It wasn’t a nightmare. Donald Trump really did perform that well on Super Tuesday, winning seven states and further cementing his position as Republican presidential front-runner.
Give the dude credit, when he talks, people listen — though not everyone takes his words as fact.
Those seeking refuge from all the hot air Tuesday night had a chance to hear it like it is at a panel of writers and editors for the popular fact-checking site Politifact.
PolitiFact started in late 2007 as a project of the Tampa Bay Times. The idea was to dig through candidate claims and rate the degree of truth they contain using objective facts and data.
They've since fact-checked over 12,000 claims.
At the Palladium Theater in downtown St. Pete Tuesday, at an event sponsored by the St. Petersburg College Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions, a diverse crowd that included millennials and Boomers alike gathered to learn more about the outlet, its processes and the people behind it.
The first website to ever win a Pulitzer prize, PolitiFact can now be found checking facts across 17 states and NBC News.
Their six-point ‘Truth O Meter’ scale runs from "True," "Mostly True," "Half True," "Mostly False," and "False" to everybody’s favorite, "Pants on Fire."
In some circles, it has become synonymous with Trump, given that they've checked so many claims of his (he even won "Lie of the Year" in 2015 because of the sheer volume of bogus claims he's made since he first announced his candidacy last June).
As a totally independent, nonpartisan site, no one is beyond the reach of Politifact, not even everyone’s favorite grandpa, Senator Bernie Sanders, as an example debunking a claim of his to Tuesday's crowd proved.
“We don’t mean to be personal. We are simply holding people accountable,” said PolitiFact executive editor, Aaron Sharockman.
Last night's soiree was as much about congratulating Politifact on a job well done as looking to the future, but it was hard for those in attendance to resist talking Trump.
“Trump is like no one we’ve ever seen in an election campaign,” said editor Angie Drobnic Holan.
Polls and polling place results both suggest that perhaps people don’t really care all that much about facts anymore.
Given the ever-changing landscape of the electorate and the candidates themselves, Politifact is currently on a fundraising mission in order to hire a new fact checker whose sole purpose will be to analyze statements about immigration by the 2016 presidential candidates.
Working in conjunction with journalism crowdfunder beaconreader.com Politifact hopes to raise at least $15,000 from at least 1,000 donors, which beaconreader.com will match. The money will used directly to hire the new fact checker. To contribute, click here.
People, especially you-know-who, can say anything they want these days and supporters will take it as gospel.
Whether it's true or not or whether anyone even cares, at least we can take comfort in the work of the people of Politifact, staffers said, to let us know when it's time to call bullshit.
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 2, 2016.