One of One of the strangest features of American journalism is that writers who present themselves as “fact checkers” and check politicians’ claims—like calling balls, strikes, and “Pinocchio”—are unusually bad at it.
Fact checkers have provided many failed reviews of content from the Democratic National Convention, but nothing has wracked their minds like Democrats’ relentless attacks on Donald Trump over the Republicans’ anti-abortion agenda, laid out in gruesome detail in the conservatives’ Project 2025 policy roadmap.
The former president has actively tried to get out of Project 2025, because the policy goals set out in the 887-page plan are so unpopular. Trump has claimed: “I don’t know anything about Project 2025, [and] “I have no idea who is behind this,” he said. On Thursday, he again claimed he had “absolutely nothing to do” with the matter.
It’s a ridiculous claim: The policy guide was largely written by former senior Trump administration officials — and when he spoke at a 2022 event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025, Trump said, “This is a great group, and they will be laying the groundwork and laying out the detailed plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a tremendous mandate to save America.”
like Rolling Stone Trump has been briefed directly by associates and close aides on the substance and progress of Project 2025, sources said. Senior officials involved in the project are expected to take on prominent roles in the Trump administration.
Rather than fact-check Trump’s patently false claim that he knew nothing about Project 2025, fact-checkers simply decided to believe him. Moreover, Democrats should be punished for associating Trump with unpopular policy proposals.
Earlier this week, the Poynter Institute's Politifact website said it was unfair for the Democratic National Committee to air a 2016 video of Trump saying “there should be some form of punishment” for people who have abortions, because he “retracted the comment.”
On Thursday, Politifact staffers reviewed Vice President Kamala Harris’s claim that Trump “plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report women’s abortions.”
Politifact called Harris's claim “mostly false” because Project 2025 “is not Trump's plan,” adding that “Trump and his campaign have repeatedly stated that they were not involved in the project and Trump is not listed as an author, editor, or contributor.”
It's hard to say how inconvenient this was, but things quickly got worse.
“The 2025 bill does not mention a ‘national anti-abortion coordinator.’ The document calls for a ‘politically-appointed, pro-life senior coordinator for the Office of Women, Children, and Families,’” Politifact wrote. “It says the CDC’s abortion monitoring and maternal death reporting systems are inadequate and proposes withholding federal funds from states that do not report to the CDC the number of abortions occurring in their states.”
These are pretty much the same things.
The article also criticized Harris’s supposedly “prescient” claim that Trump wants to “enact a national abortion ban,” noting that “Trump said this year he wouldn’t sign a national ban.” That’s true — but shortly before the former president declared that abortion should be a state issue, he publicly considered endorsing a national abortion ban.
It is also worth noting that Trump appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court whose votes were necessary to overturn Roe v. WadeWhich allows states to ban abortion — an achievement he openly brags about.
Politifact concluded that Harris “overplays Trump's abortion agenda by tying him to Project 2025 allies.”
Is it the job of a journalist to state with certainty that the position Trump has taken, as a political matter, is a political position? exactly What would he do if he became president? Of course not. And it’s even more neglected by commentators who portray themselves as “fact checkers.”
If this is really their job, they should give up.
