The Associated Press’s Melissa Goldin and Calvin Woodward were given the task of fact-checking President Trump’s Tuesday State of the Union address and, in some of their checks, were so pedantic it bordered on self-parody.
The worst example was the duo’s final entry. Every president tries to wax poetic about the legacy of the Revolution and how it lives on to today, and Trump was no different, “The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended. It still continues because the flame of liberty and independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot.”
The full context was that Trump was referring to the nation’s upcoming 250th birthday, but Goldin and Woodward wrote, “To be clear, the American Revolution started the previous year, on April 19, 1775. The colonies declared independence in 1776. It ended Sept. 3, 1783.”
Fact-checkers like to say that Trump is the best example of why their profession is necessary. Some like to justify the lopsided Republican versus Democrat totals by saying Republicans are checked more because they deserve it, but Woodward has been the kind of fact-checker who has been “fact”-checking Republicans’ opinions for at least 15 years, well before Trump decided to run for president.
Elsewhere, Goldin and Woodward denounced Trump for claiming, “Last year, the murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history. This is the biggest decline. Think of it in recorded history, the lowest number in over 125 years.”
According to the duo, Trump is right, but they still wanted to quibble, “Trump takes credit for a significant decrease in violent crime during 2025, claiming the murder rate in the U.S. dropped to its lowest in 125 years. But this is misleading. Crime had already been trending down in recent years.”
Trump also claimed, “More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.”
Here, Goldin and Woodward insist, “Yes, but the number of Americans with jobs always rises as the population grows. The relevant figure is the proportion of Americans with jobs, which has fallen significantly in the last quarter-century, partly because the workforce is aging and more people are retired. The proportion of Americans with jobs peaked at 64.7% in April 2000, and was 59.8% in January.”
By contrast, when former President Joe Biden stated in his first official State of the Union that “our economy created over 6.5 million new jobs just last year, more jobs created in one year,” AP’s desire to put context—in this case recovery from Democratic-mandated COVID shutdowns—around historic job numbers was nowhere to be seen.
From overzealous nitpicking to double standards in how similar claims are adjudicated, AP’s post-State of the Union roundup unintentionally did a good job of showing why the fact-checking industry needs to be greatly reformed.
