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A flimsy “fact-check” from “The Gray Lady” found former President Donald Trump’s claim on one of the vice president’s positions to be far more black and white than they portrayed.

Narrative-pushing impressions geared to the benefit of Vice President Kamala Harris continued to rule the day over stubborn reality. A prime example was provided by The New York Times this week as the newspaper of record’s claim that Trump’s take “needs context” after he brought up his rival’s stand on taxpayer-funded “gender-affirming care” for illegal alien detainees proved it to be “basically true.”

Like the real-time biases that had been called out over the debate moderators’ 3-on-1 approach Tuesday night, word games reigned from when Times’ health reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg had tried to fact-check the president for saying of Harris, “Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”

Seemingly suggesting that the president had misrepresented the policy position, the fact-check went on to detail: “Trump is referring to Harris’s response to a 2019 American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire, in which she said she supported using taxpayer funds to give access to gender-affirming care to transgender and nonbinary people, including those in immigration detention and prison.”

Presenting as an admission of blurred lines between fact-checking and partisan propaganda, a Times article after the fact noted the claim from Trump was the “wildest sounding attack line that was basically true.”

Of course, as had been reported, the validity had been known going into the debate as CNN’s Erin Burnett had appeared surprised during a “KFile Investigation” segment on Monday’s “OutFront” when Andrew Kaczynski had raised the ACLU questionnaire.

“Taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained migrants?” asked the incredulous host. “She actually said she supported that?”

For their trouble in committing actual acts of journalism, CNN was also dragged in the fact check as the Times contended the coverage “drew sharp criticism from supporters of gay, lesbian and transgender people.”

Additionally, Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler was cited as saying in the ongoing “fact-check” defense, “That questionnaire is not what she is proposing or running on.”

As many, including conservative digital strategist Greg Price, had pointed out, the context appeared to clearly show, “Oh yeah she actually supported that.”

Naturally, the Times was not alone in employing the same tactic as other outlets took their own “Wizard of Oz” efforts to tell voters to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

The New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser’s post-debate column called the line “pretty memorable, too. What the hell was he talking about? No one knows, which was, of course, exactly Harris’s point.” A piece from Time magazine said: “The original version of this story mischaracterized as false Donald Trump’s statement accusing Kamala Harris of supporting ‘transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison.’ As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris filled out a questionnaire saying she supported taxpayer-funded gender transition treatment for detained immigrants.”

Meanwhile, The Atlantic’s Ali Breland tried, “‘Transgender operations for illegal aliens in prison’ is a phrase ChatGPT would spit out if you fed it right-wing posts and asked it to parody them.”

Kevin Haggerty
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