Earlier this week, Politico made a horrible attempt to attack Justice Clarence Thomas in a hastily written “fact-check” that turned out to be false.
According to Politico, Thomas claimed that COVID-19 vaccines were developed from cells from aborted children, a claim Politico insisted was false.
“They object on religious grounds to all available COVID-19 vaccines because they were developed using cell lines derived from aborted children,” Thomas said in a quote cited by Politico. In response to this claim, Politico insisted, “None of the Covid-19 vaccines in the United States contain the cells of aborted fetuses.”
There were, however, two problems with this so-called fact check.
First, Thomas didn’t actually make the statement. Politico eventually learned this and issued a correction:
An earlier version of this report misattributed the claim that Covid-19 vaccines were “developed using cell lines derived from aborted children” to Thomas. The headline and article have been updated to directly state that Thomas was referencing petitioners’ claims.
The next problem is that the claim wasn’t that the vaccine contained cells from aborted fetuses. It’s that these cells were used in the development of the vaccines—which is factually correct, and even Politico acknowledges this in the following sentence after claiming it was false.
None of the Covid-19 vaccines in the United States contain the cells of aborted fetuses. Cells obtained from elective abortions decades ago were used in research during the development of the Covid vaccine, a practice that is common in vaccine research.
Regardless of who claimed how the vaccines were developed, the claim wasn’t that they contain cells of aborted fetuses; it was about how the vaccines were developed. This correction about who said what is really beside the point. No one said the vaccines “contain the cells of aborted fetuses,” as Politico implies. They were trying to destroy Clarence Thomas and didn’t care about the facts, so they falsely attributed a claim to him and then distorted the claim to suggest it was wrong.
Related: White CNN Host: ‘Why Have You Never Seen Clarence Thomas at an NBA Game?’
While we would call this misinformation, the left calls it journalism—because any hit piece against a conservative doesn’t have to be true. So they will continue to get away with it unless we call them out.
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