Fact-checking candidate fact checks finds them wrong

Wrong!

It’s one of Donald Trump’s favorite things to say during debates when he disagrees with something Hillary Clinton is saying, a one-word interjection that let’s the audience know Trump is trying some real-time fact-checking.

But the fact is, in many cases, it’s Trump who’s wrong.

Take Wednesday evening’s UNLV debate. At several points, Trump attempted to correct Clinton with plainly unbelievable replies.

After Clinton noted that Trump “went after a disabled reporter, mocked and mimicked him on national television,” Trump interjected with his favorite word, “Wrong.”

But anybody who has watched television for even a brief time has no doubt seen the ad of Trump flailing his hands and mocking the remarks of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski. It’s on tape.

And while Trump may now want to try to explain why what he said that day in November 2015 was not really mocking a person’s disability, what Clinton said was certainly not wrong.

In another segment of the debate, Clinton accused Trump of having “been very cavalier, even casual about the use of nuclear weapons.”

Again, Trump said, “Wrong.”

But is it? Back on April 3, in an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Trump suggested that Japan should acquire nuclear weapons to defend itself from nuclear-armed rival North Korea. He’s said that he thinks nuclear proliferation is a problem, but he’s also said it would be better for countries such as South Korea and Saudi Arabia to develop their own nuclear weapons than to rely on the cash-strapped United States for protection.

And then there came the moment when Clinton reminded the crowd that Trump, under fire for allegedly assaulting a number of different women, “held a number of big rallies where he said that he could not possibly have done those things to those women because they were not attractive enough for them to be assaulted.”

Trump interrupted to insist (repeatedly) that, “I did not say that.”

But he did, at least about one of the alleged victims, telling the crowd at a rally in Greensboro, N.C., on Oct. 14 that one of the women “would not be my first choice.”

“Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you. Man,” Trump said to knowing laughter from the audience. “You don’t know, that would not be my first choice.”

Perhaps he meant they followed different sports teams?

Clinton also engaged in a bit of creative denial during the debate. Defending herself from Trump’s charges that she’d violated the law by using private email servers while secretary of state, Clinton said: “The FBI conducted a yearlong investigation into my e-mails. They concluded there was no case. He said the FBI was rigged.”

In fact, the FBI did conduct an investigation, and its director, former deputy attorney general James Comey, said “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case” against Clinton for mishandling classified information on her private servers.

But Comey also said in the same statement that “there is evidence that they [Clinton and her top staffers] were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

And later, under questioning by members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Comey acknowledged that Clinton had made several untrue statements about the email controversy to the public.

This, too, is on tape for anybody inclined to seek it out.

Why, it’s almost getting to the point where you can no longer trust the things said by presidential candidates during a nationally televised presidential debate, notwithstanding the ability of any reasonably intelligent person to check those statements using the Google machine and the Internet!

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.