Facebook Slaps Popular Anti-Trump Ad with 'Partly False' Warning Label
An anti-Trump ad released by the Lincoln Project has been labeled “partly false information” by one of Facebook’s independent fact-checking organizations.
The video was a spoof on Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” ad, and criticized the president for supposedly ignoring the coronavirus pandemic early on.
“Mourning in America” was released by the Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans including George Conway, the husband of counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway.
The warning slapped on the Facebook ad says that it was rated “partly false information” because “the information in this post is a mix of true and false statements or it could simply be incomplete. In some cases, the information is misleading.”
The Lincoln Project’s video criticized President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and said the American economy is “teetering on the verge of a new Great Depression.”
“There’s mourning in America. Today, more than 60,000 Americans have died from a deadly virus Donald Trump ignored,” the video’s narrator said.
“With the economy in shambles, more than 26 million Americans are out of work, the worst economy in decades.”
Facebook’s fact check was provided by PolitiFact, which said the ad was “wrong on several levels” and took particular issue with the ad’s claim that “Trump bailed out Wall Street, but not Main Street.”
“While there have been high-profile examples of larger corporations being awarded loans from a primarily small-business lending program (and sometimes giving them back), this line in the ad is inaccurate,” PolitiFact wrote.
According to Marc Goldwein, the senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the existing coronavirus relief legislation “generally bails out everyone.”
PolitiFact pointed out that any design flaws in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act are not only Trump’s fault. It had to pass in the Senate and House to even make it to Trump’s desk, and it was approved with bipartisan support.
The CARES Act helps small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program, but the program was criticized when some larger businesses received loans and the program quickly ran out of money.
According to the Small Business Administration, there have been over 1.6 million loans approved through April 16, with the net approved dollar amount totaling over $342 billion.
“So contrary to what the ad argues, tens of billions of dollars are flowing to small business,” PolitiFact wrote.
The fact-checker also pointed out that regulations were implemented to keep private equity firms from benefiting from the PPP.
The CARES Act does provide the Federal Reserve with $454 billion in emergency lending authority to help eligible businesses, states and localities.
“So while much of this aid will flow through banks, it was not created with bailing out Wall Street as its endpoint; Wall Street is being enlisted to aid a wide range of companies within the U.S. economy,” PolitiFact wrote.
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