What do you call a “fact-check” that admits something is true but then tries to contextualize it away? You call it an editorial, though the mainstream press would love to keep the facade up.
As RedState reported, Sen. Ted Cruz was a victim of that strategy in the days before Thanksgiving, receiving a “fact-check” from The Washington Post. In it, they critiqued his commentary that the Biden administration has been pushing for some kind of ceasefire regarding Israel’s retaliation against Hamas following the October 7th terrorist attacks.
The article is lovingly titled, “Cruz Distorts Facts on Biden Support for Israel,” and it’s a “fact-check” that perfectly illustrates how terrible the press is.
The senator’s office referred us to an Oct. 7 post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, by the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs that urged “all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks.” The State Department told the Washington Free Beacon that it removed the post the same day because it “was not approved and does not represent U.S. policy.”
Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. State Department Middle East negotiator, told us Cruz is “wrong.” President Joe Biden and top administration officials “have been nothing other than completely supportive” of Israel, even as they have tried more recently to pressure Israel to limit civilian casualties in Gaza, allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and consider how Gaza will be governed after the war, Miller said.
Notice that their “expert” doesn’t even currently work for the Biden administration. How would he know what’s wrong or right regarding internal policy positions being pushed by the White House? The answer is that he wouldn’t, nor would such a compromised source (given his alliance with the president) have any credibility to speak on the matter anyway as an authority. Further, notice that the Post then admits that Biden has been pushing for things that are largely predicated on achieving a ceasefire
If anything Cruz had more to work with than he provided, though his evidence was compelling enough. For example, Biden is currently pushing for a long-term “truce” between Israel and Hamas, endorsing the terrorist government’s plan to trickle out hostages to hold off the Israeli military. That sure sounds like pushing for a ceasefire to me.
I’m also struck by the claim that the two posts Cruz mentioned don’t count because they “were not approved.” They were put out by official administration accounts. The fact that the White House later backtracked while continuing to pressure Israel behind the scenes doesn’t change anything.
Cruz himself fired back with a lengthy post.
The Post’s “fact-check” is media bias in a nutshell. It doesn’t matter what the facts on the ground are or how right a Republican may be. Simply being on the right dictates that a deluge of “experts” must be cited that offer counter opinions while doing nothing to actually disprove anything said. It’s a strategy that’s no longer even novel. The “fact-check” industry is nothing more than a cover for far-left editorial claims.
To offer another example involving Cruz, he accurately stated in 2021 that Republicans did not try to “rig the game” in regard to removing the filibuster and packing the Supreme Court. That was during a time when most Democrat senators were pushing to do just that. Cruz’s statement was objectively true, yet Politifact gave him a “false” rating, claiming that using the normal levers of power, in this case, not voting on Merrick Garland, constituted “rigging the game.”
I could go on, and a quick search of RedState will provide many more examples, but the overarching theme is that the “fact-checkers” are useless. They don’t check facts. They try to disqualify truthful statements depending on who is saying them for political gain. Treat them accordingly.
