The Washington Post on Friday gave the White House a rating of "mostly false" — Three Pinocchios — for its claim that House Republicans voted to eliminate 2,000 Border Patrol agents.
The findings from the left-leaning Post inspired House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La, to send out an email blast on Friday touting the analysis.
"Washington Post fact check finds White House deliberately misrepresented House GOP position on hiring border patrol agents in an attempt to deflect from their own disastrous record and culpability for the border crisis," Johnson's email intro began before he pasted the entire story that took the White House to task.
The Post began its analysis with four different times over the span of a week (Jan. 3-10) that the White House repeated the inaccurate claim in an attempt to shift blame of the border crisis to House Republicans.
But the Post called out the Biden administration for its spin and fuzzy match.
"When it came to an actual vote for border security, the House in September passed an appropriations bill that funded an additional 1,795 Border Patrol agents. That was four times the increase (350 agents) that President Biden had requested in his own 2024 budget proposal," the Post wrote.
And for that, the Post issued Three Pinocchios — "significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions," according to its rating system.
"The White House is going too far here," the Post said in its analysis. "House Republicans once may have backed a tough budget plan but they never cast a vote that specified they would cut 2,000 Border Patrol agents; instead, they have voted to increase the total by nearly 2,000. That's spin worthy of Three Pinocchios.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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