Hello Walls

Because its mission is enlightenment, the Washington Post investigated President Trump’s assertion that Barack Obama’s upscale home in the District of Columbia is protected by a 10-foot wall. The Post’s story is accessible here via Outline.

The Post’s story generated numerous follow-on stories regurgitating the Post’s investigation. You can see the roster here via Google. I would use the adjective “countless” rather than “numerous” to log the search results, though Google specifies 23,100,000.

The Post disputed Trump’s assertion. The Post only found elaborate security measures including security fencing, but nothing ten-feet high. The Washington Times quotes the Post’s findings in its story. Joel Pollak also reviewed the Post’s findings in a good story for Breitbart.

A fair-minded reader would likely think that the Post is quibbling at best, but by their own lights the Post had caught out Trump in yet another whopper. The rest of the media rushed to clamber aboard and spread the good news. The competition is stiff, but a Pulitzer Prize may yet crown the Post’s investigation.

The Daily Caller’s Benny Johnson undertook a mission to fact check the Post’s fact-check in “IS THERE A 10-FOOT WALL OUTSIDE OBAMA’S HOUSE? WE WENT THERE TO FIND OUT.” It turned out to be mission impossible (video below). Johnson reports: “We tried to find out. We even brought a tape measure. But we were stopped by all of Obama’s other walls from even finding out.”

What wall? “Obama does not have one wall. He has many. He has barricades. He has armed guards entirely blocking the suburban road where he lives. Multiple cement and iron barricades block the road leading up to the Obama mansion. A Secret Service car and agent keep people from entering the stretch of road on both ends approximately 1,000 feet in both directions.” It’s almost funny.

Steve Hayward might appreciate this scrupulous correction that runs with the the Post story: “Correction: A previous version of this article said Kalorama is home to Jeffrey P. Bezos [chairman and chief executive officer of Amazon and owner of the Post]. Bezos purchased a property in the neighborhood, but his primary residence is in the Seattle area.”

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