Can we get a fact check on aisle one of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet’s opening statement Wednesday about that Trump campaign sign he claims he saw at a church?
Anyone in the media? Anyone?
Here’s how Bennet opened at the debate:
“Last week, I saw one of those Trump signs that says, ‘America, love it or leave it.’ And it was on the outside of a church,” Bennet said. “I love America. And I know we can make it better.”
We checked with our source, Mr. Google, and discovered it’s unlikely Bennet actually saw anything except social media posts.
And he didn’t see a Trump sign, he saw this, located nearly 200 miles away from his home in Washington, D.C.
This sign outside of an Appomattox church is drawing lots of support and criticism on social media. pic.twitter.com/huuLLO0jmF
— Valencia E. Jones (@vjreports3) July 17, 2019
The sign says nothing about Trump, but it caught fire on social media when the Baptist pastor admitted he supported the president.
We rate Bennet’s statement as “mostly false,” because it’s not a “Trump” sign. And when he claimed to see it for himself, he failed to disclose it was on his Twitter or Facebook feed.
Bennet repeated the slogan correctly, just not its origin or meaning.
“America: Love it, or leave it,” is a phrase coined by journalist Walter Winchell directed at communist sympathizers in the 1940s who were trying to infiltrate the federal government.
The phrase was resurrected in the 1960s as a bumper sticker to irritate hippies protesting the Vietnam War.
But now that it’s been used by a Trump supporter, we expect a leftist rewrite of history to suggest the phrase is racist in origin.