Amelia Bedelia Fact Checks The DNC For You
Oh, FFS!
Amelia Bedelia is the quirky housekeeper in a series of children’s books by author Peggy Parish. Amelia’s employers, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, give her a list of chores to accomplish each day, but she comically botches each one because she takes her instructions literally. She’s told to dust the furniture so she covers the furniture with dusting powder. She’s told to draw the drapes, so she sketches the drapes on paper. She’s told to dress the chicken for dinner, and well, you know where this is going.
Amelia is terrible at her job. We shouldn’t judge her too harshly, though, because she obviously has some sort of developmental issue. Perhaps she could thrive in a position that doesn’t require minimal language comprehension. Unfortunately, it seems someone has placed Amelia Bedelia in charge of fact-checking the Democratic National Convention.
For example, Amy Gardner at The Washington Post really dusted the furniture with this doozy of a fact-check for President Joe Biden’s speech on Monday.
“‘Donald Trump says he will refuse to accept the election result if he loses again,’ Biden said. But that's not true. Trump just hasn't said that he would accept. And he has previously said the only way he loses is if the Democrats cheat.”
Donald Trump has repeatedly made it clear that the only “fair” election is one he wins. This makes him very dangerous, because Trump and MAGA have rejected the very foundation of American democracy. Yes, Trump usually speaks in pidgin gangster, but if Biden claimed, “Fat Tony says that he’ll burn down any businesses that don't pay him protection,” it’s ridiculous to argue that all Fat Tony actually said was any business that doesn’t pay him protection might spontaneously burst into flames, which would be a shame and easily preventable.
I could find this persnickety fact-checking adorable if the Republican nominee were an otherwise normal candidate, but Trump is a convicted criminal who’s been indicted for attempting to overturn the last presidential election. Gardner isn't highlighting the facts, she’s clouding them.
What is truth?
During her speech on Monday, Hillary Clinton declared that President Kamala Harris “won’t be sending love letters to dictators.” Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler originally claimed that “there is no evidence Trump sent such letters,” but Trump himself said in 2018 about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: “We fell in love, okay? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.” Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward revealed in his 2020 book, Rage, that Trump personally used the phrase “love letters” to describe the correspondence. That’s pretty weird.
Kessler writes, “This is in the eye of the beholder.” The full expression is “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” which has a literal meaning: Aesthetic beauty is subjective. Some people might find deformed, pig snout creatures attractive, and normal people think Donna Douglas is gorgeous.
Kessler insists that we don’t know what Kim Jong Un wrote in those letters. Maybe he wasn’t that into Trump and tried to keep everything professional between two madmen. However, there is no rule that “love letters” require reciprocity. Besides, what Clinton said remains objectively true: Harris won’t send love letters to dictators and she certainly won’t brag about it like some weirdo.
This isn’t really a fact-check. It’s blatant political spin that the Washington Post is providing as an in-kind donation to the Trump campaign.
And it gets worse: The DNC aired a video Monday that included Trump’s infamous 2016 quote about abortion: “There has to be some form of punishment for the woman. Yeah, there has to be some form.” Kessler wrote, “Trump quickly walked back this statement.” Who cares? He actually said this. It wasn’t AI.
This was Trump’s answer to a direct question from Chris Matthews at an MSNBC town hall: “Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no?” If you watch the full exchange below, you’ll see that Matthews drills Trump on the real-word ramifications of banning abortion.
Trump’s response is a muddled mess, but that didn’t stop him from stacking the federal courts with far-right anti-abortion zealots. The three justices he appointed to the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and the result is that women have been punished for seeking abortions — literally. This is what Trump has wrought, but his PR flak at the Post includes Trump’s self-serving statement from 2016 about how only the evil doctors would “be held legally responsible, not the woman.” This is all nonsense, and we’re living through the awful reality where doctors are too afraid to provide necessary medical care, which endangers women’s lives.
Keep dressing that chicken
Tuesday night, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham warned, “Donald Trump and JD Vance want to dismantle our health care system, repeal the Affordable Care Act and eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions.” New York Times fact-checker Linda Qiu claimed, “This is exaggerated.”
“Mr. Trump campaigned in 2016 on repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, but Republicans in Congress never succeeded,” Qiu writes. Let’s imagine a fictional version of Qiu at The Daily Planet: “Lex Luthor has repeatedly tried to kill Superman and take over the world, but he never succeeded.” Lois Lane wouldn’t let Qiu sit with her at lunch.
Whenever Democrats sounded alarms about a unified Republican government, these “fact-checking” spin doctors would point out that their past evil schemes have failed. They don’t mention that the post-January 6 GOP is far more radicalized than it was when Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were the House and Senate leaders. There is no John McCain to stop a Republican majority from killing the Affordable Care Act.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzer reminded voters about Trump’s disastrous covid response: “Donald told us to inject bleach.” Qiu claimed this, too, was “exaggerated.”
“He did not literally instruct people to inject bleach, but raised the suggestion as an ‘interesting’ concept to test out,” she writes.
Here’s what Trump said at one of his train wreck covid briefings in April 2020: “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.”
Prtizer’s remarks speak directly to Trump’s carnival barker approach to a national emergency, when he could only offer quick fixes and snake oil. Figurative language is pretty standard for political speeches, but the Post and the Times have seemingly gone out of their way to equate the mild exaggeration in DNC speeches with the outright lies and slander at the RNC. The spin is real.
Hammering Trump, as is proper, Pritzer said, “Take it from an actual billionaire, Trump is rich in only one thing: Stupidity.” Qiu responds, “While Mr. Trump’s exact net worth is unknown, Forbes and Bloomberg estimate that he is currently a billionaire.”
In It’s A Wonderful Life, George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) lays into the villainous Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore): “This rabble you’re talking about ... they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well in my book, my father died a much richer man than you’ll ever be!”
Qiu would probably point out that George’s father wasn’t actually richer than Mr. Potter. He wasn’t rich at all. He was barely middle class! Frankly, his finances were a mess. She’d even fact-check the famous ending when Harry Bailey delivers “a toast to my big brother George: the richest man in town.” No, that’s still technically Mr. Potter.
We should expect more Amelia Bedelia-style fact checks for the rest of this campaign. At least we know Amelia meant well.
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OH MY GOD thank you Stephen! As a former actual fact-checker, I’m wondering if the entirety of MSM have replaced their staffs with AI bots. This bizarre media trend is baffling. What are they thinking? ARE they thinking at all?
“It has to be some form of punishment for the woman. Yeah, there has to be some form.”
"— Trump, quoted in a DNC video
"The juxtaposition might leave the impression that Trump still believes this. But he walked back the statement the same day he made it in a town hall."
That's not a fact check.
That's taking right-wing spin and framing it as the absolute truth. Just because he tried to walk it back after realizing he fucked up doesn't change the FACT that he said it.
A literal video of the words coming out of Trump's mouth is misleading, because, you see, it makes Trump look bad and we can't have that.
Heads I win, tails you lose.