Patton: Speakers Fact Checked At Republican Convention

The Republican National Convention has turned into a Hillary Clinton Hate Fest. Platform planks. civility, and political issues are ignored as the delegates express gavel-to-gavel hostility toward Hillary. Why? For 25 years, Republicans have been trying to destroy Hillary's political career. And, after 25 years, they have nothing to show for it. No indictments. No convictions. Nothing.

So the intense frustration among the delegates created by their failure to get Hillary is palpable. Repeated choruses of "lock her up" rang throughout the arena. The frenzy spread to the speakers whose remarks were long on vehemence, but short on facts.

PolitiFact is a well-respected fact-checking enterprise sponsored by the Tampa Bay Times. Political statements are examined for truthfulness and then judged by a three-person panel to be (a) true, (b) mostly true, (c) half-true (or, alternatively, half-false), (d) mostly false, (e) false, or (f) "pants on fire" lies.

PolitiFact examined 17 statements made by prominent Republicans during the first two nights of the Republican National Convention (PolitiFact, 7/18/2016, 7/19/2016) One claim was judged to be true; one was mostly true; three were half true (or half false); five were mostly false; five were false; and two were "pants on fire" lies.

In short, 12 of the 17 statements, or well over one-half of them, were rated as mostly false, false, or "pants on fire" lies. Apparently, not only in war, but also in political conventions, the first casualty is the truth.

What were some of the more egregious falsehoods told by GOP speakers? Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, "You know Donald Trump will secure our borders. His opponent has had her chance to do this and she has failed. Hillary Clinton is for 'open borders.'"

PolitiFact responded," We rated Giuliani's claim False, because Clinton's policies do not support the type of free-for-all 'open borders' suggests."

The first night of the convention ended with allegations that Melania Trump had plagiarized parts of her speech from one previously given by Michele Obama. "Turnitin, a California-based company, uses a computer algorithm to automatically vet submitted writing for any matches that could amount to plagiarism. Following the controversy Monday, the company used that tool to analyze (Melania) Trump’s Republican National Convention speech. . . Chris Harrick, Turnitin vice president of marketing, told The Hill on Tuesday that 6 percent of Trump’s speech was determined to have language that matched with other existing text. All 6 percent came from Obama’s 2008 speech at the Democratic National Convention.

"Harrick noted that the company does not play 'judge and jury' on whether something was plagiarized, but the odds that Trump’s speech did not include plagiarized content are effectively a mathematical impossibility." (The Hill, 7/19/2016).

Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager, responded to the plagiarism allegations by claiming that Hillary Clinton's campaign was involved since it was the first to claim there was something suspicious about Melania's speech.

Politifact responded "As it turns out, the Clinton campaign was not the first to break the story. Instead, it was Jarrett Hill, a Los Angeles-based Twitter user who describes himself as an interior designer and a journalist. Hill has no connections to the Clinton campaign, he told PolitiFact . . .We rated (Manafort's) claim as False."

Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy claimed "Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have left us with $19 trillion in debt."

PolitiFact judged this charge to be Mostly False. "The U.S. debt number is correct, but we noted several problems with this claim. About half that debt was from before Obama took office. Given that Obama took over during a recession, the debt was bound to go up no matter what he did, experts said. . . Attributing debt to Clinton is also problematic, because the secretary of state has a very limited role in deciding issues of fiscal policy."

Actor Antonio Sabato Jr. questioned Obama's religion, saying "the president is 'absolutely' a Muslim. . . We had a Muslim president for seven and a half years."

PolitiFact rated Sabato's statement a "Pants on Fire" Lie. Wrote PolitiFact, "There is an extensive history of Obama's Christian past, including his conversion as a community organizer in Chicago."

Trump himself is fond of calling Clinton, "Lyin' Hillary." The great irony in all of this is that PolitiFact has noted that Trump's statements are honeycombed with falsehoods and gave him its "Lie of the Year" Award. Apparently, there is something spreading from Trump to the delegates at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and that is a complete and utter disdain for the truth.

Gary Patton is the author of two books, Selling Mt. Washington, a political satire, and Outtastatahs: Newcomers' Adventures in New Hampshire, a work of regional humor.