(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The “Fake News Awards” announced on the Republican National Committee website and touted by President Trump pose a conundrum: Does it really count if the news organization admits error?
Regular readers of The Fact Checker know that we do not award Pinocchios if a politician admits error. Everyone makes mistakes — and the point is not to play gotcha. News organizations operate in a competitive arena and mistakes are bound to be made. The key test is whether an error is acknowledged and corrected.
President Trump almost never admits error, even as he has made more than 2,000 false or misleading statements. So with that context, here’s an assessment of the “awards”:
“1. The New York Times’ Paul Krugman claimed on the day of President Trump’s historic, landslide victory that the economy would never recover.”
Krugman, of course, is a columnist. So it’s a bit odd to feature an opinion as fake news when it’s not really news, just opinion. (We don’t fact-check opinions at The Fact Checker.) Krugman wrote: “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened.”
Clearly that prediction has not happened. So Krugman looks like he has egg on his face. But it turns out he retracted the prediction just three days later. “It’s at least possible that bigger budget deficits will, if anything, strengthen the economy briefly,” he wrote.
“2. ABC News’ Brian Ross CHOKES and sends markets in a downward spiral with false report.”
Ross got his timeline wrong, claiming that former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had just pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, was expected to testify that Trump was a candidate when he instructed Flynn to contact Russian officials. Big mistake — but ABC News corrected the error, and Ross was suspended for the “serious mistake.”
“3. CNN FALSELY reported that candidate Donald Trump and his son Donald J. Trump, Jr. had access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks.”
Here’s a case where other news organizations — The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and NBC News — quickly reported that CNN had gotten it wrong. It turned out that the sender of the email in question was notifying the Trumps of already public documents.
“The new details appear to show that the sender was relying on publicly available information,” CNN admitted. “The new information indicates that the communication is less significant than CNN initially reported.”
“4. TIME FALSELY reported that President Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Oval Office.”
This is is reference to a tweet by a reporter — which was quickly corrected. Do tweets really count as “news”? This did not appear as a news article — and the correction came less than an hour after the original tweet.
“5. Washington Post FALSELY reported the President’s massive sold-out rally in Pensacola, Florida was empty. Dishonest reporter showed picture of empty arena HOURS before crowd started pouring in.”
Again, another tweet. Again, quickly corrected, within minutes. This also did not result in a news article, except to say that the reporter apologized for the mistake.
“6. CNN FALSELY edited a video to make it appear President Trump defiantly overfed fish during a visit with the Japanese prime minister. Japanese prime minister actually led the way with the feeding.”
Again, this started as a tweet — of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Trump tossing spoonfuls of fish food into a koi pond. What went viral was a clip of Trump appearing to quickly pour his entire box of food into the pond. But then it turned out that Abe went first. It could have just been a matter of how the video feeds were released to reporters. The CNN report noted: “The move got Trump some laughs, and a smile from Abe, who actually appeared to dump out his box of food ahead of Trump.”
“7. CNN FALSELY reported about Anthony Scaramucci’s meeting with a Russian, but retracted it due to a ‘significant breakdown in process.’”
Another case when a reporting mistake led to consequences: CNN issued a correction and three employees, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, were forced out. (The RNC includes a headline about the reporters resigning.)
“8. Newsweek FALSELY reported that Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda did not shake President Trump’s hand.”
Newsweek based its report on a brief clip of the meeting, in which Kornhauser-Duda appear to walk past Trump’s outstretched hand to shake Melania Trump’s hand. When the extended clip was released, showing she then shook Trump’s hand, Newsweek corrected the story. (Vanity Fair, by the way, made the same error.)
“9. CNN FALSELY reported that former FBI Director James Comey would dispute President Trump’s claim that he was told he is not under investigation.”
Yep, CNN got this story wrong. It was also corrected once CNN realized its mistake: “The article and headline have been corrected to reflect that Comey does not directly dispute that Trump was told multiple times he was not under investigation in his prepared testimony released after this story was published.”
“10. The New York Times FALSELY claimed on the front page that the Trump administration had hidden a climate report.”
This was certainly a screw-up, as the report had been publicly available for seven months. The error was only half-heartedly acknowledged by the Times, which added a correction and this line: The report “was uploaded to a nonprofit internet digital library in January but received little attention until it was published by The New York Times.” But that was not entirely correct either, as The Washington Post had written about it months earlier — just not on the front page.
“11. And last, but not least: “RUSSIA COLLUSION!” Russian collusion is perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people. THERE IS NO COLLUSION!”
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, appointed by the Trump administration, continues his investigation, as do congressional committees led by Republicans.
The Bottom Line
To sum up, at least eight of the “Fake News” winners resulted in corrections, with two reports prompting suspensions or resignations. Two of the winners were simply tweets that were quickly corrected and never resulted in news articles. One was an opinion article in which the author later retracted his prediction.
Let’s it put it this way: If the president admitted error as frequently, he would earn far fewer Pinocchios.
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Bitter divisions in both parties threatened Wednesday to derail Congress’s effort to keep the federal government fully operating past the end of the week.
The shutdown threat emerged on two fronts: Republican defense hawks in the House said a short-term spending plan the party introduced late Tuesday did not devote enough money to the military.
Meanwhile, Democrats, whose support would be critical for passage in the Senate, began lining up in opposition amid pressure from immigration activists to use the budget talks as leverage to legalize many young immigrants known as “dreamers.”
By Wednesday evening, the short-term bill was on the cusp of failure.
The Capitol Hill showdown reflected a broader clash certain to dominate national politics in the months leading up to November’s midterm elections. President Trump and congressional Republicans are determined to fulfill the campaign promises that swept them to power in 2016, including boosting military spending and scaling back immigration. Democrats have been emboldened by Trump’s unpopularity and a surge of grass-roots activism to resist at every turn.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), flanked by other GOP senators, talks to reporters at the Capitol. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Absent an accord, federal agencies would cease nonessential activities and furlough hundreds of thousands of employees at midnight Friday evening — the first shutdown since 2013, when GOP opposition to the Affordable Care Act sparked a 16-day standoff.
House Republicans unveiled a bill Tuesday that would extend funding for four weeks, allowing time for further negotiations toward deals on long-term spending and immigration. To entice Democrats, GOP leaders attached a six-year extension of the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, as well as the delay of two unpopular health-care taxes.
But few, if any, Democrats have been swayed by the overture. House Democratic leaders urged their caucus to withhold their votes, forcing Republicans to produce their own majority. And most Senate Democrats, whose votes are necessary to pass, bristled at the strategy.
“I think there’s a lot of reluctance to take what Republicans throw at us without any negotiation,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who remained undecided on the bill. “I mean, what’s amazing to us is, we’re 48 hours from a shutdown, and Republicans aren’t willing to engage in a good-faith negotiation with Democrats.”
At the same time, Democrats were far from unified. While some promised to oppose the funding measure, others were reluctant to shut down the government. “I don’t think there’s consensus,” Murphy said.
Republicans, meanwhile, laid the groundwork to blame a shutdown on Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) noted Democrats have called for a renewal of the children’s health program and said, “We have a good chance of passing it.” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said it was “baffling” and “unconscionable” that Democrats would vote against the bill.
“Good-faith negotiations are underway, and to push that aside and try and jeopardize funding for things like [children’s health insurance] and our military, to me, makes no sense,” Ryan said.
Democrats have sought to bargain over a litany of policy matters, including funding to counter opioid abuse and protections for failing pension plans.
The most explosive issue, however, remained the fate of the roughly 690,000 young immigrants who enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program under President Barack Obama’s administration to avoid deportation, as well as other “dreamers” who were brought to the United States as children.
Trump has announced plans to end the DACA program in March, forcing high-stakes negotiations over a legislative fix. Democrats have insisted that those talks be combined with the debate over a long-term spending accord, which has placed immigration policy at the center of the shutdown drama.
As House Republican leaders worked to avoid a shutdown, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly made the rounds on Capitol Hill, meeting with members of groups including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who are pushing for a DACA fix, and the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, who want border security funding and tighter immigration policies.
After exiting a bipartisan meeting of top congressional leaders, Kelly gave an upbeat assessment of the immigration talks while offering no timetable for when an agreement might be reached.
“The DACA deal will be worked out, I think, by the United States Congress,” he told reporters. “Both sides of the aisle have agreed to meet in a smaller group and come up with [what] they think is the best DACA deal, and then it’ll of course be presented to the president.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters Wednesday that an “overwhelming number” of Senate Democrats were opposed to another short-term funding bill without an accord on immigration.
“They believe if we kick the can down the road this time, we’ll be back where we started from next time, so there’s very, very strong support not to go along with their deal,” he said.
Several Democratic senators who voted for a similar bill in December, giving Republicans enough votes to avert a pre-Christmas shutdown, announced on Wednesday that they would not support another patch.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said he was “not willing to leave these bipartisan priorities behind and vote for a bill that gives President Trump and congressional Republicans more time to hold the country hostage.”
At least one Senate Republican, Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina, further complicated the GOP outlook, saying he, too, would oppose the bill. Sen. John McCain’s (Ariz.) absence because of cancer treatment left only 49 potential Republican votes for the bill, and two of those, Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.), voted against previous similar measures.
“I’m tired of it,” said Graham, who crafted a bipartisan DACA proposal that Trump rejected last week. “This is the fourth one we’ve done, and you’re killing the military.”
Passage in the Senate requires 60 votes, but defections among Democrats had pushed the GOP to the edge.
House GOP leaders hoped to hold a vote on the spending bill Thursday but faced a potential revolt from Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee, who have bristled at the delay in an agreement boosting military funding, and conservative hard-liners, who want to take a tough line with Democrats on immigration and other issues.
“The only way they’re going to be taking the deal that we’re offering . . . is if they’re forced to, and no one has the courage to force them to,” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus.
The chances that a shutdown would come to pass increasingly rested on a small group of moderate Senate Democrats, who are being forced to choose between their party’s efforts to secure immigration and funding priorities and their desires to keep agencies open while talks continue.
They are under intense pressure from liberal activists and advocates for immigrants, who are pushing Democrats to stand up to Trump and Republicans — particularly on behalf of dreamers, who could be at risk for deportation under Trump’s policies.
Angel Padilla, policy director for Indivisible, a network of liberal citizen groups, said the organization’s 6,000 chapters nationwide are focused this week on pressuring Democrats to vote against the next spending plan.
“This is a much bigger issue after what happened last week,” Padilla said, referring to reports that Trump called African nations, El Salvador and Haiti “shithole countries.”
“We don’t understand why a Democrat would go along, given what happened last week,” he added. “Sometimes it’s a hard vote, but sometimes you have to do this.”
The clash has posed an intense quandary for Schumer, whose instinct has long been to protect the more moderate members of his caucus from political peril in an election year. But the bigger risk could be alienating his party’s liberal base.
Inside the Democrats’ lunch Wednesday, according to a person not authorized to speak publicly about it, Schumer laid out the state of negotiations and asked senators to relay to him how they were leaning. There was frustration, the person said, that they have not been able to force Republicans to negotiate on the bill, but it remains unclear whether 41 Democrats would be willing to force a shutdown.
“Chuck has been very clear on this: He knows that each senator is going through a thought process about where they want to end up, how they would explain their vote, what their position is going to be, and he’s given lots of room to members to make decisions,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the assistant party leader, after emerging from the lunch. That said, he added, “No one stood up and said they had to vote for this thing.”
Brian Fallon, a former Schumer aide who is now a senior adviser to Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC, said Democrats’ power to force a deal might never be greater than it is now — with bipartisan priorities stalled and a president seemingly under siege. “I think that moderates who remain skittish here don’t realize the amount of leverage they have,” he said.
The bigger risk, Fallon said, would be punting again on an immigration deal and alienating key partners in the Democratic coalition: “I think the activists are asking a fair question when they ask, ‘If not now, when?’ ”
Eighteen Senate Democrats voted for the last temporary spending bill.
Now that group is under exponentially more pressure, and there are signs at least some could buckle.
“I think it’s a bad proposal, I’ll just tell you that, and it has nothing to do with DACA; it’s a bad proposal,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who voted for the December bill, “It doesn’t push us in the direction we need to go.”
Read more at PowerPost
