This week, Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver — the lawyer who, among other things, defended Kim Davis — and his “Faith and Freedom” radio show co-host Matt Barber said once again that the team at Right Wing Watch were purveyors of fake news.

That’s an odd accusation considering the posts at Right Wing Watch almost always feature audio and video clips of things that people like Staver and Barber say.

Somehow, quoting conservatives verbatim is equivalent to spreading fake news…

“You mentioned Right Wing Watch,” Staver said. “I was again talking to people who were with us on a Covenant Journey trip [to Israel] and these are very bright college students; they know how to read more than just a title and so when they read Right Wing Watch, they can see this is just a bunch of fake news. Because you look at the title, then you read the body, it’s completely different, it’s 180 degrees different. You know, Right Wing Watch will say that I supported the death penalty for homosexuals. I’ve never done that!” Barber agreed, asserting that “when you read the facts and read what you actually said, no person in their right mind could draw the conclusion that you said what their directly accused you of in the title. That’s Right Wing Watch’s M.O.”

If anyone can find the post where Right Wing Watch says Staver supported the death penalty for homosexuals, you’ll win all the internets… since that clip doesn’t exist. Staver made it up. He’s a liar. That’s what he does.

More to the point, though, if such a clip existed, Right Wing Watch wouldn’t just say, “Mat Staver wants gay people to die!” They would give you the clip of him saying exactly that so you could verify the information for yourself.

If Staver wants to get mad at somebody, he should look in a mirror.

Right Wing Watch isn’t fake news. The whole website is dedicated to keeping tabs on what Religious Right figures say. Unlike conservatives, they don’t have to make up lies to show the other side in a bad light. They just have to quote them.

By the way, Staver’s own organization lied in 2015 about a supposed rally of 100,000 Christians in Peru in support of Kim Davis. The truth was that the rally never happened and the picture was from a different event. Matt Barber eventually apologized, but not before saying the reporter who pointed it out had “discredited himself and embarrassed” the site he worked for.

(Via Right Wing Watch. Portions of this article were published earlier)



