Layers and Layers of Fact Checkers…

Look, everybody gets it wrong sometimes. I know I have. 

On the other hand, when a major “mainstream” media outlet puts a “fact” in a subheadline, which will reach vastly more people than anything in the story, as many people just skim the news, it should be the most fact-checked bit of the story. 

The headline and subheadline frame everything in the story, which is why we pay so much attention to them. The whole point is to create an impression as quickly as possible. 

Politico is very interested in my Twitter account, but not interested enough to fact-check their leading claim: it’s $500 thousand, not $500 million.

Rest assured, though: if I could reasonably pledge $500m to the cause of free speech, I would. https://t.co/oQBMyRFuOc pic.twitter.com/gKc7Cp8OCO

— Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers (@UnderSecPD) April 28, 2026

So it’s really striking that POLITICO Europe got this particular subheadline so very wrong. Turning a $500,000 investment in promoting free speech in Europe into a $500 million blitzkrieg to promote MAGA propaganda is fundamentally dishonest. 

Can we call it “disinformation?” I think yes, yes we can. Maybe the EU can censor it for POLITICO, since apparently that is what they do when they want to. 

Perhaps you think that this was just a typo. And perhaps it was, although the lede of the story reemphasizes the fact that she has “hundreds of millions” of dollars at her disposal, so if it was a typo, they managed to reinforce the false impression right away. 

Depending on who you ask, she’s either just another MAGA troll meddling in European democracy, or the best hope of saving it. 

What Sarah Rogers, the U.S. undersecretary of State for public diplomacy, can never be accused of is speaking in diplomatic niceties.

With hundreds of millions of dollars at her disposal, she has positioned herself as the point person for U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign to save Europe from what the White House has called “civilizational erasure.”

Sure makes it sound like Sarah Rogers is blowing the bank on her campaign. Frankly, I wish she could, but it’s not true.

So what is Rogers doing that is so awful? Tweeting and speaking to reach out to Europeans about free speech. Arguing that sharing opinions should not get you silenced or put in jail. 

Unlike many U.S. State Department roles, the undersecretary of State for public diplomacy’s job is not primarily to talk to ambassadors or officials, but to put the case directly to citizens in other countries. And since taking office in October, Rogers has brought her message directly to European audiences, through speaking appearances and on social media. 

Often, her interventions aggravate the scar lines that many Europeans think should distinguish free speech from racism, and science from conspiracy. 

“Examples of things that I have seen described as false are things like: ‘The grooming gangs in England are predominantly Pakistani.’ That is true,” Rogers told an audience at the Prosperity Institute, a London-based free-market, libertarian think tank, in December. “‘Covid vaccines don’t entirely prevent transmission.’ Guess what? That’s true. ‘Covid leaked from a lab.’ CIA says that’s true. ‘There are average differences in IQ between racial groups.’ A lot of scientists say that’s true.”

(A 2025 U.K. government-commissioned report said there was not enough data to provide a national picture of the ethnicity of members of grooming gangs, while noting some prominent cases where suspects were predominantly from Asian backgrounds. Studies suggest COVID vaccines reduce but don’t prevent transmission. Most scientists say that the environment is the main factor behind differences in IQ identified among ethnic groups, and the evidence for innate racial differences is hotly contested.)

As you can see, POLITICO wants you to know that some people are studies disagree with Rogers. OK, fine. So what? Her point is that these are debatable issues, and should be debated. There should be no government effort to silence disagreements. 

That “51 Intelligence Officials all agree” that the Hunter Biden laptop was likely Russian disinformation didn’t make it true, but it did make sharing the contents of the laptop impossible on social media. “Experts” sharing an opinion says little about whether that opinion is true. 

March 29, 2021 Rochelle Walensky, Director of CDC, infamously declared on MSNBC:

“Vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick.”

Emails obtained by FOIA from Jan 30, 2021 show that Walensky knew this was a lie at the time she said it.

1/12 pic.twitter.com/9rdmGuEHPM

— Kevin Bass (@kevinnbass) September 5, 2025

March, 2021. CNN breaks the “news” that the Pfizer vaccine is 100% effective in preventing infection and sickness in 12-15 year olds.🤔

That was 100% not true.

Sadly many parents decided to get their children vaccinated based on that lie.pic.twitter.com/28QFofJN15

— MAZE (@mazemoore) March 18, 2026

I seem to recall an awful lot of things that the “experts” and government officials insisted were true being wrong, and that dissenters were silenced and vilified for saying the truth. 

This is the whole point of the campaign to open up speech and debate. How do you test a proposition if only one side of an argument can be heard?

Her approach has drawn sharp criticism from European officials who warn that her confrontational style risks alienating her country’s allies. It has also caused unease among U.S. officials and even some supporters, who are unsettled by her Europe-baiting.

Trump, however, seems to approve. He recently nominated her to lead the agency overseeing the government-funded international broadcaster Voice of America — a role she would carry out in parallel with her current post.

The argument that, somehow, Rogers is making European leaders uncomfortable is rather odd. European leaders hate the Trump administration, which is why Rogers’ remit is to go around them and speak directly to the people. That is, quite literally, her job as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. That is what public diplomacy means. 

In other words, this is just another complaint that Trump and company are not echoing what our so-called “allies” want said. Because their agenda is speech control. 

Perhaps, you may think, the US shouldn’t meddle in our “allies'” politics, to which is say: Thierry Breton and the Digital Services Act,  which was used to threaten Elon Musk and X with hundreds of millions of dollars in fines if Musk had a live conversation with Donald Trump during the presidential campaign. 

Every American’s speech is at risk from European rules. The Labour government in Britain sent CAMPAIGN WORKERS to help Kamala Harris get elected. European leaders counseled Americans not to elect Trump. 

Spare me the complaints about interfering in other countries’ politics. They meddle in our politics all the time. They trash Trump all the time. There is no special exception from criticism because one is European.

POLITICO gets on its high horse, as do all of Pravda, about “misinformation” and “disinformation,” but the fact is that they engage in propaganda all the time. They spew out falsehoods, shade the truth, leave out relevant facts, and shove opinions into their stories all the time. 

When all the media are doing it, it amounts to a lot more than $500,000 worth of free publicity for left-wing censorship. 

More like $500,000,000 or more. 

It’s not a mistake to claim a program that amounts to a rounding error in the State Department budget into one of its more expensive projects; the whole point was to shock its establishment readers with a claim that was entirely false. In Europe, many readers will recoil at the idea that the United States is spending half a billion dollars to propagandize for MAGA in their countries, and that was the point. 

Saying “the Trump administration is spending $500,000 to promote free speech” doesn’t have quite the same gut impact.

Big media likes to say that they are the only real journalists because they have fact-checkers and editorial processes that ensure they only tell you things that are true. 

The line is “layers and layers” of fact-checkers. Yep. Sure. 

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