On Friday, liberals on social media and several news outlets mocked Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch because they believed he had said that the seasonal flu kills “hundreds of thousands” annually in the United States during oral arguments for Joe Biden vaccine mandates.
However, he said no such thing, as audio of the statement clearly proves. Many believed he had said this because of an error in the official transcript, and the allegations against Gorsuch went viral.
On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a corrected transcript, which now accurately quotes Gorsuch as saying he believes the seasonal flu kills “hundreds, thousands of people every year.”
Related: Justice Sotomayor Told a Huge Whopper About Kids and COVID
“We have vaccines against that — that, but the federal government through OSHA, so far as I know, and you can correct me, does not mandate every worker in the country to receive such a vaccine,” Gorsuch said Friday. “We have flu vaccines. The flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year. OSHA has never purported to regulate on that basis.”
The transcription error has been fixed.https://t.co/7CYHnOlUZu https://t.co/jsEaEG6phr pic.twitter.com/bE6rkvlw3X
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) January 10, 2022
Some purveyors of the false Gorsuch quote seem to be unwilling to admit they were wrong, relying solely on the incorrect transcript and ignoring the audio, such as Elie Mystal, the justice correspondent for The Nation, who pounced on the false quote on Friday.
Gorsuch: "the flu kills hundreds of thousands of people every year"
NO IT DOES NOT. STOP GETTING YOUR MEDICAL STATS FROM FOX NEWS.
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) January 7, 2022
Even after the error was acknowledged and the transcript was fixed, Mystal still thinks Gorsuch was wrong.
“Soo… that actual argument from Republicans today is that Gorsuch didn’t say ‘hundreds of thousands’ of flu deaths (which is wrong) but said ‘hundreds, thousands’ of flu deaths (WHICH IS ALSO WRONG),” he tweeted Monday afternoon.
Soo… that actual argument from Republicans today is that Gorsuch didn't say "hundreds of thousands" of flu deaths (which is wrong) but said "hundreds, thousands" of flu deaths (WHICH IS ALSO WRONG).
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) January 10, 2022
However, Newsweek, which published an article criticizing Gorsuch for getting the figures of flu deaths wrong has since revised their article, acknowledging the error, noting that indeed, “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the flu kills between 12,000 and 52,000 Americans annually.”
Gorsuch was right. The left was wrong.
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