Wisconsin Watch and its lead fact-checker, Tom Kertscher, have made a cottage industry out of scrutinizing Republican politicians, including multiple social media posts from U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, Sen. Ron Johnson, and former Gov. Scott Walker. Yet when Tiffany this week highlighted a February 13, 2021, post from Francesca Hong’s own campaign account that read “Abolish the Senate,” the response from the self-appointed fact-checkers showed an apparent willingness to accept the campaign’s claim that Hong never made the statement.
Hong’s campaign accused Tiffany of “inventing quotes” and flatly denied the statement ever existed. Tiffany, refusing to play along, produced the original post—still live for all to see. Meanwhile, the Democratic Socialists of America, whose Wisconsin chapters proudly back Hong, openly call for abolishing the U.S. Senate in their national platform. But apparently, when progressives say the quiet part out loud, the fact-checkers reach for their blindfolds.
This is not a close call. The three words are six syllables long, written by the candidate, and still publicly available. Treating them as somehow “not her position” while surgically dissecting Republican tweets requires a level of selective blindness that borders on the insulting.
Kertscher and Wisconsin Watch have pored over Tiffany’s posts about gray wolves, Afghanistan, and COVID risks to children. Johnson and Walker have had their every utterance put under the microscope. But when a leading Democrat for governor openly calls for scrapping a core constitutional institution, suddenly the fact-checking standard vanishes into thin air.
This is the institutional double standard that has sent public trust in the media plummeting to record lows. The public is not stupid. They see the post, hear the denial, and watch the “professional” fact-checkers bury their heads in the sand. When the same media that nitpicks every Republican word suddenly finds nuance, context, or “aspirational goals” only for progressives, the credibility crisis is entirely of their own making.
Tiffany called it media bias. He is absolutely right. The refusal to hold Hong to the same standard Republicans have faced for years is not journalism—it is the media’s protection racket for progressives. This is exactly why more and more Americans have stopped taking these so-called “fact checks” seriously.
