You may want to sit down for this one: A major newsroom published a bogus story this week casting Republicans as villains and Democrats as noble victims. Big, I know.

The Washington Post tweeted Wednesday afternoon, “North Carolina Republicans overrode a budget veto while Democrats were at a 9/11 ceremony.”

North Carolina Republicans overrode a budget veto while Democrats were at a 9/11 ceremony https://t.co/b6kvApZaqn — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 11, 2019

The Post’s tweet linked to a story titled, “North Carolina Republicans vote to override a budget veto in half-empty Assembly during 9/11 remembrance.”

Does Republican villainy know no limits?

The report opened originally with this line: "While North Carolina Democrats were remembering the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001, their Republican colleagues took advantage of their absence and voted to override the governor’s budget veto Wednesday morning."

Democracy has truly died in this darkness.

Just kidding. Don’t get too attached to the Post’s supposedly damning scoop. It is a giant pile of trash.

For starters, a single House Democrat was preoccupied at a 9/11 memorial ceremony Wednesday at the time of the veto vote, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.

It reports:

Some headlines suggested that Democrats were at events commemorating the 9/11 attacks — the vote was taken at roughly the same time as the national moment of silence. But The News & Observer has confirmed only two Democrats attended 9/11 events.



One was Cooper, who spoke at the North Carolina National Guard’s Sept. 11 commemoration in Raleigh.



The other was Rep. Garland Pierce, a Scotland County Democrat, who says he attended an event in Raeford.

It is unclear where the rest of the Democratic caucus was at the time of the vote, but what we do know is that it was not at Sept. 11 memorial services as the Post report originally claimed. Moreover, the House veto vote was announced days in advance, according to audio provided to the Associated Press. Democrats, who claim falsely that Republicans broke the rules, had plenty of fair warning.

To recap: A planned vote was held this week in the North Carolina House, during which time a single House Democrat happened also to be at a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony. This is the entire basis for the Post’s faulty reporting.

Amazingly enough, the paper has not retracted its story. It has not even fully corrected it. Rather, the Post has amended the story’s opening line so that it now includes primo weasel language: “While most North Carolinians were remembering the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001, the Republican leaders in the General Assembly took advantage of a half-empty House and voted to override the governor’s budget veto Wednesday morning.”

The report also bears a slimy editor’s note that reads, “Clarification: An earlier version of this article overly generalized the reason for Democrats’ absence from the General Assembly session. This version has been updated.”

The Post’s original report is not guilty of overgeneralizing. It is guilty of asserting things that simply were not true, its coverage aligning exactly with false Democratic talking points.

That the paper refuses to retract its story or even provide a full correction shows it is every bit as conniving and dishonest as it falsely accused North Carolina Republicans of being.