Fact checker Glenn Kessler says that he jumped the gun for automatically rushing to defend Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg after realizing his comments weren’t completely accurate. Buttigieg repeated claims about racist bridges and highways which were quickly mocked online and The Washington Post fact-checker immediately rushed to defend him, however, experts chimed in that Buttigieg’s comments we actually false. Now, Kessler is eating his words.
Fox News reports:
“We should be more careful to double-check on the latest views of historians,” Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote.
On Monday, Sec. Buttigieg lamented how any Americans don’t realize the racist history behind some highways and bridges.
“I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a White and a Black neighborhood, or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach, or that would’ve been, in New York was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices,” Buttigieg said during a White House briefing.
The story is from Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The Power Broker.”
Washington Post national correspondent Phillip Bump also rushed to Buttigieg’s defense, writing an analysis mirroring Kessler’s tweets headlined, “And this is why it’s useful to talk about historical examples of institutionalized racism,” which claimed the transportation secretary’s remark “served as an opportunity not only to elevate the specific story to which he was referring but the utility of educating Americans about a complicated history of systemic racism.”
However, despite left-wing pundits’ rush to defend Buttigieg from criticism, it was quickly realized by other experts and historians that the transportation secretary’s little story was fabricated.
“Well, our knee jerked,” he wrote, noting that associate professor of history at Case Western University Peter Shulman informed the Post the tale from Caro’s book was “largely debunked.”
