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Today we are going to be fact-checking an ad put out by Tony Luetkemeyer, he is the current State Senator representing District 34 and is running for re-election. Check out the map below to see if Luetkemeyer is going to be on your ballot when you vote! Luetkemeyer has been featured previously on our blog, but in the weeks before the election, he is out with a new ad attacking his opponent Sarah Shorter. In the ad, Luetkemeyer touts his support for law enforcement and his endorsement from the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police. Luetkemeyer then goes on to attack Shorter and make misleading claims about their previous comments on police funding. In order to get a better understanding of what policies Shorter actually supports and to better evaluate the truthfulness of this ad, we reached out to the Shorter campaign directly. We will be presenting some of the information the campaign has provided as well as our own independent analysis. We also reached out to the Luetkemeyer campaign but got no response.
Claim: Shorter said “F*** the police”
Fact: The video where Shorter appears to say “F*** the police” comes from the campaign’s TikTok account. In the original source video, Shorter is discussing abortion (video below). At no point in the video does Shorter mention the police. As Shorter mentioned in a tweet after the ad was released, the audio doesn’t match up with how their lips are moving in the video clip. While it is unclear where the audio comes from, or if it is real at all, one thing that is clear is that it does not come from the video that is featured in Luetkemeyer’s ad. This use of doctored audio and video is important and worth noting for a couple of reasons. More and more political actors are using fabricated images and videos in order to push a political agenda. This has made it harder for voters to know what is real and what is made up. This matters because doctored images and videos make it easier for misinformation to spread. Politicians like Luetkemeyer should not be engaged in spreading doctored media and misinformation.
Claim: Shorter sides with radicals
Fact: In Luetkemeyer’s ad, at one point the phrase “SARAH SHORTER SIDES WITH RADICALS” appears on the screen next to a picture of Shorter seemingly embracing Nancy Pelosi. The citation on the screen reads “Source: Shorter Website”. But it would appear that the citation is for the picture featured on the screen and not the claim that Shorter sides with radicals. We asked Shorter why they think Luetkemeyer chose the word radical to describe their policy positions. This was their response:
“I'm queer and disabled and depressed. Being open about those things in a political setting is pretty radical. …. They picked radical because it's a scary word and it "others" me in a distasteful way to conservative people. He needs to make me seem out of touch because the truth is I'm more embedded and present with the people of this district than he is.”
Moreover, the picture featured in the ad is not faithful to the source material on Shorter’s website. Shorter mentions in a tweet that the woman in the original picture is their mom, not Nancy Pelosi (see pictures below).
Claim: Shorter supports defunding the police
Fact: Nowhere on Shorter’s website do the words “defund the police” appear. We asked Shorter outright if they supported defunding the police and this was their response:
“Unfortunately, "let's look at what the police are being asked to do, what they have the manpower to do, and how we can deescalate situations before the use of deadly force even becomes an issue" is usually boiled down to "defund the police."
What Shorter is referring to here is the power of definition in politics. Dan Hahn says in his book Political Communication: Rhetoric, Government, and Citizens, that definitions can constrain societal dialogue, control who should be involved in solutions, limit the scope of debate, and can even eliminate debate entirely. Because Luetkemeyer and other Republicans are able to define any Democrat who merely mentions police funding as a supporter of defunding the police, they are able to exert more control over the debate.
Shorter says there are other ways to support law enforcement such as passing laws to get guns off the street and offering community mental health support to prevent crimes before they happen.
“We keep hearing about how all of our PDs are understaffed, and if we can't attract more people to the job, then we need to figure out how to take some things off of their plates.”
After reviewing Shorter's answer to our questions and conducting our own research we rate this ad as EXTREME on our Pants on Fire O-Meter. This rating is based on the fact that Luetkemeyer’s ad features doctored audio, video, and images which is dangerous for democracy and allows misinformation to spread, that its citations are inaccurate and misleading, and that he is lying about Shorter’s policy positions.
Thank you for reading Show Mo Facts! Be sure to follow us on Twitter as well as like and comment on this post. Also, send us any ads that you see and would like us to cover through our Contact page. If you’d like to check out another blog from our class, we recommend Gateway To Facts. They are fact-checking the MO DNC. Find them here!
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