PolitiFact Gets it…Right(ish)?
Fact Checking the Newsom/DeSantis Debate
Credit where credit is due.
During Thursday’s debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said "I can’t wait to get all the PolitiFacts tonight.”
He may not have wanted to have that wish granted, as PolitiFact – while it failed to check many of Newsom’s many lies – it did, in general, slap down Newsom’s claims surprisingly accurately.
The New York Times, however, did as one can expect and had a crushing fan girl of Newsom’s handle their fact checking duties.
Before we get to the specifics, it would be remiss not to point out how two of the big California papers – the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee covered the debate.
Newsom won. Newsom Trounced. Newsom didn’t have to do it – it was “a lark” for him - while DeSantis reeked of desperation. Moderator Sean Hannity – who even dared to wear a red tie to signal his pro-DeSantis tilt - was biased and unfair and put Newsom “on defense” by daring to ask uncomfortable questions and actually expecting answers.
“Newsom was on the defensive for much of the debate as Hannity focused on taxes, crime, late-term abortions, California’s high gas prices and other topics on which conservatives believe they have the upper hand politically,” wrote the Times. “Newsom responded by ignoring or reframing many of the questions as the two men repeatedly spoke over each other in a chaotic back-and-forth.”
Yup – how dare you ask a governor of a state about crime and homelessness and taxes: don’t you know those are Republican issues?
Now to PolitiFact’s takes…
On people leaving California, PolitiFact said it is happening (Newsom ignored the question – twice) but did throw Gavin a lifeline citing a statistic that shows 1.31 per 1,000 Californians moved to Florida in 2022 while 1.32 per 1,000 Floridians moved to California. But even PolitiFact wondered if that difference was “meaningful.”
Still, this does ignore the fact that the question did not involve people moving from California to Florida specifically but moving from California to any other state.
New York Times’ fact checker Shawn Hubler – more in a moment on her – also missed the actual question and said claims Californians are moving to Florida (or kinda sorta anywhere else, despite census figures showing about a million such moves in the past three years) were “misleading,” helpfully pointing out that “(A)s for Californians leaving “in droves,” to be clear, there are still 39 million people in California. And the outflow to Florida last year wouldn’t fill the Florida Gators’ football stadium.”
Hubler also claimed California’s psychotic pandemic response showed far better results than Florida’s more open approach:
“By most measures, even adjusting for differences in age and population, California’s (pandemic) approach saved significantly more lives,” Hubler wrote.
That is not an error but an intentional lie -
It should be noted that Hubler – in response to Newsom being called “slick” actually posted the following during the debate:
“Newsom actually is not slick in person. He tends to be pretty sincere and nerdy.”
You can practically see her writing “Mr. Gavin and Mrs. Shawn Newsom XOXOX” in big hearts with arrows through them over and over on her notebook in history class.
Turning back to the pandemic, PolitiFact dinged Newsom for his claim that California did better than Florida. Specifically, Newsom’s attempt unbelievably unironic to paint DeSantis as a “lockdown governor.”
“Newsom borrowed a page from former President Donald Trump’s playbook by misleadingly portraying DeSantis as a lockdown leader. Newsom’s comments focused on DeSantis’ actions in the pandemic’s first few weeks, when nearly all governors operated in lockstep,” wrote PolitiFact. “Newsom omits that DeSantis reopen earlier than most governors in the spring of 2020.”
As to book bans, Newsom’s number was based on a “more expansive” definition of the concept, that his claim that Biden-inauguration poet Amanda Gorman had her book banned was false, and that the vast majority of the “bannings” actually involved parents complaining about the potentially pornographic nature of books like “Gender Queer” and not books by noted authors like Toni Morrison.
PolitiFact said Newsom’s “working class people in Florida pay higher taxes than rich people in California” claim is hard to prove as it is based on one study from 2018 claiming a difference of 0.3% of total income paid in taxes exists.
So, no, that’s not true.
For the full check, see here: https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/dec/01/fact-checking-newsom-desantis-debate-migration-boo/
One more interesting note – the debate was a pretty big political event, but you know what? Of the big fact checkers, only PolitiFact (and the, ugh, Times) actually did a fact check of the event.
Nothing from USA Today, AP, Reuters, FactCheck.org, CNN’s Facts First, NPR, etc. – just crickets.
I wonder why… I guess DeSantis did better than folks are giving him credit for.