Tag: Republican lies

The Fact Checker’s crash course for the 2018 elections

NOTE:  CLF, the Paul Ryan aligned super PAC has been busy with nasty ads in Minnesota, too.  With multiple ads in CD3, among other CDs. We’ve noted they’re false and provided information on this group before.  Here’s what a journalist charged with fact checking has to say about their style of ads.


A super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan produced six ads in tight house races that are littered with falsehoods. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

All 47 of our fact checks that dealt with candidates or campaign ads in 2018 are now in one place — right here.

Yes, it’s a wonder we still have time to fact-check politicians not named Donald Trump, he of the 6,420 false or misleading claims. But it’s not just the president who is flooding the airwaves with misinformation. The 2018 campaign season has featured a bunch of Trump-like TV ads, nativist rhetoric and scurrilous statistics from candidates, super PACs and other groups.

Of the 47 fact checks, 21 received Four Pinocchios. Twelve got Three Pinocchios, and seven got Two Pinocchios. We threw in two fact checks that got One Pinocchio and five with no ratings.

View the complete November 5 article by Salvador Rizzo on the Washington Post website here.

Karin Housley twists Tina Smith’s finances to allege profits from big pharma

In a recent Minnesota Republican ad for U.S. Senate, a man and woman clink flutes of champagne on the beach as text rolls across the screen: “Tina Smith loves the good life.”

Smith is defending her U.S. Senate seat on Nov. 6. She was appointed to the position earlier this year after fellow Democrat Al Franken stepped down following sexual misconduct allegations.

The “good life” ad comes from Smith’s Republican challenger, state Sen. Karin Housley, and the text on screen quickly departs from the beach scene’s serenity.

View the complete October 31 article by Kyra Haas on the PolitiFact.com website here.

Paulsen’s Lies Not Limited to TV: Debunked Claims Hit Mailboxes Too

A dark secret: Paulsen and his special interest patrons are waging a disinformation campaign in MN03 mailboxes

EXCELSIOR, MN – Congressman Erik Paulsen’s coordinated negative television campaign has earned him unprecedented scrutiny from local fact checkers, but another tactic has earned him less scrutiny, with dozens of special interest-funded mailers containing the same objectively false claims landing in mailboxes across the Third District.

“Voters in Minnesota’s Third District have been subjected to a barrage of objectively false claims on TV and in their mailboxes thanks to Erik Paulsen and his special interest funders,” said Zach Rodvold, campaign manager for Phillips for Congress. “The pieces are too numerous to track, and have no regard for fact or truth — oftentimes coming from dark money groups who operate with no transparency. Congressman Paulsen and his special interest patrons have shown an unrelenting commitment to buying this election, and embracing Donald Trump’s propensity for lies and personal slander on the campaign trail as much as they have his policies in Washington.”

Congressman Paulsen has raised over $2.7 million from PACs – the fourth most of anyone in Congress – and used the money to run an unprecedentedly negative campaign that has been called inappropriate, reckless, false, distorted, not even in the same time zone as truth, extremely misleading, just plain false, and wildly out of context by independent journalists, community leaders, sexual harassment survivors, and Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike. While the TV ads have been the subject of scrutiny by independent fact checkers, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of deceptive direct mail has gone unnoticed.

Here are just some of the outrageous claims being delivered to mailboxes across the district:

Continue reading “Paulsen’s Lies Not Limited to TV: Debunked Claims Hit Mailboxes Too”

NRCC Lies, Again, in Ad Titled “All True”

Credit: Fibonacci Blue

Excelsior, MN – Erik Paulsen and the special interest PACs and outside groups bankrolling his campaign are continuing to run a dishonest campaign, seeking to distract attention from Paulsen’s voting record on healthcare, taxes, and gun violence prevention that are deeply unpopular in his district. A new ad released today by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), ironically titled “All True,”  continues this well-coordinated disinformation campaign.

The latest ad repeats a debunked attack on healthcare benefits at Penny’s Coffee, which has been debunked as false and misleading by local TV stations, and was called mostly false, distorted, and out of context by Politifact just this week. The ad also repeats the false claim that Phillips sought to profit off a marketing campaign that was the subject of a complaint filed by a private citizen. Phillips challenged this claim in a letter to the FTC earlier this week, citing that the complaint was filed by a private citizen to an industry group two years after he had stepped down from his position as CEO of Phillips Distilling and had no financial stake in the company.

A stinging report by Politico, released today, outlines Republicans’ coordinated effort to buy seats with attack ads full of lies and distortions in districts like MN03: Continue reading “NRCC Lies, Again, in Ad Titled “All True””

The repeated, incorrect claim that Russia obtained ‘20 percent of our uranium’

The following article by Glenn Kessler was posted on the Washington Post website October 31, 2017:

The United States lost nowhere near 20 percent of its uranium supply as a result of the Rostom-Uranium One deal. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

“How is it that our government could approve a sale of 20 percent of our uranium at the same time that there was an open FBI investigation?”
— Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), interview with Fox News’s Neil Cavuto, Oct. 26, 2017

“Knowing what you know about Russia, was it really a good idea for the Obama administration and the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to approve a deal giving the Russians control of 20 percent of our uranium supply? . . . Why did Hillary’s office and the Obama administration sign off on giving the Russians a fifth of our uranium? . . . Why is that a good idea to give a hostile power 20 percent of our uranium supplies? It’s insane though. . . . How would Hillary Clinton not know if a Russian company was getting 20 percent of our uranium supply? What was she doing?”
— Tucker Carlson, on Fox’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Oct. 23 Continue reading “The repeated, incorrect claim that Russia obtained ‘20 percent of our uranium’”

It’s Not Just Trump: Republicans Constantly Lying About Health Care Means Reporters Face A Growing Challenge

The following article by Eric Boehlert was posted on the Media Matters website May 14, 2017:

As the Beltway press scrambles to keep pace with the White House’s shifting explanations as to why President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey — explanations that seem built on a laundry list of daily deceptions — journalists are now fighting a multiple-front war versus the Republican crusade to embrace fabrications as a rule.

The erratic new president has unleashed a torrent of lies in the place of public policy discussion, but the serial mendacity on the right is hardly limited to Trump. That means journalists face a growing challenge in trying to ferret out the facts. Continue reading “It’s Not Just Trump: Republicans Constantly Lying About Health Care Means Reporters Face A Growing Challenge”