With both party conventions now in the books, so too are PolitiFact’s nightly recaps. After four days of the RNC and the DNC, PBS’s new fact-checking partner, gave Republicans three times as many false ratings while giving Democrats three times as many true ratings.
Throughout the RNC, PolitiFact awarded two true ratings, one mostly true, eight half trues, eight mostly falses, 16 falses, and one pants on fire. That is eight percent on the right side of the truth-o-meter, 70 percent on the wrong side, and 22 in the middle.
During the DNC, PolitiFact handed out seven true ratings, four mostly trues, ten half trues, six falses, two falses, and zero pants on fires. That is 38 percent on the green side, 28 on the red side, and 34 in the yellow.
The difference was even starker when it came to Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. PolitiFact slapped Trump with one pants on fire, 16 falses, eight mostly falses, eight half trues, and only one mostly true. Harris, by contrast, got one true, one half true, and one mostly false. That is 89 percent false for Trump and 33 percent for Harris.
It is a common retort to say Trump or Republicans are labeled false more often because they deserve it. However, when Harris falsely claimed, “The United States Supreme Court just ruled he would be immune from criminal prosecution," PolitiFact did not give her a false or even mostly false rating despite quoting the Court ruling that, “There is no immunity for unofficial acts."
Also on Thursday, PolitiFact gave JD Vance a false rating for claiming “Kamala Harris wants to give $25,000 to illegal aliens to buy American homes” because “At PolitiFact, the burden of proof is on the speaker. Having seen no specific details from Vance’s team that demonstrate Harris’ proposal would benefit immigrants in the country illegally, we rate his claim False.”
However, when Harris claimed Trump “and his allies would limit access to birth control, ban medication abortion and enact a nationwide abortion ban, with or without Congress,” PolitiFact again declined to hand out a false rating despite writing several words that suggested Harris was spinning and fearmongering about birth control and Trump’s federalist abortion stance.
If those two examples were given the false labels they deserved, Harris’s percentage of false claims would have nearly doubled to 60 percent, which is quite a different headline than 33.
