ambitious over time. In other words, the Paris framework is a starting point — as bad as it is — not an end point. And exiting the agreement protects the United States from future intrusions on the United States’ sovereignty and massive future legal liability. Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we stay in.

As President, I have one obligation, and that obligation is to the American people. The Paris Accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risks, and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world. It is time to exit the Paris Accord — (applause) — and time to pursue a new deal that protects the environment, our companies, our citizens, and our country.

It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — along with many, many other locations within our great country — before Paris, France. It is time to make America great again. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Very important. I’d like to ask Scott Pruitt, who most of you know and respect, as I do, just to say a few words.

Scott, please. (Applause.)

ADMINISTRATOR PRUITT: Thank you, Mr. President. Your decision today to exit the Paris Accord reflects your unflinching commitment to put America first.

And by exiting, you’re fulfilling yet one more campaign promise to the American people. Please know that I am thankful for your fortitude, your courage, and your steadfastness as you serve and lead our country.

America finally has a leader who answers only to the people — not to the special interests who have had their way for way too long. In everything you do, Mr. President, you’re fighting for the forgotten men and women across this country. You’re a champion for the hardworking citizens all across this land who just want a government that listens to them and represents their interest.

You have promised to put America First in all that you do, and you’ve done that in any number of ways — from trade, to national security, to protecting our border, to rightsizing Washington, D.C. And today you’ve put America first with regard to international agreements and the environment.

This is an historic restoration of American economic independence — one that will benefit the working class, the working poor, and working people of all stripes. With this action, you have declared that the people are rulers of this country once again. And it should be noted that we as a nation do it better than anyone in the world in striking the balance between growing our economy, growing jobs while also being a good steward of our environment.

We owe no apologies to other nations for our environmental stewardship. After all, before the Paris Accord was ever signed, America had reduced its CO2 footprint to levels from the early 1990s. In fact, between the years 2000 and 2014, the United States reduced its carbon emissions by 18-plus percent. And this was accomplished not through government mandate, but accomplished through innovation and technology of the American private sector.

For that reason, Mr. President, you have corrected a view that was paramount in Paris that somehow the United States should penalize its own economy, be apologetic, lead with our chin, while the rest of world does little. Other nations talk a good game; we lead with action — not words. (Applause.)

Our efforts, Mr. President, as you know, should be on exporting our technology, our innovation to nations who seek to reduce their CO2 footprint to learn from us. That should be our focus versus agreeing to unachievable targets that harm our economy and the American people.

Mr. President, it takes courage, it takes commitment to say no to the plaudits of men while doing what’s right by the American people. You have that courage, and the American people can take comfort because you have their backs.

Thank you, Mr. President.

END

===

time lag problem, req 2nd active step; filter bubble:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/why-fact-checking-may-be-futile-against-trumps-black-hole-of-lies/

Donald Trump has publicly lied at least 20,000 times since taking office, according to the Washington Post. He does this in part because he has shown himself to be mentally unwell, if not a sociopath. But he also lies because he is a fascist authoritarian. For such leaders, lies are a way of assaulting reality and truth as a means of achieving unlimited power. These explanations are not discrete. They overlap with one another.

In a season of massive death, Donald Trump and his regime's lies about the coronavirus are a public health emergency – one which has killed at least 216,000 people in the United States.

Donald Trump and his regime's lies have also severely damaged America's prestige, alliances and global power. The country's enemies have also been emboldened by the Trump regime's lies and overall lack of consistency in foreign policy and principles.

Most important, Trump and his regime's policy of lying (in conjunction with wanton cruelty and other evil) has undermined American democracy. A common understanding of reality is the foundation of a health democracy. The Trump regime's lies and those of its agents are rotting that foundation.

In "The Death of Truth," Michiko Kakutani explains that the damage Trump has done to the country's institutions and foreign policy will take "years to repair."

"And to the degree that his election was a reflection of larger dynamics in society—from the growing partisanship in politics, to the profusion of fake stories on social media, to our isolation in filter bubbles—his departure from the scene will not restore truth to health and well-being, at least not right away," Kakutani writes.

Why is Donald Trump such a powerful and effective liar? Why has the mainstream American news media largely surrendered to his lies, and by doing so normalized them? Would more aggressive fact-checking have blunted Donald Trump and his regime's strategy of lying? What explains why the mainstream American news media as a whole refused — and for the most part, continues to refuse — to describe Donald Trump and his regime accurately as being fascist and authoritarian?

In an effort answer these questions, I recently spoke with Eric Alterman, a columnist at The Nation and the author of more than 10 books, including the bestseller "What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News." His latest book is "Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie and Why Trump is Worse."

Why are there now so many more voices in the mainstream American news media who, several weeks from Election Day, are finally using language such as "fascism" and "authoritarianism" to describe Trump and his regime? This was obvious several years ago. Why the delay? What were they waiting for?

There are many disincentives to tell the truth about Donald Trump. The most obvious one is that he's the President of the United States and people consider it disrespectful to use certain words about the president, like "liar" and "racist" and "conman" and "conspiracy nut," even when they're true. It is worse in Washington D.C. to call someone a liar than for them to actually be a liar.

In Washington, that rule is part of how a person makes a living. Therefore, people in the news media have to show respect for the office of the presidency. The second reason is that the ideology of "journalistic objectivity" does not have a framework for determining what the truth is. It has no bias for truth. "Journalistic objectivity" says on the one hand, so-and-so said this; on the other hand, his opposition said that, and you, the reader, you, the viewer, you, the listener, it is up to you to decide what's true.

Donald Trump is an idiot in many ways, but he is a genius when it comes to media manipulation.

The Washington Post has now documented at least 25,000 or so lies by Donald Trump — and nothing has changed in his behavior. If anything, he has become more brazen.

I do not find fact-checking as done in that way to be very helpful, because Donald Trump is not being fact-checked as he says the lies. If a person reads the fact-checking article, they will learn what Trump said is not true. Trump's lie still has power because it is repeated by the president and circulated. Again, Donald Trump has been winning this battle against the mainstream news media every day and they still have not really caught up to his strategy. The New York Times still does not really know what to do about Donald Trump in this regard and others.

Is the reluctance, if not fear, of calling Donald Trump a liar a function of the corporate culture of American's mainstream news media? Are reporters and journalists afraid of being punished in terms of their careers if they tell the unpolished truth about Donald Trump?

I have a different idea of lying than most of the country's journalistic institutions do because they will almost never use the words "lie" or "liar" when it comes to the president or most politicians. Instead most in the mainstream news media will say, "We can't know his intent. We can't know what's in his heart." They assume that a lying politician may believe the nonsense that they are saying. My position is if a politician should know what is true and he does not, then he is lying.

I do not care what the excuse is. I don't care if Trump or some other politician thinks God is talking to him. I don't care if Trump is too disengaged from reality. I don't care if Trump is so much of a narcissist that he makes up stuff and he believes it. If it's the president's job to know something and he misinforms the country, then he's lying. Worry about his motivation some other time.

There has never been a historical moment in this country where a president, in this case Donald Trump, could be ignored because everyone knows he's so full of lies and nonsense.

Donald Trump might get reelected and destroy our democracy because so many in the mainstream news media are treating Donald Trump's lies and delusions as though it is all somehow normal.

Why has the White House press corps been so accommodating and enabling of Trump's lies? He also uses them as props for his fascist performances. Why do the members of the White House press corps not just walk about of the briefings or stand up and turn their backs to him?

They do not know how to do their job any other way. Their job is defined as getting whatever information is available at the White House. So even if it's lies, even if it's daily humiliation, the press corps has to go back the next day. Those reporters need to be on good terms with the people who are giving out the information — even if they're not giving out real or otherwise substantive information. It would be nice if the job of the White House press corps was to actually go out and find news, but that's not what they're there for. They're there as conduits for the White House....

===

aha /yikes

does a factual basis for a bigger lie disable fact check capability eg this on twitter?

escalator, activ meas

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/how-trump-is-once-again-colluding-with-russia/

no lnx twt

how Trump is once again colluding with Russia

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 14, 2020

Almost two weeks ago, a story circulated that Portland protesters were burning Bibles and American flags. It spread via social media and was picked up by conservative outlets, such as the Washington Examiner. Of course, several Republican leaders joined the bandwagon.

tp kirk --> djt jr?]

---

ted cruzretweet: This is who they are.

Ian Miles Cheong

@stillgray

Left-wing activists bring a stack of Bibles to burn in front of the federal courthouse in Portland. https://twitter.com/Shelldrayk/status/1289481822414413827/video/1

---

don jr

Now we move to the book burning phase. I’m pretty sure ANTIFA doesn’t actually stand for what they say it stands for. Maybe just remove the anti part of them name and it’s perfect.

---

tpkirk

BLM inc arsonists just burned a stack of Bibles in Portland

The activist media won’t report on this because it’s likely they support it

Our faith is under attack.

If you vote for Biden—you vote for Bible burnings

---

Two reporters at the New York Times, Matthew Rosenberg and Julian Barnes, decided to look into the story and found Vladimir Putin’s fingerprints all over it. As is often the case with effective propaganda, this story contains a kernel of truth. Apparently, some group was handing out Bibles to protesters that night and one of them was used to start a fire. An American flag was also burned. But a local paper covering the protests that night devoted just one sentence to that story in a lengthy piece about what happened.

The video news agency connected to Russia Today (RT) was regularly streaming a live feed of the Portland protests. They edited the clip of the fire and made it the focal point of their protest coverage that night. Then, RT did an entire story about it. Social media took it from there and the next thing you know, outlets like the Washington Examiner were picking it up. Here is how Rosenberg and Barnes summarized the process:

The Russian technique is a kind of information laundering, akin to money laundering.Stories originate with Russian-backed news sites, some of them directly connected to Moscow’s spy agencies, officials and experts said. They are then picked up by Americans on social media or in domestic news outlets, and their origins quickly become obscured. Often, by the time a story reaches most of its American audience, there is little to indicate that it was created to fuel grievances and deepen political divisions.

Following Trump’s press briefing on Wednesday, Hunter Walker tracked down another example of Russia’s attempt to get their propaganda in the news. He wrote about the question OAN reporter Chanel Rion asked the president.

Rion: In the last hour or so, if you googled antifa.com. it would take you straight to Joe Biden’s website, his official campaign website. Odd situation. We don’t know who’s behind that. But it raises an interesting leadership question. Should Joe Biden, the Democrat party, Kamala Harris– should they publicly denounce the Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization?

Trump: They should. I think they’re afraid to. It’s– in my book it’s virtually a part of their campaign, Antifa. The Democrats act like, gee, I don’t know exactly what that is.

Take a look at Portland. Take a look at any place you want to take a look at, and they’re all over the place. They were here. [DC?]

Basically Rion gave Trump the opportunity to claim that Antifa is part of the Biden campaign—which is, of course, a blatant lie.

Walker looked into what actually happened with the antifa.com website. Once again, as Pelosi said, “all roads lead to Putin.”

:{:{}:

Records for “antifa.com” in the domain name database Whoisology.com show the site was registered in the Russian Federation from 2013 through last July.Starting last November, the site’s registration was moved to Panama, The website has always been anonymously registered and its owners could not be reached for comment.

Russia set up the antifa.com website and eventually redirected it to Biden’s campaign page, allowing the president to claim that the group was involved politically with Democrats. Of course, this raises the old question of whether this was all coordinated with the president or if Trump is simply taking advantage of Putin’s efforts. The same questions are raised about the role of OAN in these kinds of Russian propaganda efforts.

So there you have two examples of how Russia is currently interfering in the 2020 election to support the reelection of Donald Trump. One thing worth noting is that if these examples are reflective of their efforts, Vladimir Putin has calculated that his best bet is to inflame the so-called “culture wars,” something that has been the bedrock of the Republican strategy for decades. The Bible burning story was especially useful for the Christian nationalists who want to scare their followers into thinking that, as Trump has suggested, Joe Biden is against God and the Bible.

It is important to keep in mind that the only reason we know about these Russian efforts is because some reporters put in the time to track down the story. Senator Richard Blumenthal, who has seen what our intelligence services know about Russian interference, said that the 2020 efforts “make Moscow’s past interference and nefarious actions look like child’s play.” But the Trump administration is keeping that information from the public, while the attorney general hypes the antifa story and puts all of his energy into accusing the Obama administration of “spying” into the Trump campaign. That strikes me as the definition of collusion.

cmd 720

Facebook is “aiding and abetting the spread of climate misinformation,” said Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Drexel University. “They have become the vehicle for climate misinformation, and thus should be held partially responsible for a lack of action on climate change.”

Brulle was reacting to Facebook’s recent decision, made at the request of climate science deniers, to create a giant loophole in its fact-checking program. Last year, Facebook partnered with an organization, Science Feedback, that would bring in teams of Ph.D. climate scientists to evaluate the accuracy of viral content. It was an important expansion of the company’s third-party fact-checking program.

But now Facebook has reportedly decided to allow its staffers to overrule the climate scientists and make any climate disinformation ineligible for fact-checking by deeming it “opinion.”

The organization that requested the change, the CO2 Coalition, is celebrating, E&E news reported on Monday. The group, which has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, says its views on climate change are increasingly ignored by the mainstream media. Now it plans to use Facebook to aggressively push climate misinformation on the public—without having to worry about fact checks from climate scientists.

How it all started

A column published in the Washington Examiner in August 2019 claimed that “climate models” were a “failure” that predicted exponentially more warming of the earth than has occurred. The piece, co-authored by notorious climate science denier Pat Michaels, was quickly shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook.

There was just one issue: It wasn’t true.

This is exactly the kind of mess that Facebook’s network of independent fact-checkers is supposed to solve. In May 2019, Facebook partnered with Science Feedback, a site dedicated to explaining “why information is or is not consistent with the science.” Science Feedback’s process is extremely rigorous. Each piece has multiple reviewers, and each reviewer “holds a Ph.D. and has recently published articles in top-tier peer-reviewed science journals.”

Five scientists reviewed the Washington Examiner article for Science Feedback. The scientists identified a number of problems with the piece: “false factual assertions, cherry-picking datasets that support their point, failing to account for uncertainties in those datasets, and failing to assess the performance of climate models in an objective and rigorous manner.” The article was rated “false” by Science Feedback and logged in Facebook’s system.

That should have been the end of the story. The Washington Examiner article should have had a warning overlaid each time it was shared on Facebook, and its distribution on Facebook should have been dramatically reduced.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, an organization affiliated with Michaels, the CO2 Coalition, wrote Zuckerberg and complained about Science Feedback’s rating. Among other things, the coalition claims that Science Feedback’s analysis amounted to “simple differences of opinion.” The coalition asked Zuckerberg to “remove Facebook’s censorship, labeling, and restrictions on this article.”

Amazingly, it worked. In September, Facebook removed the false rating, overruling the judgment of Science Feedback. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook found that the misinformation about climate models was an “opinion” and, therefore, not eligible for fact-checking.

Now, the CO2 Coalition has announced its intention to exploit this loophole to spread climate misinformation on Facebook.

How Facebook’s fact-checking program is supposed to work

The rules for Facebook’s fact-checking program are clear. Facebook does not conduct the fact-checks itself. Instead, it has outsourced the process to third parties that are certified by Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network.

If a publisher has a dispute about a rating it receives on Facebook, it should “reach out directly to the third-party fact-checking organizations.” The rating can only be removed by the organization that issued the fact check — either because the fact checker is convinced by the publisher’s dispute or the publisher corrected the false information. There is no mechanism to appeal a fact-check directly to Facebook.

According to Facebook’s rules, all “public, newsworthy Facebook and Instagram posts, including ads, with articles, photos, or videos,” are eligible for fact-checking. The only type of content that is listed as exempt is original content posted by politicians or political candidates.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, after receiving the complaint from the CO2 coalition, Facebook planned to create a new rule exempting “opinion pieces” from fact-checking. But Facebook did not “respond to requests for comment” on the new rule. No such rule has been publicly acknowledged by Facebook in the months that followed.

In response to a request for comment, Facebook did little to clarify the situation, reiterating the company’s official fact-checking policies but not addressing its decision to overrule Science Feedback. “The focus of Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program is combating viral misinformation,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said. “There’s an appeals process in place for publishers to appeal directly to fact-checkers to dispute ratings.”

How climate science deniers plan to exploit Facebook’s loophole

Creating an unwritten exemption for “opinion” content, which is enforced by Facebook and not its fact-checking partners, creates a giant loophole for misinformation. The CO2 coalition told E&E News that they plan to exploit it.

After the quiet decision by Facebook, the coalition says it and other groups that attack consensus climate science can share content that climate scientists have labeled as misleading because Facebook will consider it “opinion” and therefore immune to fact-checking.

The CO2 Coalition is increasingly focused on using Facebook to reach more people with its message that climate change fears are overblown and that burning more fossil fuels would help humanity, Executive Director Caleb Rossiter told E&E News this week. He sees the battle over its climate-related posts as part of a larger proxy war over how to reach an audience outside of conservative media.

Rossiter said Facebook was increasingly important because “the mainstream media” is no longer willing to amplify the group’s opinions. But the reason the “mainstream media” is not willing to amplify the group’s opinions is because they’re not opinions at all. They’re falsehoods.

Climate facts are not climate opinions

Andrew Dessler is one of the five climate scientists who originally fact-checked the CO2 Coalition’s op-ed by Pat Michaels. It was “complete bullshit,” he said. “We gave it a bad review, which it 100 percent deserved.”

The article claimed computer models used by climate scientists to predict warming have proved overblown, and thus shouldn’t be trusted. To prove it, Michaels compared “actual temperatures since 1979 with what the 32 families of climate models used in the latest U.N. report on climate science predicted they would be.”

The comparison was flawed. Michaels compared the earth’s present temperature with past climate models that predicted more carbon pollution than actually occurred. If we had polluted as much as the models predicted, the world would have warmed as much as the models predicted.

We know this because actual climate scientists have published research assessing the accuracy of climate models. That research, which went through the rigorous peer-review process, says computer climate models have been largely accurate for the last 40 years. Michaels’ analysis, on the other hand, didn’t go through any peer-review process, nor is Michaels climate scientist himself. What Michaels did was amateur Google sleuthing. What the scientists did was science.

Dessler thinks Michaels should be able to state his opinions about climate change without getting fact-checked. “Things like, ‘we should [implement] a carbon tax,’ or ‘subsidize nuclear energy, or even ‘we shouldn’t do anything about climate change,'” he said. “Those aren’t facts; they’re policy choices.”

But statements about the physical condition of the planet; the effect of carbon on the atmosphere; the historical accuracy of climate models—those are scientific in nature. “Those are not opinions,” Dessler said. “They’re either true or false.”

“The earth is warming. Climate models have done a good job,” he added. “That should be covered by fact-checking.”

The dire consequences of not fact-checking climate denial

The CO2 Coalition told E&E News that it is getting assistance from a “‘conservative’ Facebook employee.” Facebook says that claim is not true, but did not specify who at Facebook reversed Science Feedback’s ruling.

American political conservatives have a long, well-documented history of perpetuating climate disinformation in order to delay climate action. Disinformation—that is, the intentional spread of misinformation—has been a key strategy of the fossil fuel industry and its political allies for decades. The less people understand about climate science, the strategy goes, the less likely they will be to support aggressive climate policies, which threaten the fossil fuel industry’s immense profitability.

The CO2 Coalition’s use of Facebook’s op-ed loophole “fits right back into that strategy of trying to promulgate misinformation to the public in order to keep alive the lack of public concern over climate change, to stop meaningful action to address it,” Brulle said. And by having the loophole, Brulle said, “Facebook is becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution, to climate change.”

Naomi Oreskes, an acclaimed Harvard University professor who co-wrote “Merchants of Doubt,” agreed that Facebook’s op-ed loophole is “potentially very damaging.”

“We know that many people, particularly young people, are getting their information heavily, or even primarily, from social media,” she said. “For social media to propagate disinformation, without any attempt at screening, is for them to become, in effect, part of the disinformation machine

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/mark-zuckerberg-spread-misinformation-about-facebooks-fact-checking-program-during-his

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a false answer when asked during a congressional hearing about a division of right-wing website The Daily Caller being involved in Facebook’s fact-checking efforts.

Zuckerberg deflected Facebook’s responsibility by suggesting an outside entity is in charge of which organizations Facebook uses as fact-checkers. But that isn’t true: Who gets to fact-check on Facebook is decided by Facebook. Additionally, reporting has shown that a Facebook executive previously agitated for The Daily Caller’s inclusion in the fact-checking project.

Zuckerberg appeared before the House Financial Services Committee on October 23 to testify about Facebook’s efforts to launch a new cryptocurrency, how Facebook has been used to post ads that violate federal housing discrimination laws, and other topics related to the company. One of those topics was Facebook’s fact-checking project, which has been maligned for its ineffectiveness.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) asked Zuckerberg why a division of The Daily Caller is included in the Facebook fact-checking project given the publication is “well-documented with ties to white supremacists.” Zuckerberg demurred on the question of Facebook’s role, and instead claimed, “We actually don’t appoint the independent fact-checkers, they go through an independent organization called the Independent Fact-Checking Network that has a rigorous standard for who they allow to serve as a fact-checker.” That is false. Facebook requires its partners to be accredited by the organization, which is actually called the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), but it is Facebook, not IFCN, who decides which organizations Facebook uses in its fact-checking project.

[vid?]

As explained by Vox, “IFCN certification is a necessary condition for partnering with Facebook, but once a site is certified, it’s up to Facebook to decide whether to partner with it. There are currently 62 organizations with IFCN certification globally, but Facebook only partners with six in the United States.”

Judd Legum, who publishes the Popular Information newsletter, asked IFCN about Zuckerberg’s response to Ocasio-Cortez’ question. IFCN Director Baybars Örsek confirmed that Zuckerberg’s claim that IFCN appoints Facebook fact-checkers was false:

Zuckerberg repeated this falsehood during a follow-up question after Ocasio-Cortez asked, “So you would say that white supremacist-tied publications meet a rigorous standard for fact-checking?” Again, Zuckerberg falsely claimed that IFCN, not Facebook, was “assessing that standard” for inclusion in Facebook’s fact-checking project.

In fact, a Facebook executive previously attempted to ensure that The Daily Caller’s fact-checking division, which is called Check Your Fact, was included in Facebook’s fact-checking project. According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook executive and former George W. Bush administration official Joel Kaplan started pushing for it to be included in the summer of 2018. But other executives at Facebook were opposed to its inclusion because of falsehoods promoted by The Daily Caller, and debate over the matter ended when Check Your Fact lost its IFCN accreditation in November 2018. But in April, after Check Your Fact regained its IFCN accreditation, it was named as a Facebook fact-checking partner.

In order to be recertified, Check Your Fact had to comply with disclosure requirements about the source of its funding. That disclosure indicated that Check Your Fact is funded via the bigoted Daily Caller's general operating budget, the website's own ad revenue, and a $100,000 grant from The Daily Caller News Foundation that was provided by the right-wing Searle Freedom Trust foundation.

Zuckerberg’s testimony about the project misled Congress and made clear that he may not even be aware of the basic logistics of how Facebook’s fact-checking operation works.

(Disclosure: In March 2018, Check Your Fact fact-checked a claim that I made about the National Rifle Association, rating the claim “true.”)

===

OMfG

https://thinkprogress.org/facebook-misinformation-pelosi-climate-science-8bc80493ac7c/

romm

“When it comes to efforts to avert catastrophic climate change, Facebook is no ally. They are an enemy.”

Those are the sobering words of leading climatologist Michael Mann in the wake of Facebook’s astonishing admission that it isn’t concerned with whether or not the information people post on the social media site is actually true.

The latest instance of Facebook doubling down on its failure to avert the spread of misinformation came after an altered video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) went viral on the social media platform last week. Facebook was widely criticized for refusing to take down the video — even after admitting that it had been doctored to make her look like she was slurring her words or drunk.

Facebook defends its refusal to delete altered video of Nancy Pelosi (Updated)

The decision is the latest in a long line of troubling and confusing moves by the social media giant.

What was particularly shocking is that in defending this move, Facebook told the Washington Post, “We don’t have a policy that stipulates that the information you post on Facebook must be true.”

Equally stunning is what Monika Bickert, the company’s head of global policy management, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday. “We think it’s important for people to make their own informed choice about what to believe,” Bickert said. “Our job is to make sure that we are getting them accurate information. And that’s why we work with over 50 fact-checking organizations around the world.”

But this is just double-talk, since, as the Post reported, two of the major fact-checking organizations Facebook uses, Lead Stories and PolitiFact, have determined the video was “false.”

Facebook said that it would “heavily reduce” how often the fake video is seen in people’s newsfeeds. Also, those who click on the video now see a box labeled “Additional Reporting on This” with links to those two fact-checking sites.

But this means the doctored video can still be spread by anyone who had previously seen it. “Any user could still like, comment, view and share the video as often as they liked,” the Post noted.

This new fiasco comes just weeks after Facebook hired an arm of the conservative, anti-science media site The Daily Caller, funded in part by Charles and David Koch, to serve as the company’s newest “fact checkers.” (The Kochs, who made their fortune largely on fossil fuels and petrochemicals, have long funneled money to groups who spread misinformation on climate change.)

So, ThinkProgress asked some experts what Facebook’s latest actions mean for the national conversation on climate change.

Facebook’s newest ‘fact checkers’ are Koch-funded climate deniers

The fatal flaw in Zuckerberg’s effort to deal with fake news.

“Facebook is complicit in spreading outright falsehoods and misinforming the public about matters of public concern,” environmental sociologist Robert Brulle wrote in an email. The company’s “refusal to take down this blatant distortion of Speaker Pelosi shows that they are an irresponsible actor, and contributing to the decline of public discourse.”

Brulle explained that Facebook’s actions are particularly disastrous since there are so many issues critical to public well-being that require an accurately informed public, such as vaccinations and climate change.

Mann, who is director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center, was equally blunt. “This shows that Facebook is in fact complicit with bad actors seeking to spread disinformation throughout the internet,” he said. “We must view them now as another tool in the toolbox used by fossil fuel interests and plutocrats to confuse the public and policymakers.”

Because Facebook refuses to be a responsible actor, Brulle concluded, “Senator Elizabeth Warren is right — it is time to break up Facebook.”

omg

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/02/15/propaganda-pipeline-front-group-gain-grow-america-infrastructure-now

Although pipelines have been facing a number of setbacks recently, pro-pipeline groups aren’t giving up. One of those is Grow America’s Infrastructure Now (GAIN), which came to our attention because it’s recently begun sponsoring the Washington Examiner’s daily energy newsletter.

GAIN’s website simply describes the group as supporting strengthening infrastructure development and only mentions pipelines as one aspect of its focus, which also includes bridges, roads, etc. But the group’s blog, Twitter, and coverage in the mediaare pretty exclusively dedicated to pro-pipeline messaging. Hmmm, almost like it isn’t an all-around infrastructure group, and perhaps may have some ulterior motive …

Which, of course, it does. GAIN was formerly known as the Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now (MAIN), which Steve Horn at DeSmog reported was acting as a front group for DCI. You may remember DCI as the PR firm tied to the GOP: It’s got experiencein creating front groups on behalf of Big Tobacco, it’s known for its role spearheading the modern Tea Party movement, and it’s also worked to discredit Dakota Access pipeline protesters.

And although it seems to have changed names, GAIN is still up to the same tricks.

Back in July of 2017, Eric Hananoki at Media Matters wrote a piece exposing howCNN Commentator James “Spider” Marks was writing op-eds attacking pipeline protestors without disclosing he was on the advisory board of TigerSwan, a company that was hired to provide security for the Dakota Access pipeline. This led to numerous papers updating Marks’ pieces to reflect this. PennLive actually stated “his work will not appear on the website again” due to this failure to disclose.

What’s Marks been up to lately? Well as it turns out, in the past year, he’s been writing more pro-pipeline op-eds, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington Times, and RealClearPolitics. All, of course, without mentioning his position as a Strategic Advisor at GAIN.

GAIN’s latest project is a “fact-checker” tool, designed, as the website says, to push back against the so-called “coordinated disinformation campaigns” that have been leveraged against pipelines like Dakota Access and Keystone XL.

However, GAIN seems unaware of how fact-checkers generally work: The website often just repeats a claim without offering any further evidence and then deems it true.

A recent fact-check from earlier this week has the appearance of offering more evidence, but that disappears once you dig in. The check gives a “False” rating to a claim that a pipeline would negatively impact property values, using evidence in a 2016 study by the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA), a trade organization that advocates for the natural gas pipeline industry, which concluded that proximity to a natural gas pipeline has no impact on property value.

Beyond the inherent bias of having a natural gas pipeline advocacy group do this study,some have also pointed outthat the study compared houses next to the pipeline with houses in the same development, a few hundred feet from the pipeline, rather than with the broader market. This means the research may not be accurately portraying the influence of pipelines on property value. After all, if the pipeline depresses value for the whole neighborhood, this methodology wouldn’t notice.

Personal and local accounts suggest that’s exactly what’s happening. One property owner in the path of that Kinder Morgan pipeline — a self-described conservative who supports pipelines — says he’s been trying to sell his property and interest has dropped since the project was announced.

Meaning that unless you own the pipeline or get paid by the people who do, buying into the industry‘s propaganda will be all pain, no GAIN.

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https://kpfa.org/episode/project-censored-february-8-2019/

also newsguard fact check

https://www.mintpressnews.com/newsguardneocon-backed-fact-checker-plans-to-wage-war-on-independent-media/253687/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/the-washington-posts-three-pinocchios-for-aoc-shows-how-incoherent-mainstream-fact-checking-really-is/

The Washington Post's "three Pinocchios" for AOC shows how incoherent mainstream "fact-checking" really is.

###

A truth that’s told with bad intent

Beats any lie you can invent

– William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”

Fact-checking political discourse is noble in theory, but it can easily go wrong. That’s what happened in 2011, when PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” — the claim that Republicans wanted to end Medicare — was actually true, as Paul Krugman, Steve Bennen and others pointed out. Writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, Greg Marx summarized the problem with PolitiFact’s “reasoning”:

You can’t report your way to the conclusion that it’s okay to say, as leading Republican Mitt Romney has, that the GOP plan will “fundamentally transform Medicare,” and basically okay to say, as President Obama has, that the plan would “end Medicare as we know it,” but that it’s an egregious falsehood to simply say it would “end Medicare.”

The problem with “fact-checking” was much bigger than this one spectacular misfire. As Marx noted, most articles in the genre “actually contain counterarguments— many of which are solid, some shoddy or tendentious, but few of which really fit in a ‘fact-check’ frame.” Such articles are engaged in “patrolling public discourse,” he continued, a project that “will inevitably involve judgments not only about truth, but about what attacks are fair, what arguments are reasonable, what language is appropriate.”

If that was problematic in 2011, welcome to 2019, as fact-checkers have homed in on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., face of the progressive resistance, while Donald Trump is burning down their house.

It happened again last week, when Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler gave AOC “three Pinocchios” for comments she made about economic justice, echoing Dr. Martin Luther King, at an event honoring his birthday. Kessler ignored the context of her argument and picked out four claims, three of which he deemed false. But Kessler actually confirmed one of those without realizing it, while another was purely semantic and the third was at worst debatable, not a clearcut falsehood. If anything, Matt Bruenig’s detailed attack on Kessler’s analysis for Jacobin made it seem more substantial than it actually was.

In part, fact-checkers are always seeking a false balance — as PolitiFact was doing in 2011, after twice awarding its “Lie of the Year” to Republican falsehoods about Obamacare — in 2009 for “death panels,” and in 2010 for calling it a “government takeover.” Now the Post Fact Checker’s database has tallied 8,158 false or misleading claims made by Trump in his first two years as president, so its team feels obliged to ding Democrats as well.

But there’s something more complex happening here too, that’s probably best understood in terms of press scholar Daniel Hallin’s three-sphere model of how the media functions, from his 1986 book The Uncensored War. At the center is the sphere of consensus, mom-and-apple-pie country. Surrounding that, like a donut, is the sphere of legitimate debate, where journalists’ attention is usually focused, where there are two sides to every story and a need for objectivity and balance to be maintained.

Beyond that, though, is the sphere of deviance, the outer darkness in which dwell “political actors and views which journalists and the political mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard.” The shoddy fact-checking directed at Ocasio-Cortez reflects a boundary-policing instinct, and an outdated one, considering that the entire political landscape has been irrevocably changed.

To understand how shoddy it is — and the unspoken agenda involved — we need to take a closer look at the totality of what went down. Kessler was quoting from a snippet of AOC’s response to a question by Ta-Nehisi Coates in an MLK Day interview. The context is important, because context is everything in political discourse: What’s radical in one context is mom-and-apple-pie material in another.

King, paradoxically, is both. The question asked and the answer given were both in King’s spirit — but not the mom-and-apple-pie version of him the media (and much of America) loves to celebrate. It more reflected the actual, radical Martin Luther King Jr., who spoke out against the “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism,” and said, “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

This is exactly what Coates asked about in asking, “Do we live in a moral world that allows for billionaires? Is that a moral outcome?” Ocasio-Cortez answered, “No it’s not,” with an immediate clarification: “I think it’s important to say that I don’t think that necessarily means that all billionaires are immoral. It is not to say that someone like Bill Gates, for instance, for example, Warren Buffett are immoral people, I do not believe that.” Contrary to a favorite media trope, she’s not demonizing the wealthy just as Republicans demonize the poor. Then she returned to core King mode:

But I do think a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong. And I think it’s wrong that [1] a vast majority of the country doesn’t make a living wage, I think it’s wrong that [2] you can work 100 hours and not feed your kids. I think it’s wrong that [3] corporations like Walmart and Amazon can get paid by the government, essentially experience a wealth transfer from the public, [4] for paying people less than a minimum wage. And it not only doesn’t make economic sense, but it doesn’t make moral sense and it doesn’t make societal sense.

The section of that passage in italics is what Kessler chose to fact-check, broken into four parts (indicated in brackets). He awarded her “three Pinocchios,” which the fact-check guide explains as “significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions. This gets into the realm of ‘mostly false.’ But it could include statements which are technically correct (such as based on official government data) but are so taken out of context as to be very misleading.”

Here, however, the situation is the opposite: even if some of AOC’s statements were technically incorrect — if she were wrong in the ways Kessler claimed — that wouldn’t necessarily invalidate hermoral argument. That would require an error or contradiction in her moral reasoning — about which Kessler has nothing to say.

Kessler admitted that claim No. 2 was correct — in fact, it could be 135 hours, he said. But what of the other three claims? Ocasio-Cortez claimed that “a vast majority of the country doesn’t make a living wage,” while Kessler claimed the figure was “only” “about 32 to 38 percent of workers,” relying on calculations based on the MIT Living Wage calculator. Even if he’s right, that’s still morally outrageous, and serves to support her larger argument.

She claimed that Walmart and Amazon “experience a wealth transfer from the public,” and Kessler argued that only amounted to “between 20-30 percent of the benefits,” essentiallyconfirmingwhat she had claimed. Ocasio-Cortez said such companies were “paying people less thanaminimum wage,” which was likely a simple misstatement. Kessler responded that they paid more than theminimum wage — but not more than a livingwage, which was clearly the intended focus of her remarks.

So even if Kessler were right on every factual point, and Bruenig and AOC were wrong, her argumentwould still stand. If fewer people earn below less than a living wage than she stated, then arguably the situation is less dire than she described — but it’s not radically different. Furthermore, MIT’s “living wage” isn’t the last word on that subject. It’s an admirable measure, but it’s a “surviving wage,” not a “thriving wage.” A true living wage would mean more than simply surviving from paycheck to paycheck. It would mean the ability to build a future for oneself and one’s family. Here’s how the MIT Living Wage website puts it:

When coupled with lowered expenses, for childcare and housing in particular, the living wage might also free up resources for savings, investment, and/or for the purchase of capital assets (e.g. provisions for retirement or home purchases) that build wealth and ensure long-term financial security.

In short, without lowered expenses the MIT living wage does not allow people to thrive — as Ocasio-Cortez knows from her own lived experience. So she was well justified in having a higher standard in mind. The flood of hardship stories from the recent government shutdown should make it obvious how precarious most middle-class families are, and how many of them fall between the MIT living wage and what a truly thriving living wage would be.

So, read in context,everything AOC said was true, even if we accept Kessler’s factual counterclaims! The entire fact-checking ritual was a charade. As I suggested earlier, it was really a boundary-policing episode, meant to keep her “radical” ideas outside the sphere of legitimate debate by portraying her as untrustworthy. Further, it was meant to deter others from similar infractions while trying to break through the barriers excluding them from legitimacy. (See AOC’s related Twitter thread on “gravitas” here.)

But the problem is that Kessler’s implied boundaries are not worth policing, or even recognizing. The whole system is in crisis, and the mainstream media’s assessment of what is deviant, what reflects normative consensus and what represents legitimate debate bears little or no relationship to reality. Take two other examples AOC has been associated with — raising top marginal tax rates to 70 percent and a Green New Deal. The first idea drew immediate majority support — 59 percent in a poll for the Hill, including 56 percent of rural voters and 45 percent of Republicans—and scorn from the 1 percent at Davos.

Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell laughed at the idea (video here), and said he thought it would be bad for economic growth. “Name a country where that’s worked,” he responded. “Ever.” Sitting there with him was MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson, who supplied the example: the United States, throughout most of its post-World War II expansion. It was a rare, Marshall McLuhan-in-“Annie Hall” moment. Usually, when the super-rich or their sycophants spout off like that, truth does not intrude. Certainly not from the fact-checking media.

But the media’s failure is even more striking when it comes to climate change and the Green New Deal. It’s still a rarity for the media to treat climate science as firmly within the sphere of consensus, where all reputable researchers say it belongs. As far back as 2004, a study found that “US prestige-press coverage of global warming from 1988 to 2002 has contributed to a significant divergence of popular discourse from scientific discourse,” and that “the prestige press’s adherence to balance actually leads to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming and resultant action.”

Four years later, just after the financial crisis hit, George Soros told Bill Moyers that something akin to AOC’s Green New Deal was needed, to respond both to global warming and the financial collapse:

For the last 25 years … the motor of the world economy that has been driving it was consumption by the American consumer, who has been spending more than he has been saving, all right? Than he’s been producing. So that motor is now switched off. It’s finished. … You need a new motor. And we have a big problem. Global warming. It requires big investment. And that could be the motor of the world economy in the years to come.

For all Soros’ supposed power, you’ve probably never heard that idea. It remained on the fringes, if not beyond the fringe in the sphere of deviancy. But if that prescription had been followed, rather than the austerity economics that took over after 2010, we’d be living in a radically different and more hopeful world today.

Ocasio-Cortez’s ideas — on marginal tax rates, a Green New Deal and economic justice — are only deviant in a media system that’s utterly divorced from reality. That’s why it would be a serious mistake to view her in isolation. The intellectual incoherence of “fact-checking” poses a serious threat to Democrats and progressives — and to democracy itself — through the 2020 election, at least. The sooner we all wake up to that, and respond to it, the better.