Snopes Sides with Trump Against Biden Campaign's False Smear in Rare Move, Enraging Leftists
When liberals lose Snopes, they’re losing their minds.
The most notoriously dishonest “fact-checker” in the dishonest “fact-checker” business, Snopes has a well-earned reputation for putting a thumb firmly on the left end of the scale in rendering judgments on what should be objective disputes.
In a post published Sunday, though, Snopes took the side of former president Donald Trump — and liberals are raging.
In the article, Snopes addressed a claim by the campaign team for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris that Trump had admitted to “waging an all-out war on American democracy.”
The idea is absurd on its face — that a former president running for office again would openly declare a “war on American democracy,” but such is the fantasy world of the modern left.
Trump was speaking Saturday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the Biden-Harris HQ account on X went on the attack:
Trump: We’ve been waging an all-out war on American democracy pic.twitter.com/HubnEyJsyF
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) December 2, 2023
A social media posting by the progressive political action committee MeidasTouch made a similar claim:
TRUMP CONFESSES
“We’ve been waging an all out war on American democracy.”
Donald Trump’s cognitive decline led him to tell the truth to voters in Iowa. pic.twitter.com/HZFpS13H0M
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) December 2, 2023
On almost any other day, a reader would expect Snopes to take the left’s side. But this time it ruled the claim “false”:
“To our ears, Trump unambiguously said, ‘we’ve been waging all-out war in American democracy’ (and CSPAN’s transcript reflects the same),” Snopes’ David Emery wrote.
“We did not hear, nor does the context support the claim that he said, ‘We’ve been waging an all-out war on American democracy.’ It’s clear that Trump was out to accuse his political opponents of waging war, not himself.
“Given the context, Trump likely meant to say, ‘They’ve been waging an all-out war on American democracy,’ but those weren’t the words that came out of his mouth.”
Now, a simple matter-of-fact assessment is not always what can be expected from Snopes in a high-stakes political dispute. Like a liberal Supreme Court justice, the website’s writers have uncanny ways of reaching their conclusions first, then reasoning backward until they make the case.
So, while the moment might come as a pleasant surprise for conservatives — akin to any win for the New York Jets after losing Aaron Rodgers — it’s hardly something that’s going to be taken for granted, or even taken very seriously. This is Snopes, for God’s sake. They’ll be back to shameless duplicity any minute now.
But liberals weren’t taking the moment in stride at all.
This is very embarrassing for Snopes — and they should delete it. https://t.co/XoEY66QXLe
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) December 4, 2023
I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears.
I will never trust Snopes again.
— waa2112 (@bikingpenguin) December 4, 2023
Did Elon Musk buy Snopes? 🤔
— Lynda hates GOP thugs (@IvanasStairCam) December 4, 2023
But set aside the acoustical hair-splitting and ignore the differences between the prepositions “on” and “in” in a sentence where neither makes much sense, frankly. (To be clear, though, Trump unquestionably said, “in.”)
A sane adult looking at the message Trump was getting across would have found a lot more to think about.
“For decades, you watched as a corrupt political class in our nation’s capital looted your money, trampled on your dignity and pushed their radical agenda into every aspect of your lives. You know it very well,” Trump said, according to the C-SPAN transcript.
“But in 2016, you voted to stand up to those liars, losers, crooks and creeps, and you elected an outsider as your president. And it was about America first. We want to put our country first. I haven’t done that in a long time, but we did it for four years and that’s why we did so well. That’s why it was one of the great presidencies …
“From that day on our opponents, and we had a lot of opponents, but we’ve been waging an all-out war in American democracy.
“You look at what they’ve been doing, and becoming more and more extreme and repressive. They have just waged an all-out war with each passing day.”
Those are not the words of a man trying to stamp out the right to vote. They’re the words of a man reminding an entire nation exactly why the right to vote is so crucial.
They’re the words of a man who won the kind of stunning upset in 2016 that’s only possible in a mature democracy, and who knows he can win again if he can ignite the people who turned out for him before and inspire millions more to do the same.
In the years since November 2016, the country has seen the once-trusted FBI exposed as a cesspool of Democratic power grabbers, the Washington deep state as a more-than-willing participant in impeachment games, and, of course, the establishment media disgraced now and forever as a prostitute press, bought and paid for by its Democratic patrons to be used at their pleasure.
One unusually accurate Snopes ruling isn’t going to change any of that. But the reaction to it is illustrative. At some level, the left understands how tenuous its grip really is — and it can’t accept losing a bit of it.
When they’ve lost Snopes, they’ve lost their minds.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
