In August, PolitiFact has been obsessing over President Trump like they're Daniel Dale at CNN, and as usual, everything he says is “false.” On Thursday, they broke up the Trump-bashing – ultraliberal California Gov. Gavin Newsom received a "Mostly True."
PolitiFact's Loreben Turquero carefully selected this Newsom utterance from an August 17 podcast with leftist Brian Tyler Cohen: “Democrats have voted for national independent redistricting. Republicans have not.”
This comes as Newsom has asked for voters to crumble (temporarily?) the independent redistricting commission in California. So Newsom is performing a version of the old lefty joke about Vietnam -- “we have to destroy the village in order to save it.”
In this case, Newsom and the Democrats favored independent commissions nationwide, and they want credit for that, while they crumble the one in California.
Turquero was so selective in her "fact checking" that she skipped over the very next sentences after the ones she chose. Follow her YouTube link, and you discover that right after he touted Democrats favoring national independent redistricting, Newsom added “So spare me the crocodile tears on Fox and everyone else, saying ‘oh, everybody does this, oh, these guys have been gerrymandering for years and years and years’ – not like these folks have! And we’re at least willing to call that out.”
Newsom denied gerrymandering in New York and Illinois and elsewhere. PolitiFact leaves that alone.
The "fact checker" here admitted that there was a major technicality in this “Truth-O-Meter” exercise, that Republicans pretty much unanimously opposed a massive bill under Biden that aimed at at removing any idea of federalism from election rules.
In 2021, all but two absent Republican lawmakers voted against H.R. 1, which would have required all states to establish independent redistricting commissions. But the redistricting provisions were one part of the 884-page bill, and Republicans said they opposed it for various reasons, not just because of the redistricting provision.
Meanwhile, PolitiFact is touting a month-old Ron DeSantis "False" rating from July on its X account:
A federal judge ruled that Alligator Alcatraz be dismantled within 60 days because the government failed to conduct an environmental review. Experts said the increased human activity could create light and air pollution and habitat degradation. https://t.co/EidWOwIeDf
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) August 23, 2025
Trump has seven checks so far in August, including two "Pants On Fire" rants. PolitiFact has performed forty "Truth-O-Meter" ratings on Trump in 2025...39 rated "Mostly False" or worse.
So far in August, PolitiFact has given Democrats two "Mostly Trues" and a "Half True." Nothing on the False side. The Republicans have eight checks -- all of them on the False side.
In 2025, Slick Gavin's received one "Half True" and THREE "Mostly Trues." Nothing false. It’s quite typical for Democrats in this kangaroo court of “Truth.” It feels like their cop car only pulls over Democrats to congratulate them.
