A look at some of the claims in his State of the Union speech, a glance at the Republican counterargument and how they fit with the facts:
OBAMA: “After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over 6 million new jobs.”
THE FACTS: That’s in the ballpark, as far as it goes. But Obama starts his count not when he took office, but from the point in his first term when job losses were the highest. In doing so, he ignores the 5 million or so jobs that were lost on his watch, up to that point.
The wire service also examined Sen. Marco Rubio’s televised response on behalf of the Republican Party, and takes both men to task for some less-than-accurate statements during the State of the Union and GOP response on Tuesday night.
Former President Bill Clinton’s stem-winding nomination speech was a fact-checker’s nightmare: lots of effort required to run down his many statistics and factual claims, producing little for us to write about.
Republicans will find plenty of Clinton’s scorching opinions objectionable. But with few exceptions, we found his stats checked out.
As fact-checking is in vogue at the moment, here’s a look at Clinton’s speech. While they nicked him for overselling the Affordable Care Act, the key phrase is this: “Other exaggerations and missteps were minor by comparison.”
Adair [PolitiFact Editor Bill Adair] goes on for a while, but I don’t think he puts back many of the eggshell fragments. The issue, as everyone else sees it: “PolitiFact should verify actual facts, because God knows politicians make a lot of stuff up on the fly.” The issue as Adair sees it: “Shut up, critics of PolitiFact.David Weigel, PolitiFact Weirdly Unable to Discuss Facts (via brooklynmutt)
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