You see, in order for the media and/or their fact-checking departments to do their job and pressure the Democrats, Republicans practically have to promise them their firstborn child – and even then, there are no guarantees.
During the Trump years, fact-checking organizations proved to be little more than obedient mouthpieces for Democrats, an extension of their liberal, biased counterparts in the mainstream press. This was perhaps most clearly exemplified by CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale, who once made the infamous statement during a CNN town hall with Joe Biden in 2020 that Biden was fact-checking Donald Trump in real time by stringing together a few coherent sentences.
No joke:
Biden implicitly checks Trump’s statements by … uttering many coherent sentences in a row, even though Trump has repeatedly said Biden is incapable of doing so. https://t.co/LzS2Bx7ioq
– Daniel Dale (@ddale8) 18 September 2020
SEE ALSO: CNN’s Daniel Dale sounds the final death knell for fact-checking
Not surprisingly, fact-checking as an industry has gotten much worse since then. For example, about three months after Joe Biden was sworn in, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post proudly declared that, unlike former President Donald Trump, they would no longer maintain a database of Biden’s falsehoods after the first 100 days of his presidency:
Here’s the Biden database – which we don’t want to expand beyond 100 days. I learned my lesson. https://t.co/qK42PRlnrS
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) 27 April 2021
With that in mind, let’s turn to a more recent (and ridiculous) case in which a media outlet rushed to conduct a fact-check, albeit one by a different CNN employee—and the target was Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Senator JD Vance (R-OH).
Before we start checking the facts, let’s look at which statement from Vance was the trigger.
On Tuesday, Vance was in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to talk about Crime and public safety. During a press conference accompanied by police officers, Vance joked that perhaps the Democrats had held their convention in Chicago so that Walz, who has been accused of stolen valor by some veterans, including Vance, could credibly claim he had “visited a combat zone.”
“My little theory as to why they decided to hold the convention in Chicago is that Tim Walz went around saying he had served in the war, and maybe they did it in Chicago so he could actually say for sure he had been in a combat zone,” Vance explained, to chuckles from some in the audience.
Regard:
JD VANCE: They held the convention in Chicago so that Tim Walz could legitimately say he had been in a war zone. pic.twitter.com/nLRNV7dBDx
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) 20 August 2024
Obviously this was a joke, right? I mean, there’s nobody out there who believes the DNC was organized in the week and a half after Kamala Harris named Walz as her vice presidential running mate, right?
Apparently at least one CNN reporter wanted to set the record straight. Alayna Treene, who covers the Trump-Vance campaign, tweeted this cautionary tale:
Vance of Wisconsin says his “little theory” about why the Democrats are holding their convention in Chicago is “so [Walz] one could actually justifiably say that he visited a combat zone”
The Democrats chose Chicago in April 2023 – long before Biden even thought about dropping out
– Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) 20 August 2024
Wow, really? Thank you, because who would have thought?
https://t.co/juQZqy4WPY pic.twitter.com/tB2vDMttK5
— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) 21 August 2024
https://t.co/zvhtpGTiTD pic.twitter.com/uZn8GVYBoT
— President of the F-15 Owners Club (@WarDamnGunners) 21 August 2024
Journalists are so stupid and broken that they now check obvious jokes for their truthfulness. https://t.co/QiR34h3vkD
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) 21 August 2024
Vance even weighed with a elementary “lmao”.
And I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but things are going to get even more embarrassing in the next three months. So, as Joe Biden would say, gird up your loins.
Related: JD Vance attacks Andy Beshear for ‘disgusting’ rape remark about family
