Mission accomplished.
That plaudit goes to Washington Post “Fact Checker” Glenn Kessler, who has been keeping a running log of “false and misleading statements” made by the president during Donald Trump’s four years in the White House.
Last Wednesday, Kessler published the final tally in a self-congratulatory column headlined “In four years, President Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims.” The piece even includes an interactive graph that enables fellow Trump haters to track the former president’s lies along several dimensions — including “cumulative,” “daily,” and “monthly” — as well as by topic.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
A jubilant Kessler also tweeted that he “never would have believed this total was possible when we started four years ago.”
The final count. Never would have believed this number was possible when we started four years ago. https://t.co/rZaAOI0gjd pic.twitter.com/2eCUxwtmSo
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) January 20, 2021
So what’s next for Kessler and his “truth team”? Well … er — nothing. Trump is out, so what more is there to do or say? If you’re thinking they could always set their bean counter back to zero and start all over again for Joe Biden, be advised that that project is not in the works. According to the Daily Caller’s Shelby Talcott, the Post “does ‘not have plans to launch a Biden database at this time,’”.
They didn’t have one for Barack Obama, and there wouldn’t have been one for Hillary Clinton if she had won in 2016, Tim Graham of NewsBusters adds. “In terms of fact checking,” Graham quotes Kessler as having told Jordan Klepper of Comedy Central “Hillary Clinton is like playing chess with a real pro. Fact-checking Donald Trump is like playing checkers with someone that’s not very good at it,” he added, laughing. “It’s pretty boring.”
Is it any wonder, trust in journalism has hit an all-time low?
