Daniel Funke has a record of disinformation. He’s claimed Hunter’s laptop was fake, gold star parents were lying, and now he’s targeting The Gateway Pundit.
We’ve reported on the integrity of “fact-checkers” in the past. One example was the founder of Snopes who claims integrity in his work but was accused of embezzling tens of thousands of dollars on hookers during his divorce.
David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, later married the sex worker and when they divorced, she accused him of sexually assaulting her every day.
These are the kinds of people who represent the far-left’s “fact-checkers” today.
This “fact-check” factory of disinformation has gotten so bad that TGP created its own fact-check site where often our articles bring truth to the ‘fact-checkers’ tales. See TGPfactcheck.com – also linked to on our sidebar.
It’s really gotten so bad that you can’t trust a single thing these self-ordained “fact-checkers” write.
This week Daniel Funke, “fact-checker” for AFP and formerly with Politifact and USA Today, attacked The Gateway Pundit’s reporting on the progressive, socialist, Antifa killer of Highland Park citizens at Monday’s 4th of July parade, Bobby Crimo.
Funke reported that TGP’s article on Crimo was false but with no facts to support this position. His hit piece was a blueprint for a disinformation campaign. He provides little or no evidence for his accusations, for example.
Funke says an Instagram account purportedly of Crimo’s was newly made. We didn’t use the Instagram account in our reporting. We did use images of Crimo but they aren’t refuted. These images show Crimo’s ties to progressives (a progressive hand salute for example similar to a Marxist salute).
What Funke is doing is contract narrative engineering. The media shared that Crimo is affiliated with conservative circles (based on the image showing him in a Trump rally and draping himself in Trump flag-which he was mocking) but they failed to provide any evidence. The same applies to the claim that he is an extreme right-winger.
Our post didn’t rely on the Instagram account. Crimo’s validated and authenticated images show multiple leftwing/progressive symbology and affiliations.
For example:
- The source of his logo and its meaning (the four-corner polygon) was positively identified as being occult-related. The left is known to adapt and use mystical and occult symbology. Regardless of what AFP is promoting, Antifa is in fact a Neo-Nazi organization.
- Crimo’s hair color, hair style, usage of accessories (like the sunglasses and goggles), and other props all fit the avant-garde/progressive look and feel.
- Crimo’s neck tattoo and other has a close resemblance to the red rose, fist of rage, a capital A on the hat, Antifa black uniform and boots, riot gear, etc.
- Crimo’s attendance in Trump rallies and his posting of Trump-related affiliation are all derogatory.
- Crimo’s is a nihilist, he’s certainly not a nationalist. which fits an Anarchist/lefty ideology.
Overall, Funke makes a number of statements, having nothing to do with our post.
Funke’s reporting is not surprising. He claimed that the Hunter laptop was fake days before the 2020 Election, yet he wants to be taken seriously after that obvious disinformation effort.
Funke on October 30th, 2020 tried to kill the Hunter Biden story. He couldn’t prove that the laptop was fake and that Bobulinski was lying, so instead, he argued that if the story was real then the MSM would be reporting it ????
“No credible news outlets have reported any wrongdoing or role held by Joe Biden, and Biden’s campaign has denied that their candidate got involved in, or stood to gain from, the venture or any other overseas business arrangements.”
Funke also attacked gold star parents who watched their fallen children taken off the plane while Biden checked his watch.
Funke (who includes his pronouns in his Twitter profile) attempted to smear Gold-Star parents who had accused Biden of repeatedly checking his watch during the dignified transfer ceremony Sunday for the 11 of the 13 service-members killed in Afghanistan.
Mark Schmitz (father of Jared Schmitz) and Shana Chappell (mother of Kareem Nikoui) were among those who offered their firsthand accounts of the solemn coffin ceremony, saying Biden looked at his watch after every coffin and generally treated the grieving families dismissively.
“I actually leaned into my son’s mother’s ear and I said ‘I swear to God if he checks his watch one more time…’ and [that] was probably only four times in,” Schmitz recalled.
“I couldn’t look at him anymore after that, considering, especially, the time and why we were there,” he continued. “I found it to be the most disrespectful thing I’d ever seen.”
But Funke dashed out his hatchet-piece on Wednesday, accusing the families of lying and insisting that the video showed Biden only checking his watch after the ceremony.
A simple examination of the film was all that was needed to debunk the baseless claim, reported RedState. That resulted in multiple corrections in the article itself and a few sheepish comments from Funke on social media.
It’s becoming more and more clear that the “fact-checkers” aren’t in place to check facts, they’re now a big part of the disinformation engineering. If the story is big and embarrassing to the progressive left, they’ll attack it.