Predator-Elect Donald J. Trump has made it clear which American newspaper he likes the least: The Washington Post.
The paper ran a series of investigative stories that got under Trump’s thin skin, like David Fahrenthold’s exposé of some of his financial lies. The paper owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has now followed up with something truly magnificent — a tool that fact-checks his tweets.
The “RealDonaldContext” plug-in for Google’s Chrome browser was released by Washington Post reporter Philip Bump.
We made a tool that slips a bit more context into Trump’s tweets. It’s still in the early stages, but our goal is to provide additional context where needed for Trump’s tweets moving forward (and a few golden oldies).
Download the tool here to add fact-check overviews to selected Trump tweets. You have to click a post in his feed to view the Washington Post fact-check summary, a grey text box that pops up below the tweet. Not 100% of his tweets have been fact-checked in this service. It’s a wonderful, innovative use of technology, and I hope other news organizations are paying attention.
From the announcement:
It takes a little while for the Chrome extension to update, so we’ll try to stay up to speed on fact-checking what Trump is tweeting, but it may take a few minutes. This is a work in progress, so don’t hesitate to offer feedback and thoughts.
And don’t hesitate to point to Trump tweets that could use a little explication. That’s the goal, after all.