In political publishing circles, there is a long held, deeply revealing reality; books on Donald Trump are numerous, plentiful, and frequently successful, while those written on the Biden administration are in short supply, and those few examples end up languishing on store shelves.Just one example: two Associated Press writers wrote about Jill Biden in a 2022 release, and managed to move just 250 units the first week of sales. Considering the reported popularity and magnificence of the Biden administration seen in the press, there is little in the way of passionate interest in the marketplace.
So it was in the months leading to the November 5 election, with no shortage of tomes coming out with an inherent interest in swaying the election. One such title was “Beyond The Big Lie,” written by Bill Adair, the founder of the fact-check site Politifact. It is, as expected, an indictment of the Right, of Republicans, and especially Donald Trump and his aversion to truth-telling. And also as expected, there is no contempt to be aimed in the opposite direction, especially in regards to the media of this country.
A box of books! The bound galleys of Beyond the Big Lie arrived yesterday! The hardcover version will be in bookstores in October! pic.twitter.com/2I7FgMKM4V
— Bill Adair (@BillAdairDuke) July 11, 2024
Timed just ahead of the election, in the hopes of swaying enough minds, the October 15 release was entirely focused on the way the Republican party is allegedly consumed with prevarication, to the extent that the party apparatus subsists on lies in all of its operations. This farcical measurement is something Adair attested to in a sober fashion, as he was discussing things with NPR’s flawed fact-checker, David Folkenflik ahead of the book release:
FOLKENFLIK: While both major political parties peddle falsehoods, Adair argues that Republicans lie more and they lie worse than Democrats, and then they lie some more to discredit the people trying to hold them to account.
ADAIR: Any fact-checker would, in a moment of candor, tell you that that’s very true, this asymmetry, that Republicans lie more. And to be clear, this was true before Donald Trump came on the scene. And it’s even more true now.
Understand now, this is something that Adair can point to because the skewed ratio is baked into the entire, fact-checking enterprise. Take this example seen during his book tour, when Adair sat in with MSNBC’s Katie Phang, and the hostess was raving how his site managed to cite over 800 examples of Donald Trump telling lies. For contrast (and not addressed by Ms. Phang), Kamala Harris had zero comments listed as “Pants On Fire”.
Daniel Dale at CNN displayed something similar in his measurement of the Trump-Harris debate. After that performance, he announced that he tabulated all of one lie to Kamala, while Trump displayed a firehose of falsehoods. The TRUTH is Kamala was spewing off dozens of her own lies, which Dale decided were not recordable.
Paging CNN Fact-Checker Daniel Dale: Here’s How to Do Your Job, Not the Debate Malpractice You Delivered
There are a number of tricks played by Politifact, and other fact-checkers to achieve these results. For one, it is the selective measuring process, where they decide by themselves what constitutes a lie. Trump can utter an opinion on something, or he can make a prediction, and it is rated a lie. The other is in what they determine to measure, or – in the case of the Democrats – what they do not measure.
Another way is that oftentimes, they will manage to deliver an example of some leftist figure distorting the truth but Politifact will not give it a rating; so even if they show them telling a lie, it does not count against them. Yet another tactic is seen from other sites, where they will cobble together a collection of factually-challenged comments from a Democrat but place them into one article, where Trump will garner a report on each one of his “lies.”
These and other methods are used to juice the tally under a label, and in his book, Adair then uses his slanted measuring system as a means to apply pressure to politicians (read, Republicans):
A politician’s score with fact-checkers should be as much a part of their record as how they voted on key issues. If they get a lot of False ratings they should be asked about it in town halls and in questionnaires from civic groups. Journalists should mention the record in candidate profiles and opponents should bring it up in debates.
Note how Adair attempts to elevate his corrupted measurement system to the level of actual political activity, that his grading format is to be seen just as important as the way a politician actually governs. So, as his site is provably targeting one party, he intends to use that rating system as a cudgel against Republicans.
The cold irony is this is a purely fraudulent methodology from a site supposedly rooted in the facts and the truth. And yet, he is a component of the very media that – this year especially – has shown to be openly hostile to the truth, something exposed yet again with Joe Biden’s recent pardoning of his son. He, and the press, have insisted for over a year that Biden would not act in this manner. Nowhere in the primary news outlets will they acknowledge – despite his performing a complete 180 on his promises – that he lied about this.
Time Magazine gave Adair some column space to go along with his book release, and in it, Adair proposes that politicians be required to take a truth pledge. This can then be cited anytime a politician is “caught” delivering a falsehood:
A lying pledge—it could be a relatively simple vow that the candidate or official would not lie in campaign materials nor to the media—would need an organization to keep track of the signers.
So, he wants yet another biased, fact-checking outlet to be developed so that, by his own words and methodology, Republicans can be held to account.
What Bill Adair will never admit to is that it is the press corps that is in need of this accountability. He cleaves to the belief that the press is sacrosanct and above reproach, when in truth, the media in 2024 has been a hive of disinformation. The Biden pardon fully denied for over a year in the press is just one example.
There were the ongoing denials of Joe Biden’s sliding mental condition, with numerous claims that he was “sharp” and engaged, as well as the defensive claims that accurate, visual evidence of his decline was the work of “cheap fake” videos. There was the fabrication of the Kamala Harris record, as well as insisting that she was never the Border Czar. We saw widespread coverage of FEMA workers allegedly targeted by militias in North Carolina, when the National Guard announced they never saw an instance of it happening. There was the failed October Surprise of Trump allegedly groping a model, who was delivered by Jeffrey Epstein. And how about the blatant false story from Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic, about Trump vulgarly refusing to cover the funeral expenses of a fallen soldier?
This is not cherry-picking individual examples from select outlets; all of those examples were seen spread and shared by multiple, major news outlets in malpractice fashion. For Bill Adair, and other self-described experts on the truth, these are not problems they are willing to acknowledge, let alone examine and seek a fix. The press, once again, refuses to be honest with themselves – there is no reason then to expect they are telling us the truth.
