Politico's Very Selective Concern for the Truth

They have a piece today with five reasons why you have to fact-check everything Trump says.

Trump’s stock-in-trade is telling it like it is, but his propensity for telling it like it isn’t has engendered deep distrust -- 29 percent of GOP primary voters say they would never vote for him.

“There’s really no candidate who has ever been on the same level with Trump in terms of making questionable assertions, except for [2012 GOP candidate and former Minnesota Rep.] Michele Bachmann,” says Louis Jacobson, deputy editor of PolitFact, the Pulitzer-winning fact-checking site.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/donald-trump-fact-check-off-message-214051#superComments

Really? Evidently Politico has wasted no time fact checking Carly Fiorina then. And that's just it. The media has decided that Trump has mocked them long enough. They want to show him that their rules of gravity apply to him too. 

The media has no problem with candidates who lie as long as it's with their tacit approval. The let George W. Bush lie his way all the way to the Presidency in 2000 while they held Gore 'accountable' for saying he invented the Internet-even though he didn't say he invented it, just sponsored it; and for the sin of visiting a Buddhist temple. 

I also thinks there are more important errors of fact and less important. Most of the facts Politico allegedly busts Trump on are not important anyway. They say he lies about how successful the Art of the Deal was-it was successful but not the most of all time. 

Sure, but who really takes talk like that seriously? It's kind of the charm of his hyperbole. It's like advertising. I doubt his fans take this literally. Politico also wags its fingers about his false claim of being Swedish. 

But really who cares whether he is or not Swedish. Again, I've never taken Trump as someone you take literally in a lot of this. But it really isn't material to America's future whether he's Swedish or not. 

It says he exaggerates about $10 billion dollars which I can believe but again this is his showmanship, his hyperbole. And it doesn't really matter anyway. You can argue why it matters so much to him but: that's what makes him The Donald. He is vain. 

Finally Politico goes on to declare he did push for gambling in Florida. But isn't this just a pointless game of gotcha? What matters more to me is that unlike Jeb he doesn't believe in radical tax cuts for the rich or using a government shutdown for shutting down Planned Parenthood 

All these jibes at Trump have the characteristic of not actually making any difference to the lives of average Americans either way. 

Yet, when it's not about Trump who is threatening the GOP powers that be, Politico's obsessive fidelity to the truth is much less much less apparent. They lie on a daily basis with their headlines and their posts about Hillary Clinton. 

Usually these are lies of omission where they leave out important facts that would cut off their attack on her at the knees. 

They have a new headline today that reads Poll: Sanders surges past Clinton in New Hampshire

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/sanders-surge-new-hampshire-214043#ixzz3mlQUwsop

This is a misleading headline-and therefore not truthful-as it says he 'surges' whereas this surge is over a month old. Yet it tries to convey the impression that he's making further inroads against her when he has led in NH for a while.

The truth is not simply about every factual claim being true but also that you frame it in an honest way. Like the preference of the polls to all show Biden-who isn't running-deliberately makes it look like her support is lower than it is.

Politico also has another piece blaring about "Hillary approved special status for aide Huma Abedin."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/clinton-abedin-state-job-approved-214038#ixzz3mlRV7eZU

But when you read this you see that this whole storyline is being pushed by Judicial Watch and the GOP Senate is trying to run a partisan witch hunt about Abedin-no doubt her Muslim faith is part of why they are so fixated with her. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/politicos-ugly-anti-muslim-attack-on.html

Politico doesn't mind lies by those it deems politically correct. It wants to use a fact checker for Trump but what about anything that comes from Tredy Gowdy's office, considering that he investigation into Hillary's emails couldn't be more partisan or rife through with conflicts of interest. 

Yet with every new angle he or the GOP Senate Judiciary Committee proposes Politico couldn't be more credulous. 

After 24 years of lies about the Clintons you'd think that Politico, the NY Times and the rest of the Beltway press might demand a fact checker for the scandal mongerers. But this never happens. 

And these lies are much more destructive than Trump exaggerating how successful his admittedly successful book was or how many billions he really has or claiming to be Swedish even though he's not.