Fact-Checking the Democratic Presidential Debate

[LiberalArkie]

De­bate night is a great night to tell a lie: With mil­lions of po­ten­tial voters tun­ing in, and with most of them lack­ing the re­sources to sep­ar­ate fact from fic­tion in real time, the risk of get­ting called out for mis­in­form­a­tion pales in com­par­is­on to the re­ward for mak­ing a splash. With that cal­cu­lus in mind, how far from the truth did the Demo­crat­ic can­did­ates stray Tues­day night in Las Ve­gas? Na­tion­al Journ­al kept score.

CLAIM: “I did say when I was sec­ret­ary of State three years ago that I hoped [the Trans-Pa­cific Part­ner­ship] would be the gold stand­ard.”—Hil­lary Clin­ton

VER­DICT: That’s not quite what she said, and the dif­fer­ence mat­ters.

The de­bate opened with An­der­son Cooper ac­cus­ing Hil­lary Clin­ton of flip-flop­ping on the Trans-Pa­cific Part­ner­ship for polit­ic­al ex­pedi­ency: “[You have ex­pressed] sup­port for these trade deals dozens of times—you called it the ‘gold stand­ard’—now you said last week that you’re against it,” said Cooper. “Will you say any­thing to get elec­ted?”


http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/89996/fact-checking-democratic-presidential-debate