Obama’s Fake Hayes Quote
President Obama unjustly criticized a dead Republican president — Rutherford B. Hayes — by putting words in Hayes’ mouth that he never uttered.
Obama, speaking about his energy policies at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Md., said:
Obama, March 15: There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don’t believe in the future, and don’t believe in trying to do things differently. One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone,
FactCheck Mailbag, Week of March 6-12
This week, readers sent us more letters about Democrats’ claims that Republicans want to “end Medicare,” and the difference between “lies” and “whoppers.”
In the FactCheck Mailbag, we feature some of the email we receive. Readers can send comments to editor@factcheck.org. Letters may be edited for length.
Romney: Foggy on FactCheck
Mitt Romney is a little unclear on the facts when it comes to FactCheck.org — and what we and other fact-checkers have said about Rick Santorum.
In the same CNN interview in which he made a somewhat premature claim that Santorum was at the “desperate end” of his campaign (just before returns came in showing Santorum had won and Romney had come in third in both the Alabama and Mississippi primaries), he said:
Romney, March 13: Well,
Tea Party’s Targets
Tea party-aligned FreedomWorks for America has launched campaigns against several Republicans whom it deems too moderate, including Senate veterans Orrin Hatch and Richard Lugar. But some of the group’s claims miss the mark. A TV ad targeting Hatch …
Santorum’s Science
Rick Santorum calls global warming a “hoax.” If he were a scientist, he would be in a small minority.
“The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is,” Santorum said at the Gulf Coast Energy Summit in Biloxi, Miss., on March 12. He made similar comments in early February in Colorado Springs, Colo., saying that global warming was a “hoax” and that “man-made global warming” and proposed remedies were “bogus.”
Spotlight On: Jeanie Fusaro
When Jeanie Fusaro received a constituent mailer from her congressman about what’s going on in Washington, she thought: “They think we’re stupid because we’re seniors. They didn’t think we’d do our homework.”
Fusaro, 66, was particularly skeptical of the letter’s statement that reports “predict higher unemployment for the next two years.”
“That automatically incites people,” Fusaro said.
The unemployment claim was one of several misleading statements we found in the mailer Fusaro sent to Spin Detectors.
Bogus Bipartisan Claims
In a mailer to constituents, a Republican congressman claims 27 “bipartisan bills” have passed the House but “hit a brick wall” in the Democratic-controlled Senate. But most of the bills are not very “bipartisan.” A majority of House Democrats voted against all but five of the 27 proposals, sometimes overwhelmingly. One of these “bipartisan bills” had the support of only four Democrats, and another had the support of just eight.
The mailer — sent out by Georgia Rep.
Wrestling with the Truth on Santorum’s Lobbying
The Mitt Romney campaign lifts a Rick Santorum quote out of context to level a charge that Santorum is being untruthful about his lobbying history.
The Romney campaign claims to have caught Santorum being “at odds with the facts” when he told CNN, “I was not a lobbyist.” The Romney camp points to press reports that say Santorum was a lobbyist in Pennsylvania in the late 1980s. However, Santorum’s statement to CNN came in response to a question about his post-Senate career.