Rashida Tlaib’s Lies Skipped By ‘Fact-Checkers’

Written by Tim Graham

On Nov. 7, the U.S. House of Representatives (212 Republicans and 22 Democrats) voted to censure radical U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) because she has “levied unbelievable falsehoods about our greatest ally, Israel, and the attack on October 7.”

One of those outrageous falsehoods was clinging to the false claim that Israel bombed the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. But guess what? Our professional “fact-checkers” haven’t located that lie … or any other nutty utterance, like her laughable claim that “from the river to the sea” isn’t a Hamas slogan about the eradication of Israel, it’s an “aspirational call for freedom” and “peaceful coexistence.”

With Democrats, the so-called independent fact-checkers rush to correct Tlaib critics, and not Tlaib — just as they rush to correct Biden critics, and not Biden. Maybe those critics deserve correction — but so do Democrats, especially when they lie about alleged “war crimes.” The facts don’t always lean to the left.

PolitiFact takes the cake, since Tlaib has only one “fact check” in her four-plus years in Congress, and it’s a “Mostly True” in 2020 for asserting, “Detroit spent $294 million on police last year, and $9 million on health.” This is ludicrous, since policing is an essential city government function, and government-funded health care is more of a state and federal function.

Or is the worst one FactCheck.org? Their Tlaib archive page lists eight fact checks — and all eight are focused on Tlaib’s opponents.

Or Snopes.com? A search found 13 checks attacking anti-Tlaib posts (10 in 2019), but nothing evaluating Tlaib. Several were from satire websites like “Taters Gonna Tate.” Then there’s LeadStories.com, who flagged a post clearly marked satire, suggesting Tlaib advocated removing the American flag from classrooms.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler isn’t ruling on Tlaib, since he’s too busy right now picking on Trump and Republicans. But he did flag President Joe Biden for asserting the Hamas body count in Gaza isn’t trustworthy.

In recent days, Reuters Fact Check flagged social media posts and warned, “Posts about U.S. Representative Tlaib’s birthplace lack context.” Someone on Facebook suggested the congresswoman should be deported back to her birthplace. Tlaib claims she was born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrant parents in 1976. It’s weird that Reuters said “missing context,” not “false.”

USA Today‘s fact-check squad published a post headlined “Video shows Rashida Tlaib protesting Trump in 2016, not backing Hamas.” They reported, “Tlaib was not protesting in support of Hamas. That video is seven years old and was taken at an event for former President Donald Trump.”

What makes this fact check strange is that they noted, “the House voted to censure her on Nov. 7 for comments she made in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel,” but they left out the “unbelievable falsehoods” part of that resolution.

On the day before Tlaib’s censure, Washington Examiner commentator Zachary Faria did a fact check on the genocide talk. It started with U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) tweeting, “Rashida Tlaib is calling for the genocide of the Jewish people.” U.S. Representative Cori Bush (D-MO) responded by saying, “This is a lie. This rhetoric is dangerous and needs to stop. This endangers the life of Rashida and Palestinians standing up for their liberation everywhere.” Faria ruled “Bush’s pants are on fire.”

Tlaib tweeted a video on Nov. 3 touting protesters chanting “from the river to the sea” and “no peace on stolen land.” It began with Biden proclaiming, “We stand with Israel” and ended with the claim that “Joe Biden supported the genocide of the Palestinian people.” All the Biden-defending fact-checkers failed to pounce on Tlaib for that!

Tim Graham is Executive Editor of NewsBusters and host of the NewsBusters Podcast. His career at the Media Research Center began in February 1989 as associate editor of MediaWatch, the monthly newsletter of the MRC before the Internet era.