Phil Kerpen, syndicated columnist and president of American Commitment, is among the most valuable conservative voices on Twitter. It’s little surprise, then, that PolitiFact would red-flag Kerpen for a fact-check. Curiously, though, PolitiFact chose not to fact-check a column but rather a single tweet from nearly two weeks ago.
Amazing fact: Senate has already voted on more amendments in 2015 than Reid allowed ALL YEAR last year.
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) January 23, 2015
Sounds simple enough — either the Senate has already voted on more amendments in 2015 than Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid allowed last year or it hasn’t. After a more than 1,000-word analysis of Kerpen’s tweet based on eight interviews and an excerpt from Politico, writer Katie Sanders reaches PolitiFact’s ruling:
On the numbers, [Kerpen] is right. But experts cautioned us that the claim falls more in the interesting factoid category than a sign of a different or more cooperative Senate leadership.
The statement is accurate but needs clarification and additional information. That meets our definition of Mostly True.
LOLOLOL: "The simple answer on the number of votes is that Kerpen is correct."
"MOSTLY true"
Hacktastic, PolitiFraud!http://t.co/2XXk3iTW1T— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) February 3, 2015
Politifact is fact-checking tweets and is being as niggling and false as it is with long articles. http://t.co/MRjDYy9Eaa
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) February 3, 2015
@jpodhoretz I like the idea that an assertion that is literally and mathematically true is "Mostly True" for @PolitiFact.
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) February 3, 2015
@EdMorrissey The fullness of Democratic apologetics being omitted from my TWEET = "mostly true." @vermontaigne @jpodhoretz @PolitiFact
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) February 3, 2015
Well, his tweet did lack sufficient “context” to explaining away the GOP’s crazy impression that Reid’s leadership style was “uncooperative and off-the-rails.”
@kerpen @EdMorrissey @vermontaigne @PolitiFact The secret of Politifact is that many of its items are actually quite stupid.
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) February 3, 2015
@kerpen @EdMorrissey @vermontaigne @jpodhoretz @PolitiFact "By the numbers…" Well, how else do you measure more than/less than/equal?
— Just Tom (@thomasa56) February 3, 2015
@thomasa56 By party affiliation. @EdMorrissey @vermontaigne @jpodhoretz @PolitiFact
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) February 3, 2015
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/562410956257783809
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