Politifact or Politifiction?

The Epoch Times ^ | January 10, 2021 | Dinesh D'Souza

[Twotone]

A few days ago, I got an email from a fact-checker at PolitiFact. His name is Bill McCarthy. He said he was checking a quotation from me taken from my appearance on the “Ingraham Angle” on Fox News. We had an exchange of emails that gives a very interesting window into the otherwise obscure world of fact-checking.

So I’d like to track our correspondence, because, after all, these are the kinds of checks that get people tagged, restricted, and even banned on social media.

Here’s what I said on Fox: “If you follow Jan. 6 at the granular level with the facts that are coming out slowly, they are coming out because the government has been very reluctant to release footage, particularly footage of what happened in the tunnel on Jan. 6, where you now begin to see these cops using massive amounts of force against unarmed Trump supporters, including women. The death of Rosanne Boyland is now being called into question. Was she the second Trump supporter that was killed by the authorities?”

McCarthy asked me to corroborate the facts alluded to in my statement, so I sent him a series of videos from inside the tunnel on Jan. 6, videos that are shocking in their display of violence on the part of the authorities, and which feature Boyland’s lifeless body. I also mentioned to McCarthy that attorney Joseph McBride, who represents a Jan. 6 defendant, has filed court briefings about the extreme violence used against protesters in the tunnel.

[DoodleDawg]

When it comes to politics these days, one side’s facts are the other side’s fiction.

[LRoggy]

The fact checker would likely be the first one to scream police brutality if a cop asked him to turn around for cuffing . . . maybe if he got a bloody nose, he’ll learn a little logic?

[cockroach_magoo]

Politifact or Politifiction?

Maybe Politif-activism.

They might as well have called Dinesh's statement FALSE because not only was Roseanne Boyland armed, but in fact she had two arms, with a hand at the end of each one.

[Twotone]

So you see! ALL OF THOSE INSURRECTIONISTS WERE ARMED!!! Too funny.

[daniel1212]

A lynch mob. What Dinesh D’Souza said was technically accurate, that of “these cops using massive amounts of force against unarmed Trump supporters” although he should have said "including" unarmed... But what I have seen the likes of Politifact do more than once is find one thing they can use in a overall correct statement in order to call the whole of it false (yet I also see conservative sites misconstruing statements in their quest for clickbait), and D’Souza should provide a balanced account, his statement does convey an out-of-context picture of police, reaction:

D’Souza clarifies in his email to the PF editor:

“I never said no one in the entire crowd on January 6 was armed. If you read my quotation it applies to the violence in the tunnel, and I specifically referenced Rosanne Boyland who was unarmed. Please don’t use the deceptive practice of creating a straw man, attributing it to me, and then refuting not what I said but what you mischaracterize me as saying.”... I proceeded to spell out the fallacy. “Police officer A attacked unarmed protester B. Yes, but protester C had weapons.” I pointed out that “the second statement does not contradict or refute the first one.”

Regardless. PF itself will not allow any technical distinction :

D’Souza falsely claims Jan. 6 video shows police using ‘massive’ force on ‘unarmed Trump supporters’ If Your Time is short Recently released footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack shows the violent scene in the Lower West Terrace tunnel as Trump supporters tried to force their way past police lines. Commentator Dinesh D’Souza’s claim that the footage shows “these cops using massive amounts of force against unarmed Trump supporters” is inaccurate. Many rioters in the tunnel attacked police with real and makeshift weapons. The tunnel was the scene of several of the day’s most violent moments, including the attacks on Metropolitan Police Officers Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges. See the sources for this fact-check Dinesh D’Souza falsely claimed that recently released footage of the Jan. 6 insurrection shows the police guarding the U.S. Capitol using "massive amounts of force against unarmed Trump supporters" — and he suggested that the government is sitting on more video that would show the same. The claim flew in the face of what other footage, court documents and testimony have shown about the rioters’ violence and use of real and makeshift weapons against police ...PolitiFact named the lies about the Capitol attack and its significance the 2021 Lie of the Year.

.

[wac3rd]

He’s paid by the Government and Soros to lie. It’s part of the Ministry of Truth.