Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler apparently couldn’t find anything better from the Women’s March to fact-check this weekend, because he took an obvious exaggeration literally.
At the march, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., criticized President Trump’s nominee to lead the Education Department, Betsy DeVos, calling her “a billionaire who he is picking to head Education who has never seen the inside of a classroom.”
It’s pretty clear Waters was not literally claiming that DeVos has never seen the inside of a classroom. Did anyone really think Waters was claiming DeVos never went to school, never visited her mother’s classrooms when she was growing up, or never visited her children’s classrooms?
To be fair, Kessler did say even if Waters was being hyperbolic, her comment was still excessive. “If she was trying to say DeVos had never been an educator, she still went too far,” Kessler wrote. “This kind of over-the-top rhetoric earns Four Pinocchios.”
While it’s nice to see Kessler showing partisan balance, he’s taking Waters too literally, but not seriously.
Perhaps instead of fact-checking an obviously figurative comment, he should have re-used some of his fact-checking on the gender pay gap.
Jason Russell is the contributors editor for the Washington Examiner.
