PBS and their "independent fact-checker" partners at PolitiFact can agree: the Democratic convention was much more factual than the Republican convention. So Democrats didn't just corner the market on "joy" and "electricity," but apparently on facticity.
PolitiFact editor-in-chief Katie Sanders appeared on Thursday's News Hour before Kamala Harris had even spoken. She did not appear during the prime-time convention coverage to "referee" the proceedings, as she did during the GOP convention.
Anchorman Geoff Bennett requested a premature endorsement of how the Democrats exceeded the Republicans:
GEOFF BENNETT: You were with us at the Republican National Convention as well. When you compare the RNC to the DNC, which gathering has shown the greatest fidelity to the facts?
KATIE SANDERS: Certainly, there's been some exaggerations this week about — or maybe really broad claims. But I think it's hard to compare anyone with the amount of falsehoods that you hear at a campaign rally from former President Trump. If you remember his speech, we were doing a lot of fact-checking in the moment of things we have heard again and again and again. So I think that is challenging to stack up against any other gathering really for the facts.
With Kamala Harris's speech tonight, I'm curious if she's going to continue a trend to stay broad, stay a little vague, narrow — focus more on her biography, versus going into specific claims. We will just have to see. Her campaign speeches have not had a similar style, to say the least, as former President Trump.
We already knew this from the PolitiFact website, as Alex Christy reported after the Democrat convention ended: they gave Republicans three times as many False ratings while giving Democrats three times as many True ratings.
It was starker with the candidates: Trump was on the False side 89 percent of the time, and Harris only 33 percent -- in part because they ruled on Trump 33 times and on Harris only three times -- 33 to 3.
The "fact checkers" have slammed Trump as "Pants on Fire" four times in the last two weeks or so (August 9-23). We're up to 197 Pants rants since PolitiFact started checking Trump.
Kamala Harris has zero "Pants on Fire" rulings. Ever. Harris has 52 fact checks in total -- 25 on the True side, 23 on the False. So more true than false, four Half True in the middle.
Trump has 1,042 fact checks. Get out the calculator. That’s about 20 times as many fact checks as Harris. He has 119 on the True side, and 798 on the False side. Okay. He’s 11.4 percent on the true, 76.5 on the false. He has more Pants on Fire ratings than True or Mostly True, combined.
