Wouldn’t you think an alleged ”’factchecking” organization would understand what a lie is? Well, the organization is Politifact, so it’s a trick question. It’s a Democratic Party/progressive propaganda outfit and facts are the last thing it cares about: that group of hacks is easily the most dishonest and unethical of all of these thing, much less trustworthy than second in line from the bottom, which might be Glenn Kessler and the Washington Post’s intermittently fair “The Factchecker” feature. And so it was that as the end of 2024 approaches, Politifact announced that this was its “Lie of the Year,”what Trump said on September 10:

“‘In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs.The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”

“With this claim, amplified before 67 million television viewers in his debate against Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump took his anti-migrant, the U.S. border-is-out-of-control campaign agenda to a new level,” Politifact moaned.

But even if the “Their eating pets and wildlife from the parks!” story had been a deliberate lie, it obviously was neither the “Lie of the Year” in either of the two categories relevant to the choice: it wasn’t the most destructive lie, and it wasn’t the most indefensible lie. This was:

“Start your tape right now, because I’m about to tell you the truth….This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I’ve known him for years. The Brzezinskis have known him for 50 years. If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.”

That was Morning Joe Scarborough showing what a hack he is in March, but Scarborough was just a fellow traveler with the many purveyors of the real “Lie of the Year.” He was joined by those crack reporters in the mainstream media, Kamala Harris, and all the Democrats who worked with Biden and knew he was slipping into dementia years ago, even before the party nominated him for a weird pandemic-limited campaign in 2020. It knew then that a fading old man who was never all that smart in his prime could avoid interviews and public exposure more than any political candidate for office in 50 years or more sufficiently eke out a victory.

The lie was pervasive and constant, across the news media, punditry and the Left’s entire spectrum. It was the result of a conspiracy to deceive the public. Biden’s increasingly incoherent speech was just because he had a “stutter.” The videos showing him wandering off or freezing were, his “historic” paid liar told the press, “deep fakes.” The New York Times in June ran an article entitled “How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts.” The “paper of record” said that “the distorted, online version” of President Biden was “a product of often misleading videos that play into and reinforce voters’ longstanding concerns about his age and abilities.”

When Special Counsel Robert Hur wrote in March that Biden couldn’t be ethically indicted for the same misuse of classified material that Trump faced a trial for because the jury would be sympathetic to an aging, infirm, confused defendant, he was accused of a partisan hit job. It was all a cover-up. The result of this years-long lie was that the American public didn’t and do not now know who is leading the country. A Presidential election was just completed with one party’s candidate essentially appointed and anointed Politburo-style. Trust in our political system is at its lowest ebb, and existential danger to any democracy, a form of government that must be built on trust.

It is fair to say that this is more consequential than a town’s Haitian immigrants being falsely accused of eating cats.

The runner-up for “Lie of the Year”? Nothing else come close to the winner, but I would say that another Axis lie get that distinction: the Democratic smear tactic that Donald Trump was an existential threat to democracy. Or maybe it was that the Trump rally in Madison Square Garden emulated a Nazi rally there in the Thirties. Or that Pete Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame…I don’t really care. The “Lie of the Year” was disgusting, divisive, destructive, cynical, dangerous (it still is) and unforgivable.

PolitiFact’s attempt to minimize it means that it continues to this day.