In a surprising turn, PolitiFact hit White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki with a “false” rating for her claim that “no economist out there is projecting that [Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill] will have a negative impact on inflation.”
Read that again. According to Politifact — the left-leaning “fact-checking” website which usually bends truth to the breaking point to promote liberal claims — Jen Psaki is officially a liar. This is particularly interesting given that PolitiFact has been seen time and again to ignore truth while (1) making false claims about conservatives, and (2) decrying as “false” negative claims about liberals that turned out to be obviously true.
For instance, in 2008, PolitiFact rated Barack Obama’s clearly fraudulent claim that “if you’ve got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it” as true. To be fair to them, though, they changed that in 2013, calling it the “Lie of the Year.” Of course, they neglected to mention in their 2013 assessment that they had rated the “Lie of the Year” as true in 2008.
Besides that one glaring example, PolitiFact has such a record of lying to make conservatives look bad and liberals look good that it has spawned an entire genre of websites, YouTube channels, and articles. Examples are legion. In the era before Donald Trump, PolitiFact was at least clever in its lies, rating as “mostly true” or “mostly false” statements that were clearly one way or the other. Hint: If a Democrat said it, it was rated “true” or “mostly true” while statements from Republicans were rated “false” or “mostly false.”
Since its inception, PolitFact has been about as reliable as Snopes.
Donald Trump changed that. PolitiFact left clever and plausible deniability behind, granting ratings that were clearly, obviously, and verifiably bogus. In a great article on the subject, Dan Bongino wrote in 2019:
In the past I’ve argued that Politifact is at least clever with their bias, often choosing to simply fact check more Republican or conservative statements than liberal ones to give the impression that those on the right are making falsehoods more often. Of course, there have been times when they’ve slipped up, fact-checking nearly identical claims from Republicans and Democrats and rating the former false, and latter true.
Bongino then goes on to address a PolitiFact rating that found that Democrat presidential candidates want to give illegal immigrants free healthcare as “false” despite the simple reality that anyone could easily do a quick YouTube search and hear those Democrats actually saying exactly that.
In the advent of the Biden administration, PolitiFact has continued to run around behind Biden and company with a roll of toilet paper, doing their level best to clean up behind lying Democrats. As of this writing, PolitiFact has “fact-checked” statements about Jen Psaki 110 times while this is the first time the site has “fact-checked” Jen Psaki herself.
In a press briefing on November 15, Psaki sought to defend her boss’s dangerous plan to dump $1.75 trillion in made-up money into the economy to “Build Back Better.” Given that her job description is to lie and spin for the Biden administration, she looked the press pool in the eyes and lied boldly. She was asked, “Why should Americans not be concerned that injecting another $1.75 trillion or more would further raise inflation?” She answered:
Because no economist out there is projecting that this will have a negative impact on inflation. And actually, what it will help do is it will help increase economic productivity. It will help economic growth in this country. That, and the Build Back Better Agenda will help reduce inflation, will help cut costs for the American people over the long term.
By what may have been a miracle of God, her pants somehow did not burst into flames of judgment.
But while her pants may have ignored the lie, human beings — even those as far to the left as the folks over at PolitiFact — did not. Her lie was so egregious, so blatant, so obvious, that it was almost laughable. For as PolitiFact stated in its article assigning a “false” rating to her claim:
Is it really true that there’s not a single economist who thinks the bill will boost inflation? No.
Many economists have stated for the record that they think the inflationary impact of the bill will be small and brief. But we found lots of economists who say they expect modest inflationary pressure, at least initially.
PolitFact went on to cite several of those economists Psaki claims don’t exist. One was Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum. His statement on the inflationary likelihood of Biden’s plan was short and to the point. “I’m an economist, and I disagree.” He added, “If you cut taxes and increase spending, financed by debt, that will put upward pressure on inflation.”
So, after getting away with a litany of lies that would make anyone with a conscience blush, Psaki has officially been labeled as a liar by PolitiFact. And — since this is her first and (so far) only fact-check by the site — her rating as of this writing is 100 percent false. That is several times worse than the site rates Donald Trump. Of the nearly 1,000 statements by President Trump that PolitiFact has “fact-checked,” 23 percent were rated at least “half true.” Another 20 percent were rated “mostly false.”
Of course, since the folks at PolitiFact get to cherry-pick what they “fact-check,” they can ignore anything they want to. If more Trump statements had been checked (and checked honestly), his rating would certainly be higher on the “true” side. Conversely, since after almost a year at her post, this is the first time Psaki has had the pleasure of a PolitiFact “fact-check” being aimed at her, the 100 percent “false” rating does not carry much weight — except that it should serve to embarrass her.
In her nine-month tenure in that office, Kayleigh McEnany racked up 33 “fact-checks” by the site. But until now, PolitiFcat has ignored Psaki and her many outright lies. So, why the sudden change? Why did the site choose this particular lie to brand Psaki as a liar? Could it be because the Biden administration’s approval rating is falling at near terminal velocity in recent polls? Whatever the reason, Psaki has — at least for now — the lowest truth rating possible.
