Fact checkers to GOP candidates: You lie!

debate lies
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Following Thursday's first GOP debates, fact checkers got to work finding many a whopper among the Republican candidates' claims. Jeb Bush, for instance, took credit for tax cuts that were mandated by federal law, while Donald Trump falsely claimed that there would be no immigration debate without his campaign.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio attempted to paint Hillary Clinton as the most entrenched political insider, but the biggest tally of years of political experience actually goes to Rick Perry. Lindsey Graham misrepresented where America buys its foreign oil. And Ben Carson said the Air Force is the smallest it's been since 1940, which might be scary except that the Air Force didn't truly exist as a separate branch of the military until 1947.

Of course, as the National Journal staff comment in their fact check, "If your quest for your dream job was going to be determined by a 17-way contest to tell the most compelling personal story, wouldn't you be a bit tempted to take a bit of artistic license?"

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.