Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) roasted PolitiFact after the Facebook fact-checker tried to pretend it knew more about Texas law than Cruz did.
Cruz reportedly proclaimed that there was “clear legal authority” to arrest Democratic legislators who fled Texas to avoid passing an election integrity bill. PolitiFact tried to correct the sitting senator and disgraced itself in the process. The fact-checker referred to the bill as a “voting rights bill” and that no such precedent existed.
“.@SenTedCruz said ‘there is clear legal authority to handcuff and put in leg irons legislators that are trying to stop the legislature from being able to do business.’ False. There is no legal clarity,” PolitiFact wrote in an outlandish July 16 tweet.
RealClearInvestigations Senior Writer Mark Hemingway responded by quipping: “Ted Cruz is the former Solicitor General of Texas, but hey I’m sure the PolitiFact writer who spent 90 minutes researching this knows Texas law better than he does.” Cruz responded by observing: “Yep. The Texas Supreme Court just agreed with me—unanimously. But, of course, PolitiFact still rules the claim ‘false.’” He then added, “They have yet to issue a correction.”
PolitiFact’s Ted Cruz fact-check, like many recent incidents, appeared to rate statements as false when they were either blatantly true or are actually still up for debate:
The Texas House Rules states that absent lawmakers can ‘be sent for and arrested, wherever they may be found.’ But, because absent lawmakers aren’t charged with a crime, it’s unclear how the use of the word ‘arrest’ should be interpreted in this context. This is because no Texas court has reviewed how this provision is to be enforced. Thus, there is no legal clarity.
There is indeed a pattern of PolitiFact haphazardly throwing around the “false” label.
PolitiFact, acting as a fact-checker for Facebook, recently attacked the Media Research Center (MRC) for citing a graphic first released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). PolitiFact tried to combine three fact-check categories into one. It failed to note its issue as one of context, and chose to instead label the entire graphic as “FALSE,” but called it “partly false information” on Facebook.
PolitiFact initially had a field day with the claim that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan, China laboratory, calling such claims, “debunked conspiracy theor[ies].” After revelations from U.S. government officials and the media, PolitiFact declared “we are removing this fact-check.”
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