One of the odder features of American journalism is that the columnists who hold themselves out as “fact checkers” and review claims made by politicians — calling balls, strikes, and “pinocchios” — are unusually terrible at it.
Fact checkers offered up several botched reviews of content from the Democratic National Convention, but nothing has broken their brains like Democrats’ sustained attacks on Donald Trump over Republicans’ anti-abortion agenda, which is laid out in gory detail in conservatives’ Project 2025 policy roadmap.
The former president has actively attempted to run away from Project 2025, because the policy goals laid out in the 887-page blueprint are deeply unpopular. Trump has claimed, “I know nothing about Project 2025, [and] I have no idea who is behind it.” On Thursday, he again claimed to “HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH” it.
It’s an absurd claim: The policy manual was written in large part by former top Trump administration officials — and when he spoke at a 2022 event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025, Trump said: “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
As Rolling Stone has reported, sources say that Trump has been directly briefed by confidants and close aides on Project 2025’s substance and progress. Top officials involved with the project are expected to have senior roles in a Trump administration.
Instead of fact checking Trump’s clearly false claim that he knows nothing about Project 2025, fact checkers have decided they — and everyone else — must simply take him at his word. Further, Democrats must be punished for tying Trump to its unpopular policy proposals.
The Poynter Institute’s Politifact already beclowned itself earlier in the week by declaring it was unfair of the DNC to broadcast a video of Trump from 2016 saying “there has to be some form of punishment” for people who have abortions, because he “walked back the comment.”
On Thursday, Politifact’s staff reviewed Vice President Kamala Harris’ claim that Trump “plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.”
Politifact deemed Harris’ claim “mostly false” because Project 2025 “isn’t Trump’s plan,” adding that “Trump and his campaign have repeatedly said they were not involved in the project and Trump is not listed as an author, editor, or contributor.”
It’s hard to say how inappropriate this is, but things quickly got worse.
“Project 2025 doesn’t mention a ‘national anti-abortion coordinator.’ The document calls for a ‘pro-life politically appointed Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families,’” Politifact wrote. “It says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s abortion surveillance and maternal mortality reporting systems are inadequate and proposes withholding federal money from states that don’t report to the CDC how many abortions take place in their states.”
These are virtually the same things.
The article also pans Harris’ supposedly “predictive” claim that Trump wants to “enact a nationwide abortion ban,” noting that “Trump said this year he would not sign a national ban.” This is true — but shortly before the former president announced that abortion should be a state issue, he openly mulled endorsing a national abortion ban.
It’s obviously worth considering, too, that Trump appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices whose votes were essential to overturning Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortion — an accomplishment he openly brags about.
Politifact concludes that Harris “exaggerates Trump’s abortion agenda by tying him to Project 2025 ‘allies.’”
Is it really a journalist’s job to declare with certainty that the issue position Trump has settled on, as a matter of politics, is exactly what he would do as president? Absolutely not. It’s even more irresponsible coming from pundits holding themselves out as “fact checkers.”
If that is indeed their job, they should throw in the towel.
