This week, the surprise announcement was made that among the big names jumping from the sinking ship that is the Washington Post was the longtime fact-checker extraordinaire, Glenn Kessler. He decided that after a 27-year tenure at the paper, he was going to accept the buyout offer that the new management put forth for those who could not tolerate the editorial shifts proposed to keep the paper functioning. 

In my Townhall media column, I use one category to feature flawed corrections called “Body Checking The Fact Checkers,” displaying the biased manipulations of the “truth” by these arbiters of accuracy. Glenn Kessler has been a frequent entrant with his consistent desire to shield Democrats and come out against Donald Trump and the Republicans. Bonchie brought a few of the receipts to show Kessler’s slanted work, but this day deserves a career retrospective to fully appreciate his body (corpse) of work.

Glenn was at the forefront of tabulating Trump’s alleged lies in his first term in office, and like the others, he would inflate the total by recounting any time Trump repeated the same disputed claim. As Tim Graham noted in one example, Glenn claimed Trump “lied” about blacks having the lowest unemployment rate in history, calling it false because that data only began being measured in the 1970s. Then he took that weak-tea “debunked” ruling to count every time Trump ”lied” about it – 80 times.

Then, Mr. Kessler was seen pulling the exact opposite during the Joe Biden years. As his 2021 term began, Kessler famously announced he was suspending the lie tracker for President Silver Alert, because he was simply convinced that Biden would be more honest. Imagine our surprise to learn his job was to compile statistics to determine who “wins,” not analyze the facts. But how convenient was it that he knew ahead that Biden would not be delivering deception?

Here’s the Biden database — which we do not plan to extend beyond 100 days. I have learned my lesson. https://t.co/qK42PRlnrS

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) April 27, 2021

Then he went further with his warped approach, employing another fact-checker tactic. Much like the New York Times did when concluding the lying recidivism from Joe Biden made him merely the “Storyteller in Chief,” Kessler also addressed Biden’s lies in a rather novel fashion: They were not in fact lies. He drew up a lengthy column tabulating myths and provably artificial stories and boasts, and then cracked open the thesaurus to reframe the lies. Behold this list of descriptors of Biden comments Kessler went with:

“Aren’t credible / likes to tell stories / propensity to exaggerate / embellish tales / doubts about his truthfulness / his version / personal tales / cannot be verified / refuted by contemporary accounts / implausible story / claims / story has evolved / did not add up / amended his statement / not plausible”

And there you have it: If you do not classify those deceptions as “lies,” they do not get counted, and therefore, he lies far less often. Also like the Times, Glenn compiles a laundry list of falsehoods from Biden into a solitary article, yet in regards to Trump, that list alone would constitute 15 different fact-checks, and any repetitive use of the exact same comment would be counted independently. 

But Glenn truly shone with his tortured explanations in his fact-checks. Creatively calibrating details, adding more context, redefining terms, interpreting intent, and any other tool of subjectivity could be applied to what was allegedly a hard analysis of truth. Then, of course, there were those precious moments when the viscount of verite’ – who by definition was the final word on accuracy – would struggle getting the facts correct.

One notable lowlight was when he tried to dispel the claim that George Soros backed the campaign of Alvin Bragg. Glenn’s reasoning that Soros gave a large sum to a PAC, which then gave that exact amount to Bragg’s campaign, exonerated Soros of involvement. After he was shown on Xitter to have gotten the facts wrong, he lashed out at what he called “Twitter trolls” and was promptly corrected by Community Notes for getting facts incorrect two additional times. 

Twitter trolls who posted a “community note” to this tweet apparently have not read the actual fact check. Click the link and you will find that Color of Change did not spend $1 million in independent expenditures on Bragg, as people often claim. https://t.co/fCJVrCrvyW

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) April 1, 2023

Glenn has declared that illegal immigrants cause less crime while ignoring that, by being illegals, they sit with a rate of 100%. He called it inaccurate that FEMA paid a fortune to house illegals in hotels when the agency displayed that very fact on its website. During the campaign, he denied Kamala Harris wanted to cut the consumption of red meat, then went on to show she essentially said that very thing. He called it false when Ron DeSantis said Democrats favored late-term abortion, but did not disprove him; all he managed was to say that the procedure was rarely performed.

One other hallmark of Kessler’s career was how often his definitive final reports on the facts needed to be readdressed – when shown to be factually incorrect. In one case of trying to defend Biden from the GOP for quoting him directly, Kessler tried to say there was an edit in the video changing the context – when there was not. He then sheepishly gave the full quote and told people to figure it out for themselves. In…a supposed fact-check. He took on the role of an internet troll, making an audacious claim, and when asked for proof tells people to “go Google it and find out.”

Of course, he was on the front lines defending Joe Biden from accurate reports of mental decline, becoming further inconsequential when he was among those pimping the “cheap fakes videos” canard. He ridiculed Ted Cruz for pushing the Covid lab leak theory as an impossibility, yet later had to assert that it had become credible. Then the facts authority outdid himself, by declaring it was Donald Trump’s fault that Glenn had not done his job: “The Trump administration’s messaging was often accompanied by anti-Chinese rhetoric that made it easier for skeptics to ignore its claims.”

Obviously Kessler was on the side of denying the Hunter Biden laptop, but even while following the lead of the rest of the press, he managed to distinguish himself. First, he admitted that he had not explored the details of the laptop when he stated, “Recently, a reader directed our attention” to a report about its contents. Then, when he grudgingly began to peer into the matter, he came up with his neutered conclusion: “When we looked into it, there was less to the story than one might imagine.”

We close this incomplete tribute out with a grand example of his hackery. While it is difficult to choose, I consider this one a personal favorite. Kessler made a grand effort to defend Pete Buttigieg after the Transportation Secretary made the oddball statement that bridges in New York were racist, as they were allegedly built lower to keep minority residents away from public beaches. We received Glenn’s support for the comment by referencing a biography of the then-city planner, Robert Moses. In describing “The Power Broker,” Kessler described the book as a “majestic biography” and indicated he had read it in a rave review: “Easily one of the best non-fiction books ever written.”

Then Glenn was contacted by historians who informed him that the details inside the biography were considered inaccurate and that this majestic work, ranking among the best ever published, was essentially disregarded these days. 

ICYMI – We were too quick to cite Caro’s work as definitive. Experts increasingly doubt the story …. Robert Moses and the saga of the racist parkway bridges https://t.co/xJxshDUKXC

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) November 10, 2021

It serves as definitive evidence of the craftsmanship seen in Glenn’s work. It is all on display there: the reactionary defense of the Democrats, the snide references to critics on the right, the pompous citing of dubious sourcing, and the definitive declarations of inaccuracies…followed by a meek and less enthusiastic correction.

But what was on display was the fluid foundation of most of Glenn Kessler’s fact-checks. While he was tasked with delivering the final say on accuracy and evidentiary rectitude, he would instead begin from a stance of partisan application, only to later be undermined by the very thing his job title stipulated – the arrival of the facts.