For a policy reporter -- or an engaged citizen with a reasonably sensitive BS detector -- watching presidential debates can be strenuous mental exercise. Falsehoods, exaggerations and arguments so flawed that, as one of Marco Rubio’s philosophy majors might put it, they are “not even wrong,” fly by so quickly that if you react to them all, it’s like trying to watch the debate in a house with a malfunctioning fire alarm.
For example, if you hear Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul complaining about the how the Federal Reserve’s post-recession policy has “destroyed” the value of the U.S. dollar and stop to do a quick Google search revealing that, wait a minute, that’s just objectively untrue, you lose precious moments.
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By the time you turn your focus back to the debate, you don’t know what you’ve missed, and then suddenly there’s Jeb Bush, claiming that the banking industry’s capital requirements have fallen because of the Dodd-Frank Act. Back to Google to discover that, no, in fact they’ve done exactly the opposite.
At that point, though, they’ve moved on to stories about Vladimir Putin being in one place when he was actually on a different continent, and untruths about the relative incomes of welders and philosophy majors.
No sane person could keep this up for more than two hours without plunging into existential despair, so most of us just make mental notes to go back and check on some of the more egregious whoppers later.
However, some go further than others, and the morning after the fourth GOP debate produced a solid crop of strong fact-checks from various sources. Here are five of the best.
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* After a night when federal financial regulators came under more intense fire than usual, Mike Konczal at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute identified six problems the GOP candidates had in their arguments about financial services reform. In addition to Bush’s struggle with the realities of bank capital, he identifies mistakes about the source of the financial crisis, the actual role of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and more.
* Over at The Washington Post, Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee ding Rubio for the welders claim, hit Carson for claims about the minimum wage and unemployment levels, and much, much more.
* The fact-checking shop at Politifact, unsurprisingly, was working overtime Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, identifying truth-shading on various topics and a few outright whoppers, including statements about U.S. trade with China and the Syrian refugee crisis.
* The Associated Press produced a curated list of fibs, exaggerations and weirdness, including several misleading claims about the economy from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, an outright falsehood about Obamacare from former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson’s inexplicable claim that the Chinese have troops in Syria.
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* And of course, as in any modern debate, there was the real-time fact-checking that goes on via social media. Over at Forbes, Corinne Jurney gathered a sampling of face-palms, snark, and outrage.
Cheer up everyone, the election is only a year away.
* And of course, as in any modern debate, there was the real-time fact-checking that goes on via social media. Over at Forbes, Corinne Jurney gathered a sampling of face-palms, snark, and outrage.
Cheer up everyone, the election is only a year away.
