Checking on Ron Paul and Those Newsletters
Ron Paul's rise in opinion polls has drawn extra attention from reporters. Photo by Matt Largey/KUT NewsAudio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul has led in some polls leading up to the Iowa Republican caucuses. He has also come out pretty well on the Texas Truth-O-Meter. The congressman, known for not adhering to the mainstream Republican establishment, had nearly 30 such claims about him or made by him reviewed by the Austin American-Statesman’s Politfact Texas, and 18 came out Half True or better. Eleven fared worse.
KUT’s Emily Donahue spoke with Gardner Selby of Politifact Texas about two of those claims, including one by Paul about racism in newsletters he published in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.
We zeroed in on a recent claim by Paul that questionable passages, which he has disavowed, totaled only, oh, 8-10 sentences out of maybe 10,000 newsletter pages. We looked over a sampling pulled together by the New Republic from Paul’s newsletters and totaled up 35 sentences in 14 passages that struck us as potentially — what they hey? — offensive. Now, folks can see them all; they’re all piled up on a spreadsheet.
Podcast: Download (4.3MB)
