Snopes Moves Guam Across Globe through Sheer Willpower
- Snopes rates as “true” something that is entirely “false”
- Dan MacGuill says Cong. Greene said Guam was a foreign country, when she did not say that
- MacGuill hides the actual language spoken by Greene so far down that few will notice his amazing lies
- MacGuill tries to say Guam is part of America, forgets that America is a continent
OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.
Indicted Outlet: Dan MacGuill | Snopes | Link | Archive
Modern ‘fact checking’ goes something like this: find a yes/no question you can prove false about somebody you dislike, even if you have to invent the statement by the person you hate. Snopes is a left-wing trash site, and Dan MacGuill is a left-wing trash person, so he of course hates Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Left wing trash groups say that Greene said Guam was a foreign country, so does Dan serve his readers or does he serve his partisan passions? Since it’s Snopes we all know the answer.
Here’s the claim and how Dan at Snopes rated it:
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene referred to Guam, a U.S. territory, as a foreign country.
Correct Attribution
And this is entirely, completely, wrong and Dan and Snopes should apologize to Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Major Violations:
- Misrepresentation
- Lying
- Lying Headline
Let’s just start with what Greene actually said by Snopes’ own admissions:
I’m a regular person, and I wanted to take my regular person, normal, everyday American values, which is — we love our country, we believe our hard-earned tax dollars should just go for America, not for, what, China, Russia, the Middle East, Guam, whatever, wherever. Right? If we want to build roads, if we want to put money into schools, if we want to build border walls, we want it right here at home.
The distinction is what is meant and intended by the phrase “America” and by whether or not U.S. territories and possessions are considered part of “America.”
America, Snopes may be surprised to learn, refers to two continents: North and South America. These are big landmasses that people live on, and in North America there are three big countries: Canada, the United States, and Mexico, along with a series of countries we would probably more accurately call the Carribean nations.
Guam is not in North or South America. So when you say that funds should go for “America” – chances are you either mean the 50 U.S. states that most people understand as “America” or perhaps you mean the people who largely comprise the taxpayers within the primary landmass.
Guam is actually not properly in any continent, some people consider it to be “Oceania” as it is in the western Pacific Ocean. [1] If you were to randomly type into Google, “how far is Guam from America” you would receive the answer 11,579 miles. [2] For reference, the Earth is only 24,000 miles around the Equator, so it is almost perfectly on the other side of the globe.
Through wishful thinking, Snopes is arguing in bad faith that “Guam” includes “America.”
Guam has never been in America, or part of America. No one refers to Guam as being part of the American continent.
The dissembling that MacGuill uses in order to rate this statement by Greene false and by Greene-hating liberal groups true is really pretty stunning, here is the relevant excerpt:
Taylor Green did not explicitly state that “Guam is a foreign country,” and the Call to Activism meme correctly did not present its description of her words as a direct quotation.
However, the context of her remarks makes it clear she did indeed refer to Guam as such. She argued that taxpayer-funded expenditures should be kept within the U.S. for infrastructure, education, and so on “at home,” rather than being distributed as aid overseas. In making that point, she listed several examples of foreign countries and regions, and included Guam in that list.
As a result, we are issuing a rating of “Correct Attribution.”
So, Snopes admits that Greene did not say what is being alleged, but then says it’s correct anyway because he can construe the left-wing group as having paraphrased Greene correctly.
But the claim is very plain: is Guam part of America? Did Greene say that Guam is a foreign country? The factual, objective answer to both is no.
And yet Snopes answers yes anyway.
Here’s the exact language the liberal groups used:
Stupid Alert: Marjorie Taylor Green says American dollars should not go to foreign countries like Guam. Guam is an American territory. What do you say to her?
Because I enjoy doing the jobs leftists won’t do, let me patiently explain to them how that is clearly false:
- Cong. Greene did not say Guam is a foreign country.
- Guam is not a country, it is a territory. Cong. Greene correctly discussed it as part of a list of places the United States spends U.S. taxpayer money.
- Liberal groups are dishonestly misstating what Greene said and are dishonestly labelling her as ‘stupid’ because they are actually stupid.
We could engage wordplay all day to dissect these bogus Snopes ratings, but it seems clear that their agenda is to find any way possible to rule a conservative incorrect using insults from the second grade, and validate every left-wing speaker with an equivalent second grade education or pressure group as essentially correct.
This is partisan and unbalanced. It’s also just frankly disgusting from an organization that pretends to be a ‘fact check’ organization.
If you wanted to give MacGuill any charity here, maybe it’s confusion about the meaning of specific words. Namely, that while some people in America refer to the country itself as ‘home’, they would not refer to Guam as ‘extended home’ or as home to anything other than the 200,000 people who live there mostly as recipients of federal funds and expenditures.
It’s worth noting here that MacGuill appears to be from Ireland according to his biography at Snopes. [3] So it’s a possible issue in how Americans refer to America, something difficult for him to fully appreciate without the benefit of decades speaking directly, daily, with other Americans. But no one in this country reasonably refers to Guam when talking about America.
This might delve into the kind of semantics and hair-splitting that, frankly, Snopes itself is notorious for, but there’s something to be said that America refers to the country and the people, who consider themselves ‘Americans’ whereas the term “U.S.” or “United States” refers more to the political jurisdiction.
Here’s how Merriam Webster defines “America” [4]
1 either continent (North America or South America) of the western hemisphere
2 or the Americas \ ə-ˈmer-ə-kəz , -ˈme-rə- \ the lands of the western hemisphere including North, Central, and South America and the West Indies
Here’s how Merriam Webster defines “United States of America” [5]
country (a federal republic) in North America bordering on the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans; capital Washington area 3,796,742 square miles (9,833,517 square kilometers), population 329,256,000
Here’s how Merriam Webster defines “Guam” [6]
island in the southern Marianas; unincorporated U.S. territory containing extensive U.S. military facilities; capital Hagåtña area 209 square miles (541 square kilometers), population 159,358
Notice that when defining “Guam” they do not say “see America.” When they say America, they do not include the entire globe.
I would like to take a moment and thank Dan MacGuill. It’s truly breathtaking to see a liberal journalist with such a level of idiocy and arrogance that it makes the job of debunking them so effortless. Just by existing in the form that he has chosen, it is as though he lives his life to write my jokes for me.
Thank you Dan!
OUR RATING: Journalistic Malpractice. Even Salon.com is ashamed.
Bibliography:
1 ] https://www.answers.com/Q/What_continent_is_Guam_located_on
2 ] https://www.distancefromto.net/distance-from-guam-to-united-states
3 ] https://www.snopes.com/author/danmacguill/
4 ] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/America
5 ] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/United%20States%20of%20America
6 ] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Guam
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