How right wing lies spread through the echo chamber

The National Rifle Association’s ugly ad targeting President Obama’s children accuses him of being a “hypocrite” because the school his daughters attend has “11 armed guards.” The ad also attacks NBC journalist David Gregory for the same alleged “hypocrisy.”

And to back up this claim they cite the right wing attack dogs of breitbart.com.

Here’s that article at breitbart.com, by A.W.R. Hawkins: SCHOOL OBAMA’S DAUGHTERS ATTEND HAS 11 ARMED GUARDS!

Some interesting news has broken in the wake of the latest push for gun control by President Obama and Senate Democrats: Obama sends his kids to a school where armed guards are used as a matter of fact. The school, Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, has 11 security officers and is seeking to hire a new police officer as we speak. If you dismiss this by saying, “Of course they have armed guards — they get Secret Service protection,” then you’ve missed the larger point. The larger point is that this is standard operating procedure for the school, period. And this is the reason people like NBC’s David Gregory send their kids to Sidwell, they know their kids will be protected from the carnage that befell kids at a school where armed guards weren’t used (and weren’t even allowed). Shame on President Obama for seeking more gun control and for trying to prevent the parents of other school children from doing what he has clearly done for his own. His children sit under the protection guns afford, while the children of regular Americans are sacrificed.

Notice that there’s no link, and no source quoted for this claim by A.W.R. Hawkins.

That’s because the claim is totally false. Made up. Bogus. An outright lie. A rancid howler.

According to the Washington Post, in the real world Sidwell Friends School has exactly zero armed guards on duty.

The National Rifle Association is airing a television ad (and has on its website this four-minute video) that says the private school that President Obama’s daughters attend, Sidwell Friends School, has 11 armed guards. It doesn’t. In fact, it has no armed guards. My Post colleague Glenn Kessler, who writes The Fact Checker column, wrote about the issue here and quoted Ellis Turner, associate head of Sidwell Friends, as saying: “Sidwell Friends security officers do not carry guns.” Parents and students say they have never seen one either. The president’s children are protected by Secret Service agents, which is required by federal law, but that is not the same thing as armed school resource officers. The Fact Checker, who hands out “Pinocchios” depending on how accurate — or inaccurate — a particular story is, gave the NRA and its ad the worst possible rating, four Pinocchios. Whereas three Pinocchios are given for “significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions,” four Pinocchios are given for “whoppers.”

This is a great example of the counter-factual closed loop echo chamber of the right. A Breitbart hack just makes up a false accusation out of thin air, and from there it propagates throughout the right wing universe with no regard whatsoever for the truth, ending up in an attack ad by one of the most powerful right wing lobbies in the country.

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