News/Commentary

‘What a strange world’: Snopes under fire from the LEFT over Trump fact-check

December 4, 2023 | | Print Article

Quick! See if Satan is snowboarding, because Snopes just fact-checked a Biden campaign video and liberals are setting them on fire for it.

Snopes has long been blasted by conservatives for its commitment to pushing whatever narrative progressives construct at the expense of actual journalism, so to see the group come to the defense of none other than former President Donald Trump is an event worth noting.

On Saturday, the Biden-Harris HQ account — the “official digital rapid response channel of the Biden-Harris campaign” — dropped on X a video that it claimed showed Trump admitting at a December 2 campaign stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that “We’ve been waging an all-out war on American democracy.”

The MeidasTouch Network (MTN), named after a liberal American political action committee formed in 2020 with the express purpose of stopping Trump from being re-elected, also circulated the clip, declaring in all caps, “TRUMP CONFESSES.”

Combined, the posts have been viewed more than 2 million times.

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But, according to Snopes, Trump never uttered those words.

“Neither the audio recording nor the context of Trump’s remark supports the claim that he said ‘We’ve been waging an all-out war on American democracy,'” the group determined.

“To our ears, Trump unambiguously said, ‘we’ve been waging all-out war in American democracy’ (and CSPAN’s transcript reflects the same),” Snopes states. “We did not hear, nor does the context support the claim that he said, ‘waging all-out war on American democracy.'”

“It’s clear that Trump was out to accuse his political opponents of waging war on democracy,” according to Snopes, “not admitting to doing it himself.”

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The website provided Trump’s full statement “drawn from CSPAN’s video recording of the event,” highlighting the phrase in question:

For decades, you watched as a corrupt political class in our nation’s capitol looted your money, trampled on your dignity and pushed their radical agenda into every aspect of your lives. You know it very well. But in 2016, you voted to stand up to those liars, losers, crooks and creeps, and you elected an outsider as your president. And it was about America first. We want to put our country first. They haven’t done that in a long time, but we did it for four years and that’s why we did so well. That’s why it was one of the great presidencies, they say. Even the opponents sometimes say that he did very well, I have to say, “Take it back,” his people scream. His people say “Take it back.” From that day on our opponents, and we had a lot of opponents, but we’ve been waging an all-out war in American democracy. You look at what they’ve been doing, and becoming more and more extreme and repressive. They have just waged an all-out war with each passing day.

 

It was enough to make liberals scream.

“1. This is an absolutely absurd choice to make in terms of something to fact check,” fumed liberal journalist Aaron Rupar. “2. Regardless of what Trump said in this instance the fact is he has been waging an all out war on American democracy.”

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In other words, Rupar is big mad at Snopes for telling the truth.

“This is very embarrassing for Snopes — and they should delete it,” stated the MeidasTouch Network.

And Keith Olberman, the poster child for nonsensical rants, called the Snopes fact-check a “failure.”

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“Your failure here is underscored by the simple word ‘in,'” he informed Snopes. “Even in Trump’s dysfunctional mind, what was this sentence SUPPOSED to mean? ‘we’ve been waging an all-out war IN American democracy’ ‘In’ would render the sentence nonsensical. Even for him.”

“Delete,” Olberman urged Snopes, “or fold.”

“I find it funny that the Left is now trying to set Snopes on fire,” wrote one user on X. “For years they’ve been using Snopes as a bellwether and now they’re embarrassed Snopes exists.

“What a strange world we live in.”

Melissa Fine
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