Elon Musk says 'fact checkers' are 'in fact some of the biggest liars'

Elon Musk made it clear that he is no fan of many of the self-proclaimed "fact checkers" that are commonly promoted by legacy media outlets and social media platforms alike; the tech mogul said such people are "in fact some of the biggest liars."

Musk's comments came after X user @alx made a proposition that those who get tagged by X's 'Community Notes' notification for lacking key context in various posts have a clown emoji slapped by their name for two weeks.

"If you get shamed by@CommunityNotes three times in a week like @GlennKesslerWP, your Verified Check becomes a Clown Emoji for Two weeks," he posted online. "Thoughts? cc: @Elonmusk."

"Great idea," Musk responded along with a crying and laughing emoji. "It is interesting to see how many so-called 'fact checkers' are in fact some of the biggest liars."

It is no secret that many of these, as Musk describes them, "so-called 'fact checkers'" present quite a dishonest track record. Take for instance PolitiFact, which posted a "fact-check" on an article by conservative commentator Mark Levin titled, "‘America is dead’—Joe Biden actually said this at his Iowa rally." According to the organization, the article lacked "context" because Biden was talking about the Covid-19 death toll rather than the death of the United States.

There is just one problem—Levin's article quite literally quotes Biden as having been speaking about Covid-19. In other words, the "context" was there the entire time.

It is a well-known fact that Politifact is partnered with Facebook, a social media company that has routinely censored information that goes against its political interests. 

The Post Millennial was similarly hit with a "fact check" after USA Today accused it of putting out an article with "missing context." The piece in question had correctly quoted a moment when Joe Biden had referred to a group of American military troops as "stupid bastards" back in 2016.

What was USA Today's reason for the dishonest label? According to the outlet, Biden did make the "stupid bastards" comment, but had done so in a joking manner. This is the "context" that was supposedly left out—an opinion about whether or not Biden's comments were meant to be funny.
 

USA Today was called out for a "fact check" in 2021 after saying that Biden had only checked his watch a single time during a transfer ceremony of the remains of the 13 US service members killed in Afghanistan, when family members of the fallen said they saw Biden check his watch multiple times during the ceremony. That fact check was later retracted.