FILE – In this file photograph taken Nov. 1, 2007, the masthead of The Washington Post is displayed on the office building, in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
Remember when House Intel Chief Adam Schiff (D-CA) stooped to new lows back in September with a so-called “parody” reading of the July phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian president Zelensky? Schiff just made up things that Trump didn’t even say in order to boost his case that Trump should be impeached.
Fast forward to March, and the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler is having a “hold my beer” moment on quoting Trump.
In a tweet yesterday, Kessler linked to a piece done by his Washington Post colleagues that disputed the wisdom of Trump wanting to return the country back to some semblance of normalcy within a few weeks.
To try and emphasize the point of the piece, which Kessler clearly agreed with, the “fact checker” shared a quote about how progress shouldn’t be impeded even if there was a “pile of bodies over in the corner”, insinuating it’s what Trump said when asked about a timeline for getting things back to normal:
“Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner.” Why Trump’s impatience to restart economy could be disastrous. via @thewanreport @ReedAlbergotti @JoelAchenbach https://t.co/iKdEdHwEf9
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) March 24, 2020
The problem with Kessler’s quote, as several Twitter users pointed out, was that it wasn’t something Trump said. It was a quote from Bill Gates, who – like Kessler and other mainstream media figures – was perpetuating the false narrative that Trump wants everything back to normal tomorrow regardless of the human cost:
“There really is no middle ground, and it’s very tough to say to people, ‘Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner. We want you to keep spending because there’s maybe a politician who thinks GDP growth is all that counts,’” Gates said in an interview with TED Tuesday. “It’s very irresponsible for somebody to suggest that we can have the best of both worlds.”
Not only that, but to suggest Trump wants America to get back to work at the cost of stepping over dead bodies is false, as RedState senior editor Joe Cunningham explained here.
Sadly, this is just another on a long list of instances of garbage takes from the Washington Post on the Trump administration’s handling of the Wuhan coronavirus crisis, whether it be on the social media side, the news side, or the opinion side. Kessler’s false attribution of the quote to Trump also comes just days after he was called out by yours truly for erroneously giving key White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Anthony Fauci four Pinocchios for claiming Italy did not close their borders after the virus hit their country.
As I noted in my piece, it was Kessler, not Fauci, who was wrong in his claim about Italy’s open borders. But as of this writing, a correction has not been made to the piece.
Perhaps the paper is having to devote so much time to issuing corrections for their own columnists after the fact that they don’t have the resources to fact check their own fact checkers?
Understandable. Not excusable, but understandable, all things considered.
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