It’d be nice if Republicans could rely on the fact-checkers in the mainstream media to hold Democrats to account when they lie through their teeth.

But as I documented Friday, it’s simply not possible to do so because the fact-checkers like CNN’s Daniel Dale who are supposed to thoroughly review claims made by candidates and politicians from a neutral perspective simply cannot keep their liberal biases to themselves.

Case in point, this tweet from Dale Thursday night, and another from him back in September:

Biden was again imperfect from a fact check perspective. He made at least a few false, misleading, or lacking-in-context claims.

Trump was, as usual, a serial liar.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 23, 2020

Look, there's just no equivalence.

Biden makes some false and misleading claims. It's important to note them. We will. But his assertions of fact have been largely factual.

Trump, as we saw at the town hall and see again tonight, has been incessantly and egregiously dishonest.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 18, 2020

The double standards at play here are insane. Sadly, Dale is not the only “fact-checker” with this mindset.

Because of that unfortunate reality, Republicans keep archival footage and media clippings themselves in order to fact check their opponents, as Trump and his reelection campaign did Friday over comments Joe Biden made about Social Security and Medicare during the Thursday debate.

Before we get to the Bernie video, here’s the exchange between Biden and Trump during the debate minus the moderator interruptions:

Trump: When he says public health option, he is talking about socialized medicine and health care. When he talks about a public option, he’s talking about destroying your Medicare, totally destroying — he’s destroying your Social Security. And this whole country will come down. You know, Bernie Sanders tried it in his state. His governor was a very liberal governor, they wanted to make it work —

[…]

Biden: And the idea that we’re in a situation and want to destroy Medicare — this is the guy that the actuary of Medicare said, ‘If in fact’ — and, social security — ‘If, in fact, he continues to withhold his plan to withhold the tax on Social Security, Social Security will be bankrupt by 2023, with no way to pay for it. This is a guy who’s tried to cut Medicare. So I don’t know. I mean, the idea that Donald Trump is lecturing me on Social Security and Medicare? Come on.

[…]

Trump: — he tried to hurt Social Security years ago, years ago. Go back and look at the records. He tried to hurt Social Security you’ve got —

The day after the debate, Trump took to the Twitter machine to fact check Biden on his Medicare and Social Security claims by using a video of a primary debate between Sanders and Biden where Sanders repeatedly called on him to admit what he’d said on the Senate floor about Social Security and Medicare. Sanders would know perhaps more than any of the other Democratic candidates who ran against Biden because Sanders has served alongside Biden in the Senate for decades.

Watch:

For years, Joe Biden fought to cut your Social Security and Medicare—a fact which Joe falsely denied last night. This video (Joe Biden’s own words) was created by Bernie Sanders earlier this year to expose Joe Biden’s atrocious record and egregious lies! pic.twitter.com/womMTc70RP

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2020

Boom. That one’s gonna leave a mark, especially considering there is no love lost between the Biden and Sanders camps.

Now, in fairness to Dale, he did fact-check a couple of Biden claims from Thursday and noted they were untrue. But the exception is not the rule, and he doesn’t get a cookie for only doing the bare minimum when it comes to holding Joe Biden to account.

The fact of the matter is that Republicans are left no choice but to do their own fact-checking on claims made by Democrats because the people who have been charged with doing so have been miserable failures in that department going back well before Trump’s presidency – and that will not change in the future.

Good on Trump for using the words of another Democrat to call out Biden’s lies here.