Right-wing media outlets get called out out for pushing an invented anti-Pelosi story

Conservative writer Jim Swift, a alum of the Weekly Standard who now writes at The Bulwark, has written a comprehensive takedown of right-wing media outlets straight-up inventing a story about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Over the last week, conservative outlets ranging from the Trump-aligned Big League Media to the more respectable Washington Examiner have pushed a story about Pelosi buying a $25 million mansion in Florida, despite the fact that there's no evidence she's done so.

"The lib-owning idea went something like this: Nancy Pelosi and her ilk have overreacted to COVID-19 at every turn," writes Swift. "Ron DeSantis is a freedom loving governor of the greatest state in America. And now Pelosi was all but admitting that DeSantis was right by spending $25 million on Florida real estate. What an elitist hypocrite!"

Swift looked into the sourcing of the Pelosi house story, however, and found it to be tissue-thin, including one report that relied on "several south Florida Twitter users" who claimed that they had "sources confirming that Pelosi is in fact buying the house."

Swift noted that a reporter at Realtor.com did the hard work of actually making phone calls and looking up records -- instead of relying on "South Florida Twitter users" -- and they discovered there was no truth to the story at all.

"I’m sure the corrections and apologies will be flooding in now that Realtor.com has done the shoeleather journalism to debunk this wildly false claim," Swift commented sarcastically.