The Media Research Center cheered last fall when J.D. Vance spread the lie that Haitian migrants were eating pets in an Ohio town, refusing to call out the lie. After the election, it was still mad that others called out that lie. Tim Graham complained about it in his Dec. 20 column, bizarrely insisting that the demonstrable falsehood was merely “unproven”:
Don’t call PolitiFact an “independent fact-checker.” When they assemble to select their “Lie of the Year,” they have singled out Donald Trump in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021. No Democrat has been tagged with this dishonor since Trump arrived on the scene.
It was Trump again this year, as PolitiFact tweeted: “A lie marked a town and its residents in the name of campaign rage. It was absurd. It was consequential. Our Lie of the Year goes to Donald Trump and JD Vance for false claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pet dogs and cats.”
This was an unproven accusation in a presidential debate. It’s also exactly the pick you expect if you only poll liberals. Everything in the “fact checking” racket is about target selection. Republicans are “fact checked” more, and get harsher ratings for dishonesty.
PolitiFact reported “eating the pets” won in a “landslide” in their readers’ poll, with 54 percent. The second-place finisher was also Trump: the argument that FEMA is spending its disaster dollars on illegal migrants drew 17 percent. In fact, if you look at the 10 items PolitiFact listed for readers, the Trump side – including Vance, Elon Musk, and Marjorie Taylor Greene – drew 88 percent of the votes!
Graham then went into whataboutism mode, hyping “a bunch of blatant falsehoods the Democrats will not put on a Lie of the Year ballot.” He then whined that liberals defended the Haitians being lied about: “The Left always smells racism and xenophobia whenever mass immigration causes anxiety among the natives. They naturally and staunchly side with recent migrants over native-born Americans.” He then groused that the PolitiFact writer “minimized all the social problems and taxpayer costs from massive immigration in Springfield as mere ‘growing pains,’ without questioning the wave, and how Team Biden facilitated it.” But Graham identified nothing to back that up.
Graham went on another whataboutism tear over this in a Dec. 26 post:
The PBS partnership with the liberal “fact checkers” at PolitiFact was celebrated on Christmas with a seven-minute promotional segment for their “Lie of the Year” award, granted to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance for Trump’s claim Haitian migrants were “eating the pets” in Springfield, Ohio.
They didn’t prove that, but PBS made no attempt to question the liberal tilt of PolitiFact in 2024 — because they share the tilt. In the first nine months of the year, NewsBusters found Republicans were rated “Mostly False” or worse 79 percent of the time, more than twice as often as Democrats (36 percent).
Graham then tried to minimize bomb threats in Springfield over the false story, claiming that “the bomb threats came in from overseas. They just love to spread the notion that Republicans endanger immigrants with their dangerous speech about migrant crime.” Graham offered no evidence that the source of the threats was known at the time.
Graham followed this with a Dec. 27 column unironically headlined “Biden the Invisible President Lies Without Consequence.” He made sure not to mention the Haitians in Springfield, about whom Graham and the MRC allowed Trump and Vance to lie without consequence.