Fact-Checkers Don’t Know What To Make Of Hillary’s ‘Open Borders’ Claim

Posted By Michael Bastasch On 12:01 PM 10/20/2016 In | No Comments

Reporters fact-checking Wednesday night’s presidential debate didn’t exactly know how to rate Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s claim that her previous remarks about “open borders” referred to a common market for green energy, not immigration.

Fox News host and debate moderator Chris Wallace asked Clinton about remarks she made in a paid speech to a Brazilian bank in 2013 where she said her “dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.”

“Well, if you went on to read the rest of the sentence, I was talking about energy,” Clinton responded.

Fact-checkers weren’t so sure since the Clinton campaign has not released the full transcript of the speech, which she was paid $225,000 to give. A portion of the speech transcript was released by WikiLeaks.

“You know, we trade more energy with our neighbors then we trade with rest of the world combined and I do want us to have an electric grid, an energy system that crosses borders, I think I would be a great benefit to us,” Clinton responded to Wallace.

Clinton’s own campaign flagged the speech excerpt as concerning since it painted the former secretary of state as “pro trade,” according to emails hacked from campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account.

“Fact-checks have debated what exactly this means. While Clinton’s campaign says it’s about energy, reasonable people have disagreed,” NRP reporter Danielle Kurtzleben wrote of Clinton’s response.

“PolitiFact cited people who said they believed it referred to both trade and immigration,” she wrote. “FactCheck.org, meanwhile, believed it ‘was related to trade, not immigration.’ However one interprets this, it is also true that Clinton has not called for ‘open borders’ as a policy during this campaign.”

PolitiFact rated Republican nominee Donald Trump’s claim that Clinton was for open borders as “mostly false,” but then noted they “can’t fully evaluate her remarks to a bank because we don’t have the full speech.”

“I don’t think she is calling for open immigration, but the context of her remarks shows that when she says ‘open borders,’ she doesn’t just mean open trade,” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told PolitiFact.

ABC News rated Trump’s claim Clinton wants open orders as “yes and no.” ABC reported “Clinton says she was talking about energy, not immigration, and her immigration plan does not call for open borders or amnesty.”

“Clinton’s immigration plan, similar to what Obama is currently doing, does call for border enforcement, but the resources would be focused on ‘detaining and deporting those individuals who pose a violent threat to public safety,’” ABC reported.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/20/fa...borders-claim/

by JOEL B. POLLAK
20 Oct 2016
715 comments

Politifact, which purports to be a fact-checking website, gave Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump a “mostly false” rating for claiming that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, wants “open borders” — even though she said she did.

Trump made the claim during the third presidential debate. When Clinton denied the charge, moderator Chris Wallace asked her about a speech that she gave to a Brazilian bank in which she stated: “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.” That would seem fairly straightforward: a “true” rating was well-deserved.

Enter Politifact.

The supposed fact-checkers rated Trump’s statement “mostly false” because Clinton “has repeatedly said she supports border security” and because she claimed she was referring to “energy” in the speech except to which Wallace made reference.

That is transparent nonsense, and reveals Politifact to be more a left-wing rapid-response front than a fact-checking group.

First of all, there is no reason to take Clinton at her word about anything. She has said she supports “border security,” but she has also said — dozens of times — that she supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and she abandoned that position this year.

Second, it is well-known that the term “border security” is defined differently by people on opposite sides of the immigration reform issue. Clinton’s version of the term includes allowing virtually all illegal aliens to become citizens. She also said in a debate earlier this year that she would prioritize deporting “violent criminals, terrorists, and anyone who threatens our safety,” but would not deport others, including “children” and “family members.” That means allowing continued illegal immigration.

Third, the expanded version of the quote from her speech to a Brazilian bank makes plan what Clinton’s meaning was:

“My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.”

Clinton’s statement about energy is independent from the statements that precede it: she wants “green and sustainable” energy in addition to open trade and open borders. The fact that she refers to a “common market” is further proof: the best-known “common market” is the European one, whose basic elements are the free flow of goods and people across national frontiers. It is also unclear how “green and sustainable” energy would be shared across borders. The plain meaning of the text is the best reading: “open borders,” in common parlance, means the free flow of people across national frontiers. That is her dream.

Even if every inference were to be drawn in Clinton’s favor, there would be no basis for ruling out the conclusion to which Trump and Wallace arrived. At worst, the statement might earn a “mostly true” rating.

But this is Politifact, which — like so many other so-called fact-checking agencies — has a particular partisan agenda, and in this case a very poorly disguised one.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journal...-open-borders/

The Liberal Tilt at PolitiFact


Brent Bozell|
Posted: Jun 29, 2016 12:01 AM

CNN's "Reliable Sources" offered a panel discussion on June 26 asking if Americans are so apathetic to the truth that our politics have entered a "post-fact check phase." This is a reference to Donald Trump, of course. The media believe he's a liar and gets away with it because of public apathy. What these journalists will never concede, however, is that Democrats get away with dishonesty because of their own apathy. Hillary Clinton's obscene lie about landing in sniper fire in Bosnia is a distant memory.Washington Post humorist/columnist Gene Weingarten was less than amused. Referencing the segment, he tweeted, "Everyone associated with this needs to be fired, killed, buried in an unmarked grave."

Surely he was reacting to Trump-defending Jeffrey Lord who said, "I honestly don't think that this fact checking business ... is anything more than, you know, one more sort of out-of-touch, elitist, media-type thing." You can start with CNN. It has been documented countless times over the years how its fact-checking of politics has required fact-checking in return.

CNN is by no means alone. This arrogance, this "out-of-touch, elitist, media-type thing," also infects the liberal-media project calling itself PolitiFact. CNN interviewed PolitiFact boss Angie Drobnic Holan, who agreed in assessing last week's candidate speeches that Clinton's was more accurate than Trump's:

"Clinton is very well-prepared. She is very literal. She doesn't make unforced errors." Like Bosnia?

Let us briefly review the ratings this "fact-checking" project gave the candidates that week.

Nine of Trump's statements were rated. There was one "Mostly False," four "False," three "Pants on Fire" and one "True" -- restating that Hillary-Bosnia thing. Only four of Clinton's statements were rated: two "Mostly True," one "Half True" and one "True."

A Clinton critic can easily shred these results. They found it "True" in a Clinton speech to Planned Parenthood that maternal mortality has plummeted since Roe v. Wade -- as if that's some kind of scientific principle connecting the two instead of a general advance in health care since 1973. That was a "Mostly False."

What about Clinton's claim that Trump "actually said, 'women should be punished for having abortions'?" Fact is, under heavy pressure from MSNBC's Chris Matthews Trump gave the thoughtless answer -- "there has to be some form of punishment." But fact also is that he then almost immediately backed away, withdrawing that answer. "Half True" is being generous.

PolitiFact avoided rating another Clinton statement altogether. In the same speech she said, "Thank you for being there for Natarsha McQueen, who told me how Planned Parenthood caught her breast cancer when she was just 33 years old, and saved her life." Wrong. One of the most persistent lies is that Planned Parenthood does mammograms and "catches" breast cancer. Planned Parenthood doctors only refer women to other people who do mammograms. Clinton tells that lie incessantly. "Pants on Fire Lie" puts it mildly.

This is a pattern with PolitiFact. Overall, they've rated Trump "False"/"Mostly False"/"Pants on Fire" 77 percent of the time. But they've rated Clinton "False" and "Mostly False" only 26 percent of the time.

The PolitiFact political agenda jumps off the page. On the Republican side, Sen. Ted Cruz lands on the "False" side 65 percent of the time, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich 57 percent of the time and former Sen. Rick Santorum 55 percent of the time. For Democrats, President Obama is ruled false 25 percent of the time, and Sen. Bernie Sanders is false only 30 percent of the time. This is the guy who routinely says, "the business model of Wall Street is fraud."

Then consider possible Clinton running mates. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro has 11 ratings from PolitiFact, and not a single one leans false. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has only four ratings, and again, not a single on leans false. It's not just quality of analysis. It's quantity. Cruz and Warren were both elected to the Senate in 2012. Cruz has been assessed for truth on 114 occasions by PolitiFact, but Warren has only been assessed on four? And for the record, there's no rating for Warren claiming to be part Cherokee Indian.

Does this sound like a liberal, out-of-touch, elitist media thing? Jeff Lord nailed it.
http://townhall.com/columnists/brent...ifact-n2185076

ON CRIME, TRUMP’S RIGHT AND POLITIFACT IS WRONG [UPDATED]


Politifact, a biased liberal operation that purports to fact-check political claims, recently examined Donald Trump’s statement that “crime is rising.” It found the claim to be false, rating it “pants on fire,” the worst rating these liberals dole out.

But Trump, in this instance, is correct. Crime is rising.

How did Politifact err on such a basic question? It erred by looking at no data past 2014. Sean Kennedy at AEI Ideas blows the whistle.

Trump made his statement on June 7, 2016. Thus, his claim that crime is rising can only be fact-checked by analyzing current data. By failing to do so, Politifact confirmed that it is either incompetent, hopelessly biased, or both.

Kennedy did what Politifact was obligated to do before proclaiming Trump a liar. He looked at data that would illuminate whether crime is increasing.

Specifically, Kennedy examined local agency data for 2016 and compared it to 2014 and 2015 data. He found that violent crime in most major US cities, especially homicide, is up substantially since 2014.

Kennedy also cites a March 2016 Gallup poll finding that 53 percent of Americans “personally worry about crime and violence…a great deal.” That’s up 14 percent since the question was last asked in 2014. This dramatic increase in concern surely reflects a change in the facts on the ground — i.e., increased crime and violence.

But Politifact’s bias and/or incompetence wasn’t limited to its failure to dig up 2016 data. Kennedy notes that the source Politifact did use — the FBI, per its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) database — provided preliminary figures for 2015.
The preliminary 2015 numbers show crime rising in most categories across the country between 2014 and 2015. Violent crime (i.e. murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault) is up. The murder rate rose 6.2 percent; rape rose 9.6 percent.

This information was readily available as of January 2016, well before Politifact wrote its June hit piece on Trump.
Why didn’t Politifact use the preliminary 2015 data? The information was, of course, “preliminary.” But it still represented the FBI’s best estimate as to whether crime was increasing as of the beginning of 2016.

This data was sufficient to show that, at a minimum, Trump’s claim that “crime is rising” is plausible. I would say it shows he is probably right (and the 2016 numbers show he is right). Yet Politifact gave Trump’s statement the lowest possible rating for veracity.

These days, the mainstream media barely pretends to be other than anti-conservative and anti-Trump. But even by the MSM’s revoltingly low standards, Politifact’s analysis of Trump’s statement on crime is a disgrace.

UPDATE: Bill Otis has more on Polifact’s farcical fact-check.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive...t-is-wrong.php