File this one under “things you simply cannot make up.”

One of the first tweets I saw after logging on to the Twitter machine today was an announcement from Politifact about a “festival of fact-checking” virtual event that will take place next month.

I did a double-take on it for a couple of reasons. The first one being the list of guests they noted. Among them were President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as CNN’s resident media hall monitor, Brian Stelter.

Considering the long list of Stelter’s lies and deliberate misstatements over the years as well as the fact that Fauci has been in the hot seat with questions raised by even some in the MSM about past statements on masks, lockdowns, and the vaccine by him and other Biden officials, I thought to myself that the Politifact “festival” could not be an actual thing.

Surely it was a belated April Fools’ Day joke, right?

Wrong:

🚨 We’re announcing our first-ever, multi-day virtual event celebrating facts 🚨 United Facts of America!
Speakers include Dr. Anthony Fauci, @brianstelter, @docdanmd and other salient voices in media, health care, politics and technology. Register today: https://t.co/Xo4SJFGW7F pic.twitter.com/bLjG1YkuBe

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) April 2, 2021

When you click on the registration link for the “United Facts of America” event, here’s how the organizers — Politifact and the Poynter Institute (which owns Politifact) — promoted the self-serving soiree:

[The event is] a celebration of fact-checking featuring some of the most important voices in media, health care, politics and technology.

[…]

Over 10 hours of virtual programming, you’ll hear from expert fact-checkers from PolitiFact, the Washington Post and FactCheck.org, doctors on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic and political and technology leaders trying to counter the spate of misinformation that lives online.

And as a bonus? If you shell out $100 for the “VIP experience,” you get to spend some time during a private virtual happy hour with… Brian Stelter:

VIP experience: $100 (includes a private virtual happy hour with CNN’s Brian Stelter and small group break-out sessions with PolitiFact fact-checkers)

Twitter users who are all too familiar with Stelter’s dishonest shtick responded accordingly:

Great choice, folks. This is whom @BrianStelter deems a “reliable source” …pic.twitter.com/zXXyz9clsX

— David Henry (eat/my/shorts) (@imau2fan) April 2, 2021

Hell, I can get people to lie to me over drinks for free.

— Mattphilbin (@Mattphilbin) April 2, 2021

pic.twitter.com/8Um0sq8MfA

— jon w (@jonwins) April 2, 2021

And as our friends at our sister site, Twitchy, noted, another of the special guests at the event honoring fact-checking is Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who like other Democrats is busy telling lies about Georgia’s new election reform law:

When other states are passing laws making it a crime to give voters water while they wait or reduce access to ballot drop boxes, I applaud @GovernorVA for taking steps to ensure that all Virginians have access to the ballot box. We should make it easier for all Americans to vote. https://t.co/YAT50Wdren

— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) April 1, 2021

So to sum up, an event put on by questionable fact-checkers that is to celebrate the fact-checking industry will have featured guests who have a history of deception (whether intentional or not), thereby once again confirming why so few people trust fact-checkers in the first place. Twitter user “newsman” nailed it:

I have discovered Mecca for the most consistently wrong and intentionally deceptive people in the country, run by an organization who is consistently wrong and intentionally deceptive. https://t.co/c4NwW4GIDj

— a newsman (@a_newsman) April 2, 2021

The tone-deafness on display by these people is just absolutely off the charts. Again, you simply can’t make it up.

Flashback: Brian Stelter Asks Politifact About Andrew Cuomo, and the Interview Was Everything Wrong With Journalism