The Washington Post reported on a burgeoning new Trump scandal: that people with U.S. birth certificates were being denied passports along the U.S.-Mexico border in greater numbers under Trump.
However, they were fact-checked by a surprising source: the far-left Huffington Post, who proved the Post’s story false.
The U.S. has long scrutinized birth certificates that may have been issued illegally—but the number of people denied a passport has actually gone down under Trump, not up.
The Huffington Post wrote:
The [Washington] Post withheld key data, mischaracterized information and lobbed an allegation of fraud at a deceased doctor without speaking to his family members, who complained publicly, HuffPost has found. The piece has been substantially altered three times, including Thursday after multiple queries from HuffPost.
“The paper cited a number of specific policies to support its allegation of a crackdown: supposedly heightened scrutiny of birth certificates signed by midwives suspected of peddling fraudulent documents, supposedly unprecedented passport denials to people born far from the border, and a supposedly new focus on babies delivered by one Texas doctor.
All three practices predate Trump.
The Post’s allegation that the administration is increasingly scrutinizing birth certificates signed by midwives suspected of peddling fraudulent documents ― the basis for much of its initial story ― is particularly problematic. This allegation was supported by the observations of several expert lawyers who had witnessed skyrocketing caseloads of passport denials, mostly in South Texas. The story lacked statistics, which the State Department initially failed to provide.
But when the State Department provided HuffPost the raw number of passport denials in suspect midwife cases along the border, those numbers contradicted the Post’s report. The number of denials steadily dropped, from a peak of 1,465 in 2015 to 971 last year. As of last month, the State Department appeared to be on pace to end 2018 with still fewer denials than last year. The total rejections in these cases since Trump took office number fewer than 1,600 ― not thousands.”
The Washington Post later issued an “explanation” of the story, but has not yet removed the fake news.