One of Tim Graham’s main jobs at the Media Research Center is to reflexively lash out at fact–checkers for fact-checking conservatives (not that the fact-checks aren’t justified, mind you) and that they don’t fact-check liberals nearly enough (though he often lacks evidence to justify that conclusion). As such, Graham pushed this narrative through the 2024 presidential election process. He huffed in a Jan. 10 post:
President Joe Biden kicked off his re-election campaign with two speeches filled with his usual fact-challenged bombast. But since checking that might sound like “normalizing” bombastic Donald Trump, the “independent fact checkers” have filed nothing after his speech near Valley Forge on January 5 and his speech in Charleston on January 8.
But USA Today leaped to Biden’s defense on January 7, censoring Facebook posts that claimed Biden didn’t condemn political violence after the race riots in the summer of 2020. In Charleston, Biden glorified “the historic movement for justice” at that time, which is whitewashing some history.
It’s unclear what Graham means by claiming that USA “censored” Facebook posts — something it has no power to do — and the USA Today article specifically noted that “critics claimed on Facebook that Biden had not condemned violent protests by activists from Black Lives Matter and antifa.” Proving someone factually wrong isn’t “censorship.”
Graham returned to his old chestnut about Trump getting fact-checked in his Feb. 14 column:
Never call PolitiFact an “independent fact-checker.” They are every bit as liberal and biased as their fans in the liberal media. Recently, they announced they had published their 1000th “fact check” of Donald Trump.
“American fact-checkers have never encountered a politician who shares Trump’s disregard for factual accuracy,” they proclaimed. “Ever since he descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, we have encountered a firehose of claims.”
In those 1,000 checks, PolitiFact tagged Trump on their “Truth-O-Meter” as “Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants on Fire” in 757 of them (75.7 percent). Trump was found “True” or “Mostly True” in only 121 checks (12.1 percent).
Barack Obama is currently in second in the “fact check” count with 603. PolitiFact was founded in 2007, when Obama was running for president. Donald Trump was a real-estate developer until 2015.
But look at the difference in “Truth” ratings. Almost half of Obama’s “checks” were “True” or “Mostly True” – 289 of them (48 percent). Only 143 (or 25 percent) were “Mostly False” or worse. Obama has been rated “Pants on Fire” nine times. Trump’s been found flammable 184 times.
Hillary Clinton came in third with 301 checks. She has an even better “True” side percentage – 148 out of 301 (49.1 percent). Only 83 (26.5 percent) landed on the “False” side, and only nine “Pants on Fire” warnings.
Joe Biden is fourth with 286 checks. He hasn’t been blessed with the magic that the other two top Democrats have.
Graham offered no evidence that Obama, Clinton or Biden has told as many falsehoods as Trump, so his comparison fails.
Graham spent a March 8 column nitpicking a fact-check of Trump he didn’t like:
Reading the “fact checkers” in the press sometimes triggers memories of the comic-book hero Plastic Man, who could contort into all sorts of shapes. Take the Associated Press, and immigration reporter Elliot Spagat in San Diego.
The headline was “Fact Focus: Claims Biden administration is secretly flying migrants into the country are unfounded.” Spagat had to redefine all sorts of words like “secretly” to defend President Biden’s fly-over-the-border policies.
The Spagat dispatch began: “In his Super Tuesday victory speech, former President Donald Trump elevated false information that had gone viral on social media, claiming the Biden administration secretly flew hundreds of thousands of migrants into the United States.”
AP noted that on January 26, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (if you can call them that) reported 327,000 immigrants were vetted and authorized for travel. The government flew in more than 67,000 Cubans, 126,000 Haitians, 53,000 Nicaraguans and 81,000 Venezuelans.
Trump said, “Today it was announced that 325,000 people were flown in from parts unknown — migrants were flown in airplanes, not going through borders … It was unbelievable.”
How was this false? Spagat elastically argued, “But migrants are not being flown into the U.S. randomly.” Trump never said “randomly,” or “secretly.” He said “parts unknown.”
Trump referred to an article by the Center for Immigration Studies, which AP calls a “group that advocates for immigration restrictions.” Todd Bensman of CIS found CBP’s migrants arrived at 43 airports, but the CBP refused to divulge which ones, using an exemption under the Freedom of Information Act for “law-enforcement sensitive information.”
But this doesn’t look like law enforcement. It looks like government-enabled illegal immigration.
Graham offered no evidence to back up his claim that it was, in fact, “government-enabled illegal immigration” — meaning that he’s taking refuge in the ambiguity to falsely cast aspersions on the AP fact-check. He inadvertently demonstrated the the AP cares about facts and he doesn’t.
For a March 29 post, Graham lashed out at PolitFact again over another Biden remark that he had been on the now-collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore “many, many times commuting from the state of Delaware either on a train or by car.” The bridge didn’t have train tracks, and a White House spokesperson later stating that Biden “is clearly describing driving over the bridge while commuting” is somehow a cop-out in Graham’s view: “In other words, ‘the President is clearly describing what he MEANT to say, not what he actually said.'” Of course, Biden did also say he traveled over the bridge by car, so his original claim wasn’t completely inaccurate.
Graham raged at more Trump fact-checking in an April 3 post:
On April Fools Day, [New York Times podcast] host Michael Barbaro brought on Times political reporter Jim Rutenberg to discuss “Ronna McDaniel, TV News, and the Trump Problem.” Rutenberg should be best known for his infamous 2016 front-page editorial announcing objectivity was officially going in the trash can (as if it was vibrantly observed before).
Rutenberg described the Trump Problem: “If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?”
Rutenberg proclaimed the “objective” media must now be “oppositional.” Then The Times unfurled the arrogant motto “Truth. It’s More Important Now Than Ever,” and put it on T-shirts.
This created another “Trump problem.” The Republican half of the country would dismiss them as Democrat messengers (if they weren’t dismissed before).
Republican listeners could break out a middle-fingers salute at the end of this podcast. They discussed how temporary CNN boss Chris Licht thought CNN “put on a jersey, took a side,” which they obviously did.
But Graham didn’t dispute the accuracy of anything Rutenberg said — he simply rebranded any criticism of Trump, no matter how factual, as “liberal” without evidence to back that up. (Also, we don’t recall Graham ever complaining how Fox News put on a jersey and takes a side.) He then played whataboutism by whining about Hunter Biden’s laptop and effectively denying that Trump was lying about election fraud:
They seize on Trump’s election denial as if it’s the only issue. Both shows never touched on the Hunter Biden laptop or any other issue where the media suppressed true facts. NPR executive Terence Samuel infamously said “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.” It was a “pure distraction.” Then The Times and other liberal outlets acknowledged the laptop was real…in 2022.
This never came up because both shows failed to include any conservative guests. Because when you’re for the “true facts,” why should the “lying” side get any airtime on tax-funded radio?
When the non-conservative side gets space at NewsBusters to rebut its partisan attacks, then Graham might have a basis for criticism.
In an April 21 post, Graham declared that Trump’s falsehoods are merely “opinion” and, thus, cannot be fact-checked:
CNN’s resident “fact checker” Daniel Dale usually shows his face on air when CNN wants to attack Donald Trump. On Thursday’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, Dale confessed that Trump’s statements during jury selection were mostly just opinion, but he mocked the “false conspiracy theory” that President Biden had something to do with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s prosecution, even though an Associate Attorney General [Matthew Colangelo] joined Bragg’s team.
[…]At least CNN is mentioning Colangelo in passing. If this were a Trump Justice Department official arriving on a Biden prosecution, it would be a major scandal of partisanship. CNN would be aggressively digging for anonymous insiders to decry this plot.
Again, Graham offered no evidence to back up Trump’s bogus conspiracy — correlation doesn’t equal causation after all. He then weirdly bashed Dale as a “Canadian Trump-basher,” as if his nationality has any relevance whatsoever to his job and only real Americans are allowed to fact-check others.