Fact checker Glenn Kessler gives Bernie 3 pinocchios
Fact Checker
Bernie Sanders’s claim that Hillary Clinton objected to meeting with ‘our enemies'
By Glenn Kessler February 12 at 2:56 PM
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The Pinocchio Test
Sanders stated that Clinton in that debate opposed any discussions with “our enemies.” But, in fact, she objected to any presidential meetings in the first year without preconditions, as she correctly stated. Moreover, as she noted, the approach Clinton outlined in the campaign turned out to be the one used by the Obama administration.
Obama did not meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after he took office, though he did give U.S. diplomats more freedom to meet with Iranian officials than under the George W. Bush administration. A phone call between Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani did not take place until 2013, when the two sides were deep in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. In other words, preconditions were set — and met — before a high-level conversation.
Similarly, Obama did not have a substantive meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro (in 2015) until the two countries reached an agreement on normalizing relations, which included the release of an American detainee.
Obama and Rouhani have never met, but that has not stopped opponents of Obama’s diplomacy from photoshopping images of an alleged meeting.
Sanders earns Three Pinocchios. Clinton and Obama differed over whether to set preconditions, not about meeting with enemies. And it turns out that once in office, Obama followed the course suggested by Clinton, abandoning his earlier position as unrealistic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/12/bernie-sanderss-claim-that-hillary-clinton-objected-to-meeting-with-our-enemies/
Three Pinocchios
Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions. This gets into the realm of “mostly false.” But it could include statements which are technically correct (such as based on official government data) but are so taken out of context as to be very misleading. The line between Two and Three can be bit fuzzy and we do not award half-Pinocchios. So we strive to explain the factors that tipped us toward a Three.
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