Fact-checkers gonna fact-check and Politifact is no different. The industry of pretending to be unbiased while operating as total hacks is apparently good for the bottom line.
The most recent example comes courtesy of a claim about DACA and Barack Obama, namely whether he ever admitted he didn’t have the authority to enact such an order. This all came in a snarky reply to, who else, Donald Trump. The President had tweeted out this.
President Obama said that he did not have the right to sign DACA, that it will never hold up in court. He signed it anyway! If the Supreme Court upholds DACA, it gives the President extraordinary powers, far greater than ever thought. If they do what is right and do not let……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2019
Anyone that’s been around for more than five minutes knows that’s objectively true. Barack Obama said multiple times, publicly, that he did not have the authority to enact DACA and that Congress had to be the ones to act.
Despite these obvious facts, Politifact rode in to try to rescue the former president from criticism of his own words.
.@BarackObama didn’t say that he lacked the right to act. In contrast, he emphasized his authority to set priorities until Congress approved the DREAM Act. https://t.co/yGy35M2rxt https://t.co/oVGpDH2c2i
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) October 9, 2019
So much fact checking.
Ironically, it was a reporter from The Washington Post that stepped in to set them straight.
https://twitter.com/BecketAdams/status/1181975381223624704
I now can’t find that post from Seung Min Kim on her timeline, so perhaps she deleted it? Either way, she was right the first time. Obama absolutely said that it’s “just not the case” that he can suspend deportations and he did with DACA.
And just to cap all this off, Politifact’s own site had found the claim that Obama did say that “mostly true” previously.
https://twitter.com/BertDifig1/status/1182014976971567105
These fact-checking sites are just absolute dumpster fires.
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