Free Republic

“$1.9 billion to recently-created decarbonization of homes committee, headed up, and we know she’s involved, just at the last moment the money was passed over, by a woman named Stacey Abrams. Have you ever heard of her?” — President Donald Trump, in an address to a joint session of Congress, March 4 We fact-checked 26 claims in Trump’s address on Tuesday night, but this one required more research to nail down. From Trump’s phrasing, it sounds like Stacey Abrams somehow got her hands on nearly $2 billion at the “last moment.” Abrams, of course, helped ensure Trump’s 2020 election loss...

As the Trump administration this week dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, the primary vehicle for U.S. foreign aid, the White House issued a statement justifying its actions. Titled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep,” the news release claimed USAID “has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight.” The news release then listed 12 examples, plucked from the websites of right-wing media. But the numbers cited — as low as $32,000 — hardly justify the claim...

Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler slammed Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Wednesday for alleging President Joe Biden was stronger than President-elect Donald Trump on securing the southern border. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the southern border remained open: Nearly two million known gotaways evaded U.S. Border Patrol under the Biden-Harris administration, according to numbers released by Republicans on the House Committee on Homeland Security in April. The administration allows up to 650,000 criminal migrants and suspects — including at least 13,099 migrant convicted murderers and 222,141 migrants facing criminal charges — to roam through American communities, according to data released...

“The Harris-Biden administration says they don’t have any money [for hurricane relief]. … They spent it all on illegal migrants. … They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them.” Trump has been trying to weaponize the Hurricane Helene relief efforts, accusing the Biden administration of failing to provide adequate assistance. As part of his critique, he claims there is no money available for hurricane relief because it was spent already to handle the surge of migrants at the...

“You’re not safe in Joe Biden’s America.” — tagline of Trump campaign ad posted on social media Donald Trump’s presidential campaign moved quickly to tie the killing of a Georgia nursing student, allegedly by a Venezuelan migrant who entered the country illegally in 2022, to the surge of undocumented immigrants at the southern border under the Biden administration. His campaign posted a video that, with pounding music, combines news clips about the case with clips of Biden administration officials assuring people that the border was secure. It ends with the blunt message above. Never mind that violent crime rates, especially...

Apparently The Washington Post’s in-house fact-butcher Glenn Kessler hasn’t learned his lesson. He regurgitated one of his already-debunked arguments spinning inflation data to protect President Joe Biden. Kessler used the second GOP presidential primary debate to once again target candidates who dared to suggest that American families lost significant spending power as a result of President Biden’s policy-induced inflation crisis. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley asserted that Biden’s economy has cost “$7,000 more a year for families,” which Kessler got triggered over. He attributed Haley’s statement to analysis conducted by Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni, which the fact-checker brazenly misrepresented....

The Washington Post’s third-rate “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler butchered the facts when he claimed that the sky-high inflation brought on by Bidenomics barely made a dent in Americans’ spending power. Economists interviewed by MRC Business were having none of it. Kessler went after presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) for his nuanced assertion during the GOP presidential primary debate that the average American family has lost “$10,000 of spending power” in President Joe Biden’s economy. “This seems wildly overstated,” objected Kessler. He then attributed Scott’s argument to an analysis by Heritage Foundation Research Fellow EJ Antoni, estimating that American families have...

The Washington Post’s fact-checking department has yet again quietly updated — rather than corrected — its most-read story, which contained glaring errors about first son Hunter Biden’s laptop and an infamous dinner involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi. Glenn Kessler, the paper’s chief fact-checker, has made six updates and authored an entirely new article about The Post’s bombshell reports in October 2020 and May 2021 that revealed Hunter Biden introduced his father to Pozharskyi at Café Milano in Georgetown months after joining the natural gas firm’s board. The initial fact check relied on statements from Andrew...

Yesterday there was a fact-check-a-palooza! Just to recap if you missed it, first the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler took on claims that George Soros backed the campaign of Alvin Bragg, who is now Manhattan’s super-“progressive” District Attorney. Kessler called it an “incendiary claim”:Glenn Kessler @GlennKesslerWP New #FactChecker -> The incendiary claim that George Soros ‘funds’ Alvin Bragg Eventually Twitter’s Community Notes came along to fact-check the fact-checker: Readers added context they thought people might want to know Soros donated $1 million to the Color of Change PAC, the largest individual donation it received in the 2022 election cycle, days after...

The Washington Post reviewed “every possible regulatory change” that was made under the Trump administration and found that none of them contributed to the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.“We decided to examine every possible regulatory change made under Trump that could be related to the accident and assess whether it could have made an impact,” read a review published Monday by Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post.“From our analysis, none of the regulatory changes made during the Trump administration at this point can be cited as contributing to the accident,” Kessler added.The review of “every possible regulatory change” made...

Here we are, in February 2023, nearly two and a half full years after the Hunter Biden laptop suppression, and the Washington Post "Fact Checker" column publishes a new report titled, "The Hunter Biden laptop and claims of ‘Russian disinfo.’" Glenn Kessler notes that among his media colleagues in October 2020, "few were willing to report information in the New York Post stories without their own due diligence, especially if Russia was once again seeking to meddle in the election." He then drills into the infamous former "intel community members" letter, which points to the laptop story as one that...

The Republicans in the House are having an investigation into the collusion of the media, Justice Department, and Intelligence officials as they censored the true story of the Biden family corruption right before the 2020 election. This was pure election interference to mislead the public. Now, Glenn Kessler, the designated fact checker at the WaPo, is claiming that the intelligence officials who lied about Russian disinformation were very careful in their wording of the letter but the media either misinterpreted or misused the letter. That is a load of garbage. The Hunter Biden laptop and claims of ‘Russian disinfo’The letter...

**SNIP** The laptop has been a source of significant reporting about Hunter Biden’s personal and business life, but many news organizations have treated its contents with trepidation because it emerged late in the 2020 presidential campaign and, at the time, they were unable to verify its authenticity. **SNIP** At several points Comer referenced a deal Hunter Biden tried to strike with CEFC China Energy, an energy conglomerate. Many aspects of his financial arrangements have been examined by news organizations, including The Washington Post. But at a news conference, Comer made assertions that have not been proved, are in dispute or...

On Tuesday night we learned that Gerson Fuentes, an illegal alien from Guatemala living in Columbus, Ohio, confessed to raping a young girl who was just nine years old at the time. A little girl who should be playing with Barbies and My Little Ponies and jumping rope on the playground. When you report on a story like this, you go into it hoping it’s not true. It’s hard to process the utter depravity of someone who would rape a child. It’s our job to read the police reports and the detailed descriptions of the crimes when we investigate these...

“Pres Biden reportedly sold oil fr[om] American reserves to China’s Sinopec which Hunter Biden may still b[e] tied to via his financial ventures in China. If report correct that’s OUTRAGEOUS.” — Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), in a tweet, July 8... The Facts This is all started with a straightforward Reuters article that appeared this month, headlined: “Oil from U.S. reserves sent overseas as gasoline prices stay high.” The article noted that government data showed that more than 5 million barrels released from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has been exported to Europe and Asia in June. The Biden...

“It’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production. That’s simply not true.” — President Biden, remarks while announcing a ban on Russian oil and gas exports, March 8 “Democrats want to blame surging prices on Russia. But the truth is, their out-of-touch policies are why we are here in the first place.” In a moment of national unity against Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Democrats and Republicans are fighting passionately over the steep increase in the cost of gasoline. Prices have already risen sharply since Biden became president — and he acknowledged that his...

The Washington Post is going to have to cope. Its dismissal of Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) warnings about the Boston Bomber getting paid under President Joe Biden’s gargantuan stimulus bill has resurfaced to haunt the rag.

There is an extraordinary column in the Washington Post from Glenn Kessler on a key figure in past coverage on the removal of Confederate statues. The Post ran a widely cited article on how Robert E. Lee’s own descendant wanted the general’s statues to be removed. The problem is that no one at the Post appears to have actually checked to see if Rev. Robert W. Lee was an actual descendant. It now appears that he is not, according to Kessler.

In Wuhan, China, where the first cases of the coronavirus emerged in late 2019, at least two labs studied coronaviruses that originate in bats — the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (WHCDC). Both are close to the seafood market that was originally deemed the source of the outbreak. The WIV is about eight miles away. The WHCDC is right around the corner. The WIV is where one of the world’s foremost experts on bat viruses, Shi Zhengli, works. The WIV has a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory, the most secure, where...

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina made an eloquent, uplifting speech on behalf of Republicans, in response to Joe Biden's quasi–State of the union address. He spoke of racial grievances, real ones, including a recent instance when the Washington Post's bigfoot fact-checker Glenn Kessler attempted to debunk Scott's impoverished background in the Jim Crow South as somehow "privileged," with revolting claims that Scott "had it easy," which was beyond horsehockey. Scott left egg all over Kessler's face. Scott spoke kindly of single mothers, such as his own. He spoke of his own failures and successes, and he blasted Biden for...