Politico reporter Jake Sherman observed that the meme “is actually more incorrect than correct.”
A fact check by The Daily Caller News Foundation similarly
found the meme was wildly misleading.
Kitchel deleted his tweet and
acknowledged that it was inaccurate after being mocked online.
But Snopes fact-checker Bethania Palma, a former writer for
liberal website Raw Story, fact-checked the meme three weeks later and claimed it was accurate.
Palma rated it “true” that “The Congressional seats of almost three dozen Republicans who voted to repeal Obamacare were lost to Democrats in 2018” — a different claim than what the picture alleged, much less its “primary” claim.
“In the meme, red ‘X’ marks were drawn through the faces of 33 lawmakers who purportedly were rejected by voters in the 6 November 2018 midterm elections,”
Palma wrote.
Both that claim and Palma’s summary of it were inaccurate.
Not everyone in the photo with an “X” over their face was a lawmaker — a fact left out of Palma’s fact-check. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma, for example, had an “X” over her face even though she’s not an elected official.
Moreover, many of the lawmakers who did have an “X” over their face
won re-election.
