The "independent fact checkers" at PolitiFact displayed their liberal stripes again this week by hailing the liberal student activists of Parkland High School as the victimized heroes of their 2018 "Lie of the Year." The "online smear machine" that tried to "take down Parkland students" was singled out as the very worst.
The PolitiFact online ballot for their liberal audience consisted of five Trump statements, one by Trump adviser Larry Kudlow, the Parkland "smear machine"....and then one each by socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
"The attacks against Parkland's students stand out because of their sheer vitriol," PolitiFact's Angie Drobnic Holan and Amy Sherman wrote. "Together, the lies against the Parkland students in the wake of unspeakable tragedy were the most significant falsehoods of 2018. We name them PolitiFact's Lie of the Year."
There were online smears about Parkland students, like the notion that David Hogg was a "crisis actor" who was from California, not Florida. But liberals like the PolitiFact crew can't acknowledge that Hogg and his fellow teenaged activists dropped a lot of smears wherever they went. NB's Kyle Drennen assembled a list in March:
- During an appearance on CNN’s New Day on February 19, Hogg labeled the National Rifle Association “child murderers” and fellow Stoneman Douglas student Emma Gonzalez addressed Republicans who accept campaign contributions from the NRA by saying: “...if they accept this blood money, they are against the children. They are against the people who are dying....You’re either funding the killers or you’re standing with the children.”
- While participating in a CNN town hall event on February 21, Stoneman Douglas student Cameron Kasky smeared Florida Senator Marco Rubio with this invective: “Senator Rubio, it’s hard to look at you and not look down the barrel on an AR-15 and not look at Nikolas Cruz, but the point is: You’re here and there are some people who are not.” [PolitiFact quoted Rubio calling out smears on the Parkland students in their article -- without noting this.]
- Later in that same event, Gonzales implied that NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch was a bad mother because of her support for the Second Amendment.
- On ABC’s Good Morning America on February 22, anchor George Stephanopoulos teed up Stoneman Douglas student Ryan Deitsch to blast Senator Rubio for taking “money from an organization that has been known to help in the aiding of killing innocent lives.”
- On February 28, while talking to CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, Stoneman Douglas student Alfonso Calderon accused the NRA of “basically killing kids.”
- Appearing with Calderon on CNN’s New Day on March 12, Hogg launched into a similar tirade against the gun rights group, claiming they want to “put more people at risk, scare more people, cause more violence, kill more people, and sell more guns.”
- During a March 24 interview with National Public Radio host Scott Simon, Hogg morbidly suggested: “We can and we will outlive our opponents because they’re old, and they are stuck in their old ways.”
- On March 26, ABC’s The View co-host Meghan McCain called out Hogg for saying this: “It just makes me think what sick blankers [f---ers] out there want to continue to sell more guns, murder more children, and honestly just get reelected, What type of blanking [s–tty] person does that? They could have blood from children splattered all over their faces and they don’t take action, because all they see are dollar signs.”
Hogg and his friends received little or no push-back from the journalists who hosted them.
PolitiFact would "Share the Facts" that Hogg manufactured without noting the rudeness. They did math dividing Rubio's financial support from the NRA by the number of students in Florida schools. It's not a math problem that makes any sense. It's just an attack line.
