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MSNBC hosts Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow reacted to a recent rating by fact-checking organization Politifact during their MSNBC shows Monday night.
On Friday, Politifact rated a claim O'Donnell made in an MSNBC "Lean Forward" ad as "mostly false." In the ad, O'Donnell discussed the 1944 passing of the GI Bill and said that critics of the bill "called it welfare."
Politifact rated the claim as mostly false. "There were concerns aired as Congress debated the matter that the unemployment benefits would lead some beneficiaries to laze around. But we ultimately found no evidence of critics referring to the GI Bill as welfare. O’Donnell’s claim rates Mostly False," Politifact stated.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow responded to the Politifact rating before O'Donnell. At the end of her show, Maddow, who is a harsh critic of the fact-checking site, raged against the organization for its rating. "This is why Politifact needs to go away," Maddow said. "Or at least they need to stop using the word 'fact' as part of their name."
O'Donnell thanked Maddow and offered his own criticism during his show. O'Donnell said, "I was going to fill this space tonight with a detailed defense of my use of the word 'welfare'...I was going to explain that other words were used at that time such as 'the Dole' and 'relief,' and those words morphed over the decades into what we now call welfare. And that if I used one of those words in the ad, no one under 70 would know what I was talking about."
Maddow also referred to the British Dole system during her scathing review of Politifact. "What do you think the British Dole system is? Do you think it's pineapple program of some kind!? Maybe something having to do with bananas? Everybody gets a little sticker? Did you seriously print this piece without googling 'the Dole?' You don't even have to use quotes!" Maddow said.
Watch O'Donnell's response to the Politifact rating above, and Maddow's epic rant about it below:
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