Those Factist™ Facts

I think everyone knows that The Reframe is free for all readers, because I know that for many, times are hard and getting harder all the time, and I don't want to paywall content for people who might glean some modest enjoyment or edification from my work.

However, I am delighted to inform you that The Reframe has just secured a major bag! I've been approached by [billionaire slush fund redacted due to terms of NDA] to provide fact-checking services to combat all the information that's swirling around out there like so much swirling information. (These are the crisp metaphors you've come to expect from me over the years.) Apparently Donald Trump and his creepy bearded incel of a running mate have created so many claims to check that the usual sites can't keep up with the volume, and when [billionaire redacted] approached me, I immediately told him that I could cover the difference. (I told him I'm using an AI called FastCheck®, which really excited him, but between us friends, FastCheck® is just me typing with my finger-bones. Don't snitch on me, OK?)

Now, we all know that facts are tough and tricky things. [Billionaire slush fund redacted] understands this, and so do I—particularly now that his first check has cleared. Everyone's got their own opinion, and happily, modern journalism has evolved to an enlightened place and so it realizes it would be extremely wrong and biased for anyone in the business of news or punditry to put our "fingers" on the "scale," so to speak, and try to sway public opinion by adjudicating between opinions that are based in provable evidence or observable fact, and opinions that are based on whatever fever-brained nonsense Donald Trump or JD Vance are saying right now, things that good hardworking regular people very much want to believe, and would like links they can put into social media to defend themselves for having done so. What's needed is skepticism to level true things down and credulity to prop up lies and bullshit, so we can have a nice even balance.

After all, many people's opinions, while technically untrue, are true, in the sense that there truly are people who truly do hold them. Who are we, as pundits and journalists, to come in with our elitist evidence and truth and tell them that they are wrong? is the sort of question I'm going to pose without actually considering what the answer might be or should be.

And this, I think, is what's needed: a service that provides fact checks as fast as possible, converting claims from questions of true or false into exactly those sorts of unanswerable questions, designed not to point toward answers but to suggest we should stop seeking answers immediately, fact checks designed not to resolve things in favor of the truth, but to replace answerable questions with the lingering sort that can hang around always asked but never answered within the political atmosphere like so much CO2. And, most importantly, we need a service to convert these fact checks into actual checks—pay checks, in fact, for me. So now [billionaire redacted] is paying me [absurdly inflated amount redacted] to fact-check a series of claims by or about Trump and Vance and reduce them into a sort of undifferentiated fact slurry; fact-ish facts, that put true things and false things on a more equal footing and deliver a more balanced journalism. We might call them factist.

Ooh. I'm trademarking that. Don't use that. That's mine.

Anyway, without further ado, I've been given a number of claims to fact check with FastCheck®, in order to make them appropriately factist™.

THE CLAIM: Donald Trump referred to his political opponents as "vermin" who are "poisoning the blood of the country," echoing the exact words used by Adolf Hitler.

THE FASTCHECK®: There's a mixture of fact and false in this claim. On the one hand, Trump did make these statements using these exact words, on many occasions. And it is also true that these statements are identical to phrases and words used by Adolf Hitler to demonize the minority groups his government went on to mass murder. On the other hand, this set of facts being true is potentially very damaging politically to Donald Trump, so calling it a true statement would upset the political balance of our coverage. What I'd like to ask is, while it is an empirical historical fact that both Trump and Hitler said these things ... is it?

FACTIST™ RATING: Mostly false

THE CLAIM: JD Vance made sexist statements that females who “passed the biological period when it was possible” are “miserable” people who “have no real value system” and struggle to find “meaning," and he also called them "cat ladies."

THE FASTCHECK®: Yes, Vance did say this. And many women are claiming that they got their feelings all hurt about it because according to them this is sexist somehow. However, after saying these exact words (but before saying it another thirty-seven times on separate occasions), Vance said he was just joking and that he was not sorry for telling a joke. FastCheck® would like to suggest it's time to stop all these witch-hunts over comedy. I mean, do we want to prosecute people and execute them over a joke?

Come on, people.

On the other hand, it is true that some of you ladies own cats.

FACTIST™ RATING: 17 out of 18 Truth-Oopsies™

THE CLAIM: According to Trump, Kamala Harris "happened to turn black" just to gain political advantage.

THE FASTCHECK®: Some truth and some falsehood, as usual with our little rascal Trump. It's true that Trump said it. Sure. And yes, while the claim is racist as all shit, drawing from long-standing white supremacist notions of racial identity, and is like all white supremacy also total nonsense, I'd like to end this sentence now. On the other hand, before you get all persnickety, please understand, most conservative white Christians truly believe these things, and conservative white Christians are the most important people in society, if you look at how our institutions treat them or how our government is organized. There is nothing, literally nothing, more important than hearing and validating the opinions of conservative white Christians. Their opinions are sort of automatically facts in a way that supersedes truth or fiction, and if we treat conservative white Christian beliefs as if they aren't facts for no better reason than the fact that they aren't facts, then where does it all end? is another question I'd like to pose without even briefly trying to seek an answer.

FACTIST™ RATING: If you are not a white Christian nationalist, this is False. If you are a white Christian nationalist, it's True and please don't bomb our building.

THE CLAIM: Donald Trump repeatedly came to the defense of both the rhetorical goals and the violent acts of the white supremacists who invaded Charlottesville under the banner of Unite The Right, first by insisting that the Nazis' pro-slavery goals were defensible and that the counter-protesters who were equally responsible for the white supremacist violence that ensued, and then later by creating the fiction that there were non-white supremacists among Unite The Right, and claiming that those (non-existent) non-Nazi marchers were the "very fine people" to be found among the Nazis, and many people understand that all these bullshit claims and equivocations redound to clear defense of both the Nazis and the Nazis goals, even if they were peppered with some prepared and reluctantly delivered statements that did condemn Nazis—which were statements that run counter to everything else Trump did and said over the course of those days, and also over the course of his entire presidency, and also over the course of his entire life.

THE FASTCHECK®: OK, this is bad, and it was televised so everyone really did see it. Hmmm. What I think we ought to do is just answer a different and very specifically-worded question that addresses a claim nobody is making, answering a question nobody is asking.

FACTIST™ RATING: No, Donald Trump did not say (in public) that all Nazis throughout history are very fine people. Just copy and paste this wherever you need it.

THE CLAIM: The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 represents a real threat to end democracy and install a theocratic autocracy, one that is closely associated with Donald Trump, given the close ties of its architects to members of Trump's former presidential staff, and given the claims and assurances of those architects, and given the role of The Heritage Foundation in driving Republican policy, and given Project 2025's very detailed and publicly available plans, and given Trump's own rhetoric, political record, and history of aligning with autocrats and attempting to overturn elections.

THE FASTCHECK®: All this is true. Sure. Fine. However, despite all the available evidence and clearly observable trends of what the conservative movement has said and done over the last half-century, Donald Trump did take a break from a busy schedule of saying things that are 100% aligned with Project 2025's goals (which again are available for anybody to read) to say that he repudiated it, much like he has repudiated other things that he is completely aligned with and otherwise supportive of, like Nazis in Charlottesville and other places.

Also, we would be remiss if we didn't also point out that it is at least hypothetically true that it is possible that at some point in the future, Donald Trump will become a completely different person with a different personality and different goals, transforming himself into the sort of statesman that we at FastCheck® openly wish he was and are pretending he is, on the thin possibility that someday it might happen.

FACTIST™ RATING: Technically true in the sense that it is true ... but false in the sense that there were definite take-backsies, and also what if it wasn't true?

THE CLAIM: Tim Walz said that he was playing with his dog, but after he posted a picture of himself playing with his dog, he posted a photograph of himself playing with a different dog.

THE FASTCHECK®: Wait ... what? Is this really all we have on this dude? Jesus, guys. OK. I mean, I'll do what I can.

FACTIST™ RATING: Tim Walz is lying based on (note to self fill something in here later when you checking for spelling and gammar).

This is serious stuff. Dog lies are the worst of all lies.

Walz must diminish and go into the West and remain Galadriel.

THE CLAIM: Trump’s lies total 30,573 over the 4 years of his presidency.

THE FASTCHECK®: The count of falsehoods is documented and correct. However, there is no way to tell if Trump is lying, because for somebody to lie they must be aware of the truth and deliberately say something else with the intention of deception, and because there is no way to read minds, we have no proof that Trump is aware of anything or what his intentions might be, other than our ability to remember things that happened and recognize clear patterns. Additionally, many of our leading philosophers and theoretical physicists now believe there is no such thing as free will, so we must question whether intention or awareness even exist and if lies are even possible when Republicans tell them.

FACTIST™ RATING: Entirely False

THE CLAIM: Donald Trump is repeatedly found in Jeffrey Epstein's flight logs. Also he is a convicted felon. Also he is an adjudicated rapist. Also he took a $10 million bribe from the Egyptian government. Also he is twice impeached. Also he desecrated the Arlington National Cemetery for a photo op. Also—

THE FASTCHECK®: Hey, look over there!

FACTIST™RATING: Joe Biden is very old. Is that one not still working? Turn it off and turn it back on again. Blow on the cartridge.

THE CLAIM: Semi-known author A.R. Moxon has been paid an exorbitant amount of money by an unnamed billionaire to inject misinformation and lies into the political ecosystem under the guise of fact-checking, in order to sow confusion and, far more importantly, to corrode the very idea that facts are checkable.

THE FASTCHECK®: What is all this? I don't have to stand for these sort of unfounded rumors and grotesque calumny! I don't have time for this slander! I have massive fact-checks from [billionaire redacted] to cash!

FACTIST™ RATING: This article is over!

My book of essays, Very Fine People, is now available everywhere books are sold. Click the link for signed personalized copies or direct purchase.

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A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries, and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He's not gonna let you catch him, no, not gonna let you catch the midnight rider.