Washington Post Hit Piece on Leading Critical Race Theory Opponent Chris Rufo Falls Apart After He Fights Back
“The Washington Post has attempted to smear me with five verifiably false claims. I call on the editors to issue an immediate correction and retract all of the false statements,” Rufo said in a thread documenting the false claims.
The media’s war on vocal opponents of Critical Race Theory is on. One of the leading voices nationally in the fight to educate people on the dangers of CRT has felt it firsthand over the last few months. The Washington Post recently ran a hit piece on him disguised as a standard profile piece over the weekend.
Reporters Laura Meckler and Josh Dawsey painted conservative writer and filmmaker Christopher Rufo as a propagandist. They claimed he made numerous false or misleading claims about what CRT is and the extent to how public school classrooms and official diversity training documents used by federal departments present it.
At least three versions of the story exist at online archive sites like this one, not merely due to minor tweaks made to the account. Instead, they made corrections after Rufo pushed back hard.
In a Twitter thread Sunday, Rufo documented a list of five things he said WaPo got wrong in their reporting:
The Washington Post's @laurameckler spent three weeks preparing a hitpiece against me.
In this thread, I will expose five flat-out lies, from the fabrication of a timeline to multiple smears that are easily disproven by documentary evidence.
This is how the media lies.🧵
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 20, 2021
Lie #1. The Washington Post presents critical race theory as a benign academic concept, obscuring the divisive nature of the ideology and refusing to address the huge amount of evidence on abusive CRT programs in K-12 classrooms. pic.twitter.com/NlvapesdbX
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 20, 2021
Lie #2. The Washington Post fabricates the timeline of events surrounding my involvement in President Trump’s executive order on critical race theory in the federal government. pic.twitter.com/btXcgoN4Cb
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 20, 2021
Lie #3. The Washington Post falsifies a direct quotation, claiming that I said it is “so obvious” that my strategy was to “conflate” unrelated items with CRT. I never said this and challenge the Post to produce the audio recording to support their claim—or retract it. pic.twitter.com/kGboTRx8YU
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 20, 2021
Lie #4. The Washington Post claims that the Treasury Department never said that all white people are racist during a diversity training seminar—but I have the original source documents that prove the Post’s claim is false. pic.twitter.com/zfRHeqi1L4
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 20, 2021
Lie #5. The Washington Post claims that my reporting about a “power and privilege” training at a Cupertino elementary school never happened. But I have hard evidence from a parent and the school’s own principal, who confirms that the training did occur. pic.twitter.com/NKofn55OWP
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 20, 2021
The Washington Post has attempted to smear me with five verifiably false claims. I call on the editors to issue an immediate correction and retract all of the false statements.
Democracy dies when the media lies.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 20, 2021
Two of them – 1 and 3 – are arguably a matter of differing interpretations. Numbers 2, 4, and 5 are not.
In an update posted Monday, Rufo noted that his campaign to get the Post to correct their reporting had met with some success, although there were still some notable areas where they wouldn’t budge:
WINNING: The Washington Post's hitpiece against me has collapsed.
They have admitted to fabricating a timeline, retracted or added six full paragraphs, reversed a key claim, and failed to produce evidence of a falsified quotation.
Democracy dies when the media lies. pic.twitter.com/gfKdpy4sal
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 22, 2021
how it started how it's going pic.twitter.com/WS1JlRuZlu
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) June 22, 2021
The more outspoken you become on an issue, the more you elevate your profile. But, of course, along with that comes more scrutiny and criticism. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But as we’ve previously reported, the intent behind these stories is critical. There is no question the mainstream media has become so bothered by the anti-CRT movement success that they’ve taken to using predictable tried and true tactics against conservatives.
Such tactics include falsely proclaiming opponents are racists, alleging it’s an Astroturf campaign rather than one first started at the grassroots level, and smearing prominent voices as liars and Trump stooges.
These are, of course, attempts at shutuppery. But unfortunately for Rufo’s critics in the media and on the left, he isn’t letting any of this intimidate him, which is to his credit, because the best response to concerted efforts to silence conservative voices is to get even louder.
Learn more about Critical Race Theory by visiting LIF’s Critical Race Training in Education website here.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
What your seeing here is you stand up for yourself and the left fold like a cheap suit.
a cheap empty suit
Who is Chris Rufo and why did a major newspaper chose to attack and smear him for telling the truth????
Not exactly. If they folded that way, then Rufo will probably be free of further criticism and attacks. I doubt that will happen.
Effective counter punching works.
Just sue the bastards
“Lie #1” is a matter of opinion, so it can’t be defamatory.
“Lie #2” is not defamatory. It’s also arguably not even false. “Soon” is a vague term.
“Lie #3” is a matter of interpretation, and therefore opinion.
“Lies #4 and #5” are about his reporting. He says certain things happened. WaPo has not seen evidence of them, so it doesn’t believe him. He says he has the evidence. WaPo is not required to take his word for anything. Even it he turns out in the end to be correct, they didn’t know that, so they can’t be sued for it.
But they did not say they (WAPO) didn’t know. They stated as fact the events did not happen, essentially calling him a liar. Nothing for a lawsuit, but awfully shabby journalism.
The quality of the “journalism” is not relevant. We are discussing a lawsuit. And you agree there is nothing for a lawsuit. So we are in complete agreement.
I hope that Joy Reid grows a pair and has him on her show. Chris would have her lunch. He knows what CRT is and isn’t afraid to say it
The only mistake Rufo made was not recording the interview with the 2 low lifes from the WaPo.
It’s not clear he didn’t. But he can’t use his recording to prove he didn’t say something, as it would be easy for him to edit it out. It’s up to WaPo to find it in their copy, if it’s there. And they say they don’t have a recording, just “notes.” Does that sound believable in this day and age? (Outside an FBI “interview room,” of course.)
Maybe he did record the conversation. He could be giving them more rope to hang themselves.
If they edit their recording to support their lies and release the altered version, then he can say “Oh, by the way, I have an original recording. Your edited version is just more evidence of actual malice. Let’s play lawsuit!”
The truth is, CRT is one of many examples of black racism on whites and Asians.
Sort of. The truth is ‘blacks’ were oppressed, but so was everyone else of every color, race and creed.
The key point is who did the oppressing. The oppressors were the elites of their time; the wealthy Southern planters and the wealthy Northern shipping and industrial magnates.
To paint all ‘white people’ with the same brush is historically inaccurate. The institution of slavery as an example. Southern plantation owners who exploited slave labor certainly made a profit.
However, that profit pales in comparison to that generated from buying, transporting and selling slaves to those plantation owners. Then as now the real money in a gold rush isn’t in the mine, it is selling to the miners.
The elites have always held contempt for everyone else. They hold themselves as superior morally, intellectually and physically. Even those who pull themselves up higher on the economic ladder are held at arms length, never quite being fully accepted as the equals of those born into the elite.
“every color” …. indeed. Add the Irish and Italians to those who were oppressed at one time.
Blacks have “black-on-black crime”
Whites have “white-on-white” racism.
> > brainwashed into a cult of self-hating
One of those is a real thing. The other one is being pushed by brainwashing these days.
To paraphrase Mark Twain: “Lies, damn lies, and journalism”
Twain popularized it, but he didn’t invent it. He mistakenly attributed it to D’israeli, but the actual inventor is unknown.
If you are taking flak, you are over the target.
Whatever you think of the washington post, it is jeff bezos’ personal rag.a d he owns not just the paper, but the poison it spreads.
Possibly the biggest mistake these CRT Marxists are making is to paint this as a Republican, right-wing conspiracy, the gun control Marxists make. The truth is that NEITHER are partisan issues. Just as Democrat gun owners are every bit as pro-gun as Republican and Libertarian gun owners, so are parents of all political stripe adamant of having control of what their children are taught. “They are OUR children, not YOURS” resonates with just about everyone.
Alinsky – “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and
polarize it.”
The Marxists need a devil. The eGOP accepts the role. This is a partisan issue only because of the process – the eGOP allows it to be treated /sold as a partisan issue.
Rufo likely scares the sh$$ out of the eGOP. Rufo is a patriot.
Then we can agree with the Marxists on something. The eGOP gets the role of the devil.
Their Alinsky tactics work. Use them!
The GOPe is in on the plot.
The hard left wants to convert or eliminate liberals with the same passion they want to do the same to the right, hard right, middle of the roaders, etc. That’s why you can find similar attacks on all.
I think that the public school system is committing suicide with CRT.
Seppuku?
It wasn’t supposed to be. You weren’t ever supposed to know about it.
Not suicide, pedicide.
So as shown in Lie #5, the “intersectional training” was in place of “paused teaching” in math. Not social studies, or gym, or some other optional activity. Math. The second most important skill after reading. And they “paused teaching” to force intersectional indoctrination in place of it.
Disgusting. They think they’re clever. Every parent will want to make sure their kid is there for math, so they stick the garbage into that time slot.