WaPo’s Fact Checker is Fact Checked for the Third Time in a Week

Gil C / shutterstock.com
Gil C / shutterstock.com

The whole point of fact-checking is to ensure that actual truths and not lies are being told, right? So how, then, does a guy who makes a living as a fact checker get called out for lying not once but three times in the span of a week?

Well, to answer that, we have to ask Glenn Kessler, who has worked for the Washington Post for a number of years now, as, yes, their fact checker.

But it seems he doesn’t really have much appreciation for the truth – at least when it comes to certain topics.

Like the recent indictment and trial of former President Donald Trump.

Kessler was first called out for posting not-truths the Saturday after Trump had been indicted. It came about as those loyal to Trump posted about how the man to blame for the whole indictment, New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg, had received $1 million in a donation from leftist instigator and billionaire George Soros.

Naturally, Kessler claimed that the post was false and Soros didn’t donate to Bragg’s campaign.

However, as the community notes, Twitter’s fact-checking apparatus pointed out that Trump wasn’t false. While Soros didn’t donate directly to Bragg, he did donate $1 million to PAC Color of Change, which then announced it was making a donation of the same amount on behalf of Soros to Bragg’s campaign.

Of course, Kessler couldn’t leave well enough alone.

He then claimed that the first community note said that Color of Change had donated the money to Bragg.

Again, he was called out. As you can tell by the first community note I talked about, the fact is that the Color of Change PAC pledged $1 million. As the second community note says, “the Color of Change PAC *pledged* $1 million. Soros donated $1 million to the PAC days after it endorsed Bragg and pledged more than $1 million in spending to support his candidacy.

To be sure, we’re arguing semantics here a bit. However, as a man who is paid to report on, spot, and point out the details of facts and not just hearsay or “claims,” Kessler, of all people, should have gotten these right.

Perhaps that’s because he’s trying to hide a bit about the whole indictment process and who’s behind it.

And that leads us to the third fact-checking incident of the week.

The Tuesday following these earlier two, Kessler once again got on Twitter to attack a Trump-related post. Two of Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, had posted a link to an article that suggested that the judge in Trump’s arraignment case might not be as unbiased as he claims. The link led to a report proving that the judge was a huge Democratic donor, as well as had a daughter who once worked on Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

Kessler claimed that the Trump men were trying to intimidate the judge by posting photos of his adult daughter.

He wrote, “Both Trump sons have now posted photos of the judge’s adult daughter. Totally irrelevant – – and obviously intended to intimidate.”

But, as you might have caught on before, this claim wasn’t true.

For starters, there are three Trump sons, not too. Secondly, they were not posting photos of the judge’s daughter. As I mentioned above, they posted a link that led to an article about the judge and his daughter. And that article’s featured image was naturally a photo of the judge and his daughter.

But it wasn’t the Trump men’s goal to post photos. As anyone who has ever published a link on social media knows, when you do so, whatever featured image has been assigned to that page automatically shows up.

The third community note made sure to point this out, stating factually that neither Trump son posted individual photos, merely a URL.

Additionally, it can be surmised that the post isn’t “totally irrelevant” if the judge’s family is that involved in leftist politics.

And if that’s not bad enough, in trying to cover for his more recent mistake, Kessler then said he altered the Trump posts, removing the photos so that they weren’t spread “further.”

So yes, he just admitted to editing tweets to falsely portray the image of a public figure.

And he calls himself a fact checker…