{"id":214514,"date":"2016-09-27T18:21:55","date_gmt":"2016-09-27T22:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/172.24.32.11\/daily\/2016\/09\/27\/the_fact_checkers_are_full_of_it\/"},"modified":"2018-01-26T20:08:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-27T01:08:51","slug":"the_fact_checkers_are_full_of_it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2016\/09\/27\/the_fact_checkers_are_full_of_it\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Fact Checkers” Are Full of It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n

RUSH: I\u2019m just going through my Stack of Stuff<\/a> here to see what I have left that I haven\u2019t touched on that still fascinates me.  Not all of it does each and… It\u2019s show prep. By the time I get to it and the program starts, I lose interest in some of it.  Well, a couple stories here on Lester Holt.  It was predictable what Lester was… Look, folks, if you didn\u2019t think… If you were hoping that Lester Holt was gonna somehow be fair-minded, you don\u2019t remember what happened to Matt Lauer. <\/p>\n

I mean, it was telegraphed to Lester Holt way in advance what was gonna happen to him if he didn\u2019t go after Trump on this fact checker theory or business or challenge Trump, that he was gonna get same treatment Matt Lauer got and that Jimmy Fallon got.  That was not a surprise.  There still are some stories.  Breitbart here: “Five Times Lester Holt Shilled for Hillary Clinton at First Debate,”<\/a> and they talk about Lester here and his “Candy Crowley moment.”<\/line><\/p>\n

<\/a>“[B]owing to pressure from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the liberal media by ‘fact-checking\u2019 Republican nominee Donald Trump…” By the way, this whole fact-checking business? It\u2019s not what it is.  You know what fact-checking is?  Fact-checking is nothing more than an opportunity for the Drive-Bys to opinionate in the news by calling it fact-checking.  Now, here\u2019s a piece from Kelly Riddell.  I didn\u2019t print where this comes from.  This might be McClatchy. It\u2019s not McClatchy.  It might be Breitbart.  I don\u2019t think it\u2019s Breitbart. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry, I didn\u2019t print out the website. (interruption) They say it\u2019s a popular one. I know that. I just don\u2019t remember what it is.  But there are “Eight Examples Where ‘Fact-Checking\u2019 Became Opinion Journalism.”<\/a> This is the whole point.  In fact, James Taranto — who is a great blogger, The Best of the Web blog, part of the Wall Street Journal empire. James Taranto actually tweeted <\/a>that fact-checking “is opinion journalism pretending to be some sort of heightened objectivity.”<\/p>\n

That\u2019s even better because that\u2019s exactly right.  The Drive-Bys do their fact-checking under the guise that they have no bias whatsoever, that they\u2019re totally objective and they\u2019re looking at these claims and they\u2019re being the final arbiter with no bias whatsoever, and it\u2019s patent BS.  And so what Kelly Riddell has done here is give eight examples of supposed fact-checking which are really nothing more than attempts at opinion journalism.  The first one is from the New York Times. <\/p>\n

And the way the format is, we\u2019ll read to you what the Trump quote is, followed by the New York Times or whatever organization are quoting here, their fact check.  So the first Trump quote is this:  “‘Do people notice Hillary is copying my airplane rallies — she puts the plane behind her like I have been doing from the beginning.\u2019 … Fact check: ‘[Donald Trump] did not invent the tarmac rally or the campaign-plane backdrop.'” It doesn\u2019t address what Trump said! “‘Do people notice Hillary is copying my airplane rallies”?<\/p>\n

Trump never claimed to “invent” it.  He never claimed to be the first.  He just said that Hillary is copying his tarmac rallies. Which is true, by the way.  But the New York Times fact check: “[Donald Trump] did not invent the tarmac rally or the campaign-plane backdrop.” Irrelevant! But a great example of how a supposed “fact check” is really nothing more than a slap down.  The next “Trump quote\/assertions: ‘Mrs. Clinton destroyed 13 smartphones with a hammer while she was secretary of state.'”<\/line><\/p>\n

Trump made this assertion in speeches in September. “Fact check: ‘An aide told the FBI of only two occasions in which phones were destroyed by a hammer.'” Oh, so Trump is lying. Trump is saying that Mrs. Clinton destroyed 13 smartphones, and the fact check says, “No, no, no. She only destroyed two.” The next “Trump quote: ‘We have cities that are far more dangerous than Afghanistan.\u2019 Fact check: ‘No American city resembles a war zone, though crime has risen lately in some, like Chicago. Urban violence has fallen precipitously over the past 25 years.'”<\/p>\n

There\u2019s are not fact checks.  These are bogus, opinion-oriented assertions.  But of course the low-information voters that read this stuff and even some, well, relatively intelligent people think that what we\u2019re getting here is legitimate fact-checking.  They point out that “the New York Times wrote on Sept. 9 that ‘murder rates rose in a quarter of the nation\u2019s 100 largest cities, and that ‘the number of cities where rates rose significantly was the largest since the height of violent crime in the early 1990s.'”<\/p>\n

So while the New York Times is fact-checking Trump and his claim that cities are far more dangerous than Afghanistan… They fact check says (paraphrased), “There\u2019s no such thing! We don\u2019t have any cities that look like war-torn areas, strife with war and so forth,” and the proof is that the New York Times has been worse in describing American cities than even Trump.  The next “Trump quote: ‘We\u2019re presiding over something the world has not seen. The level of evil is unbelievable.\u2019<\/p>\n

“(September 19, Fort Myers, Florida, rally) Politico fact check: ‘Judging one “level of evil” against another is subjective, but other groups in recent history have without any question engaged in as widespread killing of civilians as ISIS.'” So Trump is attacking ISIS, and the Politco does a fact check and says, “No, no! There\u2019s some just-as-bad groups.”  It\u2019s insane.  It\u2019s not fact-checking.  I\u2019ll telling you, it\u2019s not fact-checking.  It\u2019s… Well, it\u2019s opinion journalism.  It\u2019s worse than that.  The next “Trump quote: ‘Hillary Clinton is raising your taxes, it\u2019s a very substantial tax increase.\u2019<\/p>\n

“(September 20 High Point, North Carolina, rally…). Politico Fact check: ‘Clinton has not released the full details of her tax plan, but she has sworn off tax hikes for households earning less than $250,000 a year. The vast majority of tax increases she proposes … affect the highest earners.'”   Well, the fact check says that Hillary\u2019s gonna raise taxes.  That\u2019s what Trump said.  Hillary Clinton\u2019s raising your taxes, a very substantial tax increase.  They want a fact check and say that Trump\u2019s wrong and in fact-checking they admit that Trump is right. <\/p>\n

And then in December, when “George Stephanopoulos asked her ‘Is that a rock-solid promise?\u2019 (on not raising taxes on households earning less than $250,000) she hedged. ‘Well,\u2019 she said, ‘it certainly is my goal.'” And then the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  That came up last night, and Trump nailed her on that.  She was trying to go back and forth, change her mind, originally for it, then decided she was against it and so forth.  Anyway, I just wanted to share with you the examples of these “fact checks” because this has become a campaign plank.<\/p>\n

The idea that Trump needs to be fact-checked is nothing more than a phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n\u2019 roller technique to allow journalism to do opinion hits on Trump while supposedly occupying a position of objectivity.  It is one of the dirtiest, lowest, schemiest things that the Drive-Bys of the modern era have engaged in.  It is illusion, delusion, allusion.  It is just plain-and-simple lying, and they call it “fact-checking.”<\/line><\/p>\n

Salena Zito<\/a>.  I\u2019ve mentioned her today a couple times, and I quoted from her columns in recent days and weeks. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is doing an in-depth study of the voting population of Pennsylvania and how so much of it seems to be moving toward Trump.  She had a piece, a column recently in The Atlantic that I think a really pithy, if you will, line to try to explain to people how Trump is covered and perceived.  And it\u2019s this.  Very simple. “The press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”<\/p>\n

That is so true, and it is such a divide. And the Drive-Bys, they are totally out to lunch on this.  You know, one of the… I read this the other day.  This is true, too.  One of the amazing aspects of being a liberal — if you\u2019re a liberal intellectual, if you\u2019re a liberal magazine writer, if you\u2019re contributing editor, if you\u2019re a blogger, if you are somebody that runs a left-wing website, if you\u2019re an elected official, if you\u2019re an elected Democrat, a liberal this or that — is they have this arrogance and this belief system that every one of their voters is a likewise highbrow, superior intelligence intellectual. <\/p>\n

They do.  They think every liberal is Mensa. Every liberal in the world is as smart as any other liberal.  That\u2019s what makes liberalism what it is.  Liberalism is the ideology of the intellectual.  It\u2019s the ideology of the super smart.  And by the same token they think that anybody who\u2019s Republican or conservative is an absolute Deliverance-type hayseed, hick.  And so they are totally incapable of understanding.  They take Trump literally, but not seriously.  And they think everybody else does on their side. <\/p>\n

Everybody on their side, they think, looks at Trump the way they see him: as a buffoon, a braggart, and they think that his supporters ought to see him that way and that if they work hard enough, they can make Trump supporters see Trump the way they see Trump.  But that\u2019ll never happen because Trump supporters don\u2019t take him literally \u2019cause they know what he means. <\/line><\/p>\n

They know what he\u2019s talking about.  But since the Drive-Bys are into rhetoric a hundred percent, they use rhetoric to disqualify their political opponents.  They take anything their political opponents say, and if they find it offensive, they go on the warpath until they\u2019ve destroyed that person. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s just another example of the great divide and the disconnect that exists.  And I think these people, this whole campaign season, this entire year of this campaign has been noteworthy for illustrating this divide.  How the establishment of both parties to this day still doesn\u2019t really understand the Trump phenomenon.  The closest they can get to it is it to insult Trump supporters and say they\u2019re a bunch of angry racist bigots who finally have found a Svengali who\u2019s willing to say what they believe, and it\u2019s total contempt, it\u2019s total condescension, and they don\u2019t get it.  And, as such, they are continually surprised when Trump doesn\u2019t away, when Trump continues to grow, his popularity expands.  They literally are clueless.  <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH:  Look at this. Look at this. We\u2019ve got a fact check from Politico. Here\u2019s the headline: “Trump Is Exaggerating Clinton\u2019s \u201930 Years\u2019 in National Policy<\/a> — Trump has said at least three times that Hillary Clinton has been working on trade issues, and other national policy issues, for 30 years. But as Clinton said, it hasn\u2019t been ‘quite that long.\u2019<\/p>\n

“In 1986, [she] was Arkansas first lady, and her involvement on trade policy would have been limited at best.” Okay, make it 26 years.  This is exactly the point.  This is a so-called fact check: “Trump lied! Trump got it wrong!” Okay, 25 years, then.  Ten years. I don\u2019t care what it is.  The woman hasn\u2019t advanced the ball at all.  She\u2019s continuing to complain about the things she complained about when she first showed up.  Nothing\u2019s any better.  What more needs to be said?<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: I\u2019m just going through my Stack of Stuff here to see what I have left that I haven\u2019t touched on that still fascinates me.  Not all of it does each and… It\u2019s show prep. By the time I get to it and the program starts, I lose interest in some of it.  Well, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe "Fact Checkers" Are Full of It - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2016\/09\/27\/the_fact_checkers_are_full_of_it\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"The "Fact Checkers" Are Full of It - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: I\u2019m just going through my Stack of Stuff here to see what I have left that I haven\u2019t touched on that still fascinates me.  Not all of it does each and… It\u2019s show prep. 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