When President Trump announced that U.S. funding of the World Health Organization was being suspended, he said that in January WHO “parroted and publicly endorsed the idea that there was not human-to-human transmission happening despite reports and clear evidence to the contrary.”

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler took on that claim, and, even if you’ve seen the WHO tweets from January, nevertheless came to this conclusion:

UPDATED with White House comment: Trump’s false claim that the WHO said the coronavirus was ‘not communicable’ https://t.co/JShHr47eRG — Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) April 17, 2020

Oh really?

theres literally a tweet out there from the WHO that says exactly that https://t.co/uUv2vyf2i4 — give sidibe the wooden (@stayCurrant) April 17, 2020

They literally said it was Non-Communicable. — Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) April 17, 2020

dude – the WHO *literally said* #COVID19 was not communiable https://t.co/aiUP6egKdk — Federal Spy Guy (@FederalSpyGuy) April 17, 2020

Here’s part of the Post’s conclusion, and it’s a parse-a-palooza:

But Trump really gets over his skis when he claims that the WHO “publicly endorsed the idea that there was not human-to-human transmission happening” and that the WHO said it was “not communicable.” The WHO said initially that there was “no clear evidence.” But by Jan. 14, a senior official said they could not rule out human-to-human transmission given the experience with SARS. That statement was made only two weeks after the WHO first learned of the new virus. It’s almost a Four-Pinocchio claim but not quite. The WHO could have highlighted the human-to-human transmission sooner than it did and pressed China for more information. Trump, of course, could have done the same — and failed to do so, for weeks longer. Trump earns Three Pinocchios.

It seems that the WHO’s “no clear evidence” qualifier provided the fact-checker the out that was needed in order to label Trump’s statement as false, but not everybody’s buying it:

No, the WHO just took China's claims at face value and passed them along as fact… https://t.co/CBpCd9RAjs pic.twitter.com/Riick6ZzKC — Ryan Powers (@RyanSPowers) April 17, 2020

Glenn is such a hack. This isn’t fact checking. It is DNC spin. FEC should consider WP in kind contribution — Look, Fat (@LookFat3) April 17, 2020

#WeSeeYou And yes, we can Google to find the truth … — Christian Toto (@HollywoodInToto) April 17, 2020

Kessler has to split hairs to pretend like the WHO said something totally different from what they very publicly proclaimed. https://t.co/LKhlUoeFp4 — Mike Bastasch (@MikeBastasch) April 17, 2020

Does the Washington Post only employ completely objective, non-disingenuous journalists? There’s no clear evidence.