On Monday morning, Washington Post "Fact Checker" Glenn Kessler was tossing his "Four Pinocchios" Liar rating at Donald Trump again, this time over rent-support payments for migrants in the Democrat-run state of Michigan.
In recent months, Kessler has emptied a bucket of Pinocchios on Trump and his aides, but he's conveniently avoided throwing a single Pinocchio at Joe Biden, not even when Biden blamed Trump for massive Covid deaths: "We lost over 1,200,000 people because of the slow start in all this [vaccination] process.”
Kessler ruled in February that "Biden’s phrasing is sufficiently subtle that a link is not so easily established." That's ridiculous. It looks like Glenn Kessler (D-D.C.). This was Monday's headline:
Trump and allies say Biden pays rent for ‘illegals’ in Michigan. Not true.
Kessler established the federal government is assisting Michigan with rental subsidies, but it depends on what the meaning of "refugee" is.
The federal government, through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services, has long provided hundreds of millions of dollars a year to states and nongovernment organizations to help refugees transition to life in the United States. The Office of Global Michigan supports such efforts in the state, and in October launched the Newcomer Rental Subsidy program. Under this initiative, for up to 12 months individuals who qualify may receive as much as $500 a month in rental subsidies.
Kessler repeatedly relies on 'the state" of Michigan to rebut the Trump camp, downplaying this is a Republican-Democrat fight in Michigan.
The state says these qualified applicants include refugees, asylees, people with special immigrant visas who helped the U.S. government overseas, victims of human trafficking, Cuban and Haitian entrants, Afghan nationals and Ukrainians granted humanitarian parole. These are all people legally in the United States....
the state says that it will not consider any application with a pending defensive asylum hearing.
Then he relies on "the state" to break down their rental-subsidy handouts, with this loaded summary: "In any case, more than half of the people who have been approved for rental subsidies are Afghan and Ukrainian refugees — a far cry from the murderers that Trump claims are overrunning the country."
Kessler also lined up the Biden administration to rebut Trump: "An HHS spokesman said the refugee office funds could not be used for asylum seekers....A White House spokesman also disputed Trump’s claims in a statement." None of these statements were going the be challenged by Kessler. They were just going to be repeated.
Conservatives on Twitter mocked Kessler's conclusion:
The link to Biden is even more dubious. This is a state program that has received federal grant money, but there is no indication that Biden is even aware of it. So it’s absurd to run ads that claim Biden is paying rent for immigrants who are in the country illegally.
Trump and MAGA Inc. earn Four Pinocchios.
Kessler has repeatedly defended Democrats when Republicans make claims about the Democrats providing benefits to illegal immigrants. After all, it is an election year.
