The “fact-checking” industry is a total joke.

A bad joke. Worse than a 5-year-old’s knock-knock joke. As bad as a Chelsea Handler joke.

Really, it is that bad.

Just when you think that they couldn’t get any lower, they prove you wrong. They really exist to do nothing but buttress Establishment lies.

https://t.co/NRHDSJONuy pic.twitter.com/LnJIVWeaBS

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) May 3, 2023

Randi Weingarten, for those of you unfortunate enough not to have read my article “Randi Weingarten is an evil liar,” is the President of the American Federation of Teachers. She is, perhaps, the single biggest reason that schools in the United States remained closed for so long. A year or more in many places.

Randi has been going on a propaganda tour claiming she was desperately trying to get schools open as quickly as possible, as it becomes clear that school closures may be the single-biggest COVID-related disaster and one of the biggest government missteps in recent history.

Kids are literally dying because of those school closures, and their mental health has taken a nosedive. Much of this transgender craze is related to all the TikTok time kids had during the pandemic.

AFT President Randi Weingarten: "We spent every day from February on trying to get schools open. We knew that remote education was not a substitute for opening schools." pic.twitter.com/1qNL05VD3u

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) April 26, 2023

Weingarten testified before Congress that she was desperate to get schools open, and the floodgates of criticism opened up. The claim was so audacious that even Democrats called her out on it. Lori Lightfoot, herself no paragon of virtue or honesty, called out Weingarten. It just isn’t true that the union worked with government officials to get schools open. Instead, they attacked anybody who tried.

Weingarten did indeed keep saying during the pandemic that schools should be reopened as quickly as possible, but “possible” turned out to be totally impossible as she kept on piling up the barriers she insisted be surmounted before schools could safely be open. Congress wound up passing $190 billion in funding to meet her demands, and it still didn’t move her.

Every proposal put forth was viciously fought, and every proponent of opening schools was attacked for wanting to kill Grandma.

Teachers’ unions threatened strikes, attacked lawmakers, insulted everybody, and kept on insisting that no damage was being done because “kids are resilient.”

"Kids are resilient!" Weingarten bellows as she tosses them out of airplanes https://t.co/SRjNebIbQH

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) February 22, 2021

Weingarten has been losing the propaganda war, so she turned to the mega-propagandists to save her: the fact-checking industry and Politifact are coming to save her.

John wrote about the whole affair earlier today.

I won’t even bother going through their convoluted and deceitful “fact check.” It doesn’t even merit the name, as John rightly pointed out. Cherry-picking things Weingarten said and ignoring what she did is quite on-brand, and unworthy of analysis. It is as useful as believing Sam Bankman-Fried’s insistence that he was just an altruist saving the world.

Outstanding compilation of footage of teachers’ union leader Randi Weingarten calling for COVID school closures throughout 2020 and 2021, contrary to her now casting herself as a bold advocate for schools reopening.pic.twitter.com/UcWjfmqpno

— Michael P Senger (@michaelpsenger) May 3, 2023

Liars are going to lie, and repeating their lies doesn’t make them true. Randi Weingarten spent two years attacking attempts to open schools. Everybody knows it. Because it is manifestly true.

The fact-checking industry serves one and only one purpose: to buttress the narrative. Since so few people take the press at their word anymore, the industry sprung up to add a “No we really mean it this time” exclamation point on stories they want to be believed.

Weingarten is important to save because she is so useful to their cause: she provides a river of cash, votes, and volunteers to the Democrat Party, and replacing her quickly would be difficult. She has carried a lot of water for the Party, so they owe her.

Hence the “fact check.” It is little more than an attempt to save her credibility. Teachers are an important constituency for Democrats because people like teachers. They are sympathetic, in the way that nurses are. We are grateful to them.

They are perfect foils for politicians. Having a teacher union be held responsible for one of the most destructive acts perpetrated against children is a bad look.

Will it work? Both yes and no. No, people on the inside know exactly what happened and that she is an evil liar. But yes, because the memory will fade and the “fact checks” will sow doubt that she really is that bad.

When was the last time a Democrat actually paid a price for the damage they have done to our country?