On Thursday, Politifact announced that it had hired former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) as a “reader advocate” for Politifact. Their job: “critiquing our work and publishing on Politifact.”
According to the organization:
This experiment, which is funded through a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, will initially run until the end of April. During that time, our Republican and Democratic reader advocates will be free to critique our fact-checks and provide their own expert insight on the issues confronting voters. … Alan served on two separate occasions in Congress, first from 2009-11 representing Florida’s 8th congressional district. He then represented Florida’s 9th congressional district from 2013-17. Alan … will be free to critique any of our fact-checks starting today. …
There’s just one problem: Alan Grayson is a pathetic, loathsome pile of human excrement.
Fact check: true.
As Yashar Ali points out, here is Grayson threatening to have a Politico reporter arrested:
Today, Politico reported that Grayson’s ex-wife “claimed domestic abuse over two decades”:
Lolita Grayson called police on her husband at least two times in Virginia and two more times in Florida, sought medical attention on at least two occasions and said that, in one instance, he had threatened to kill her, according to a police report.
Politically, Grayson is no more sane. He accused Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) of wanting to “create a sort of a mass suicide cult.” He says that Republicans want you to “die quickly” if you don’t have health care and compared their health care policy to the Holocaust. He said that former Vice President Dick Cheney has “blood that drips from his teeth while he’s talking … when he was done speaking, did he just then turn into a bat and fly away?” Republicans, he says, don’t “have a conscience.” He said Rush Limbaugh was “more lucid when he was a drug addict. He ran an ad in 2010 comparing his opponent to the Taliban. A House Office of Congressional Ethics report found that “there is substantial reason to believe that Representative Grayson improperly allowed the use of his name by four entities connected to Representative Grayson’s hedge fund and Grayson Consulting, Inc. of Virginia, and received compensation through management fees from the Grayson Fund Management Company, LLC.”
That’s the guy Politifact chose to fact-check the fact-checkers.
And then Politifact wonders why conservatives see the site as a pathetic left-wing propaganda outlet?