How You Can Automatically Fact-Check Donald Trump's Lies
Since his tiny hands first signed up for the site, President-elect Donald Trump’s Twitter account has been spewing misleading, flat-out inaccurate rants with no end in sight. Before the election, he was slinging racist and plain false statistics about African-American crime rates and his imaginary opposition to the Iraq War; after the election, his so-called “landslide” electoral victory. The bottomline, in case you’re brand-fucking-new to the internet: Trump tells a lot of lies on Twitter. Seeing through the lies is pretty easy, but with dishonest tweet after dishonest tweet, the laborious task of fact-checking the madman sure adds up, so treat yourself to this delightful new Chrome extension that fact-checks Trump’s tweets for you.
The extension was created by The Washington Post and cites the Post’s articles while fact-checking. It assumes a high task, that’s for sure. Much is rightfully made of the great horror that is robots and the automation coming for retail, fast food, and driving jobs, but it’s safe to say that fact-checking a chronic, impulsive liar — saving you a few tiresome Google searches (“Did Trump really oppose the Iraq War?,” “Was Alicia Machado really in a sex tape?,” “Did millions really vote illegally in 2016 election?,” etc.) — is one job we’re more than happy to hand over to them.
Here’s a glimpse of what Trump’s tweets will look like on Chrome with the life-saving extension installed:
The Washington Post has created a Google Chrome extension that fact-checks @realDonaldTrump tweets https://t.co/bZ5qZCplvUpic.twitter.com/cA6OYM5bEu
— Wired UK (@WiredUK) December 19, 2016
Unfortunately, the extension is still a bit of a work in progress, according to The Post. Fact-checking isn’t instantaneous and could take a little patience on users’ ends. “It’s still in the early stages, but our goal is to provide additional context where needed for Trump’s tweets moving forward (and a few golden oldies),” the paper wrote in its introduction of the extension.
Sometimes, in the rare instances when Trump isn’t spewing blatant lies, The Post notes that the extension will add important “context.” For example, it could add the relevant, unsettling details about Rex Tillerson’s ties to Russia to Trump’s tweet announcing Tillerson as his pick for secretary of state. What a delight it will be to pour through all those tweets about how great he will be for women with the added context of his self-admitted tendency to grope them and all the sexual assault allegations against him.
Trump is notorious for many things: bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, and ultimately, his apparent absolute inability to tell the truth. It’s unlikely that those who support him will actually install or utilize the extension, preferring to live in his world of delusions, but for everyone else who’s wary of his lies but too burnt out to fact-check themselves, install the app here and indulge in an early Christmas gift for yourself.
