Biden slaveholding ancestry UPDATE: Rebel News fact-checks the fact-checkers — and wins
On June 25, I published an article for Rebel News which explored evidence that suggested Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden had slaveholding in his ancestry.
Biden had been talking tough on “systemic racism” and presenting himself as a progressive alternative to Donald Trump on racial matters despite a lengthy history of opposing school desegregation, so when I got a tip that his ancestral grandfather owned seven slaves, I looked into it.
By cross-referencing an extensive family tree of Biden done by renowned genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner and the 1830 census, I found that the man found to be Biden’s great-great-great grandfather by Reitwiesner, Jesse Robinette, did indeed own multiple slaves – a claim Biden has yet to address or respond to, and the mainstream media has failed to cover.
After reporting on it for Rebel News, I was targeted by PolitiFact, who had Facebook label my piece as “misleading.”
Rebel News’ Facebook account received a harsh warning and was threatened with being unpublished from the platform – which would have reduced our ability to bring you the news.
The only problem? The fact check wasn’t factual.
The article Politifact used to “fact check” my reporting had absolutely nothing to do with my findings. In fact, the details they claimed disproved my claims never once appeared in my article.
Politifact’s “fact check”, written by Tom Kertscher, was aimed at a viral blog post which claimed Biden’s great-grandfather, Joseph J. Biden (1828-1880), was a confederate soldier and slaveowner. This information does not appear anywhere in my report for Rebel News.
After patiently explaining to Politifact that their independent fact checking process had failed, and instead had targeted my completely unrelated story, Politifact’s Rebecca Catalanello retracted their mislabeling of my article as “misinformation.”
While I would love to believe it was a simple mistake, I do know better.
In April, I was suspended indefinitely from Twitter for posting an innocent meme of Joe Biden I did not even make. I was off of the platform for almost eight days and was at risk of not returning because Twitter deemed the joke “campaign interference.”
I was one of hundreds of users suspended for posting the meme, but one of only a handful who managed to return successfully.
Partisan social media manipulation is a reality, but fake news doesn’t have to be.
I will continue to go where the facts take me, and bring those to you when I can here at Rebel News.
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