THURSDAY: One of Trump's claims was "absurd," Kessler said!

THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2025

Elsewhere, it just "needed context:" We're still emitting mordant chuckles about that New York Times fact-check. 

As we noted yesterday, eleven writers fact-checked the president's hundred-minute address. They fact-checked twenty-six different statements, claims or passages from Tuesday night's joint address.

As we noted yesterday, the eleven writers found only two statements which they scored as "False." 

Only two, in a hundred minutes! Over at the Washington Post, Homey didn't play it like that. 

Glenn Kessler fact-checked 26 statements or passages all by himself. He scored twelve of the commander's emissions as "False"—and then he continued from there:

He scored another claim as "Wrong;" he even scored one claim as "Absurd." That assessment is even more scathing than "False." We applaud Kessler for using his words.

All in all, we'd say that Kessler found roughly twenty items (out of 26) which he basically scored as False. Here's the roll call of the ratings:

Assessments by Kessler:
False: 12
Appears to be false: 1
Trump often takes false credit: 1
Wrong: 1
This is apples and oranges: 1
This was not a scam: 1
Absurd: 1

There were several other presentations in which Kessler basically said that the statement in question was false or wrong without quite using those words. 

Over at the New York Times, eleven writers had been asked to grope the elephant. In the course of the hundred-minute speech, they were able to find only two claims which they scored as "False!"

Back at the Washington Post, what claim by Trump got scored as "Absurd?" Headline included, the assessment went like this, with Trump's statement appearing in bold:

Fact-checking 26 suspect claims in Trump’s address to Congress

[...]

“We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”

This is absurd. Trump inherited an economy with relatively low unemployment, falling inflation and strong growth. The month before the November election, the Economist newspaper published a cover story declaring that the U.S. economy was “the envy of the world.”

A person could imaginably think that "absurd" is wrong. For ourselves, we'd have to say that the statement by Trump was, at the very least, "Extremely or highly tendentious."

Kessler said that claim was absurd. At the Times, it just "needed context." We leave you with a question:

Whatever you think of President Trump, when did he ever speak for a hundred minutes and make only two false statements? That Times report seemed to have come from the dark side of the distant planet Nuance, with a trip to Avoidance thrown in.

Full disclosure: We think Kessler misunderstood one part of the third statement he fact-checked. This was the statement by Trump:

“Hundreds of thousands of illegal crossings a month, and virtually all of them including murderers, drug dealers, gang members and people from mental institutions and insane asylums were released into our country.” 

We think Kessler misread one part of that statement. In fairness, that statement—like so many others by Trump—is rather fuzzy in its construction, perhaps for tactical reasons.

We would have scored it (at best) as "Grossly misleading." After that, we would have explained why we did.