The White House repeatedly insisted that President Biden was in great shape and that he would not pardon his son Hunter, but none of that was enough to win PolitiFact’s 2024 Lie of the Year nod.
Instead, the left-tilting media watchdog gave the distinction to President-elect Donald Trump for saying in September that newly arrived Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating pets, repeating a rumor that police described as unsubstantiated.
“In a year of inflammatory rhetoric and shocking moments, one repeated falsehood resonated with both PolitiFact journalists and readers as the most significant falsehood of 2024,” said PolitiFact, a project of the Poynter Institute.
Was that really the biggest whopper of 2024? Not as far as those outside the liberal bubble are concerned.
Commentators on social media have since taken issue with PolitiFact’s selection with responses such as “Lie of the year: Joe Biden is fine,” “You guys really are hopelessly partisan” and “Politifact is not a credible source of information and no one should take them seriously.”
“Saying Biden was FINE was the Lie of the Year,” the conservative Media Research Center said on X.
The center had an entirely different take, giving its 2024 Brian Stelter Award for the Worst Quote of the Year to MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough for defending Mr. Biden’s fitness for office.
“This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I’ve known him for years,” Mr. Scarborough told the show’s viewers on March 6.
Four months later, Mr. Biden was out after a disastrous June 27 debate performance in which he looked confused and made head-scratching statements such as that he had “finally beat Medicare.”
MRC President Brent Bozell said that in a “media landscape full of Biden excuse-makers, Scarborough’s sycophancy stood out.”
“Back in March when it was apparent to everybody that Joe Biden was losing it, here comes Joe Scarborough to not only reject those claims but boldly boast that Biden was quote ‘intellectually’ and ‘analytically’ the sharpest he’s ever been,” Mr. Bozell said in a statement. “Four months later his own party dumped him.”
Mr. Biden’s departure from the race — and the elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him — upended the presidential contest just 100 days before the November election.
Tim Graham, executive editor of MRC NewsBusters, said the Trump “they’re eating the cats” line was “an unproven accusation in a highly watched presidential debate,” but that “everything in the ‘fact-checking’ racket is about target selection.”
“Republicans are ‘fact-checked’ more, and get harsher ratings for dishonesty,” Mr. Graham said. “Trump has been tagged as ‘Pants On Fire’ by PolitiFact 204 times, and Kamala Harris has zero in her entire career.”
The “Biden is fine” narrative pushed by the White House, Democrats and media figures also failed to make PolitiFact’s list of top 10 “lies” for 2024.
The pet-eating crack took 54% of the vote. In second place with 17% was another Trump comment, this one about the Biden administration diverting funding from disaster relief to illegal immigrants.
Mr. Biden placed third with 6% for declaring that he wouldn’t pardon his son for his gun and tax convictions, and then doing so on Dec. 1.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Trump is a repeat offender when it comes to the PolitiFact distinction, an annual tradition since 2009.
“PolitiFact has also singled out Donald Trump for ‘Lie of the Year’ in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021,” Mr. Graham said. “No Democrat has been tagged with this dishonor since Trump arrived on the scene.”
In 2013, President Barack Obama won the dubious honor for memorably saying, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” under the Affordable Care Act.
Mr. Biden has never received the Lie of the Year nod, despite his well-documented history of biographical falsehoods.
