It’s Thursday…
President Shitshow’s public schedule for…
I think it’s time we had a little chat.
Don’t worry, nobody is in trouble, and no, I’m not stepping away from blogging.
This has been on my mind, honestly, since last summer, but it’s only recently that I’ve really started noticing how little fact-checking the media is doing when it comes to the sitting president, his staff, and even other elected officials. Mostly Republican ones.
For example:
News Headlines:
I did not check the fortune article, but the other articles basically just told us what Potato said.
Scrolling TikTok I did find a post by Mr. Global who says the permit for the refinery was issued by the Biden admin.
@mrglobaltoo #gasprices #funny #wow #fyp #fypシ ♬ original sound – Mr Global
Mr. Global:
You know, sometimes the story inside the story is actually the better story, and this is one of those cases. So, the first story is, you know, you have Donald Trump here announcing a new refinery in Brownsville, Texas, and taking all the credit for it. It’s because of his America First agenda.
The problem is, this is a refinery that got its permitting under the Biden Administration. Yeah, the Biden Administration approved for this refinery to be built in 2024.
Now, I’m going to tell you the inside story that’s better than that story. You see, they started planning this refinery at the end of the Obama Administration, but they ran into a little bit of a problem, and that was the election of Donald Trump as president.
Yeah, because after President Donald Trump crashed global oil markets at the end of 2018, the company that was going to build the refinery had to file for bankruptcy.
Yeah, this is the story inside the story. That’s even better. Trump is taking credit for a refinery being built that couldn’t be built under him because they went bankrupt because of him.
I would expect nothing less. Thanks.
TikTok. 03/11/2026.
I went to Google and found this article from local NBC affiliate KXAN (03/11/2026; updated 03/12/2026):
A decade of planning:
John Calce, chairman, founder and CEO of AFR, said the facility is expected to be fully operational by 2029.
[snip]
Calce said the facility was designed specifically to process light shale oil, which differs chemically from conventional crude and can require different refining conditions.
“[Understand] that shale oil is similar to conventional oil, but it’s different petrochemically… and that shale oil refines at different temperatures than conventional oil,” he said.
Calce has been working at this idea for the last 12 years, saying he anticipated the boon of light shale oil coming out of the Permian Basin.
“So I realized that 12 years ago we were going to have an overabundance of U.S. shale oil and an under ability to refine it. All our refiners on the Gulf Coast are awesome refineries very well run, but they were designed for cantilever different oil.”
Calce said finding the right business partner was a key challenge in bringing the project together.“Reliance is a great partner. They operate the world’s largest refinery in Jamnagar, India, and so they are uniquely situated to help on the technical side of things,” Calce said. “So we’ve not received any government money whatsoever, but we have received support from the White House, from the National Energy Dominance Council, from Secretary Burgum, et cetera. But we negotiated this deal on our own with Reliance.”
[snip]
Despite billing it as an announcement, Trump’s Truth Social post’s only new information was about Reliance’s partnership with AFR. In June 2024, Reuters announced Calce was “relaunching efforts to build a large plant in South Texas,” under the company name Element Fuels Holdings, which later transformed into AFR.
[snip]
Experts have also called into question Trump’s description of the deal as being worth “$300 BILLION.” The plant itself will cost $3-$4 billion, according to both the Port of Brownsville and Calce.
In the news release, AFR said “the U.S. trade imbalance will improve by $300 billion,” — which may be the number Trump was citing (the White House did not respond to our request for comment.)
Ed Hirs, an Energy Fellow at the University of Houston, says that number doesn’t hold up.
“I think what they want you to do is read the $125 [billion of crude oil] and the $175 [billion of exported processed oil] and say ‘Oh, that’s $300 [billion],” Hirs said. However, Hirs says the crude oil is likely being counted both in it’s crude form, and when it’s processed — despite being the same oil.
He also says the raw light shale oil should not count towards the trade imbalance, as light shale oil is already being exported in it’s crude state and refined overseas.
“Processing it into refined products means that we can look at this thing maybe making $25 billion over the next 20 years. That’s the math we need to be looking at,” Hirs said.
Calce argued the $300 billion figure is accurate — when looking at overall commercial activity.
KXAN (03/11/2026; updated 03/12/2026).
To be fair, we have glimpses of real reporters attempting to fact-check Potato to his face.
I asked @POTUS about the FBI reportedly seizing election records in Arizona. He said they must have done that because it was a “rigged” election. I pointed out to him that his own AG said there was not measurable voter fraud to overturn that election pic.twitter.com/fGnfxTH3HO
— Liz Landers (@ElizLanders) March 11, 2026
Question: Arizona — why did the FBI seize election records in that state?
Potato: Well, they probably thought the election was rigged, right?
Question: It wasn’t rigged though.
Potato: Really? How do you know?
Question: Your own attorney general in 2020 said that there was not measurable voter fraud?
Potato: Oh, really? You don’t think it was rigged? I think it was rigged. And if you say it wasn’t rigged, you’re a rotten reporter.
But even with occasional glimpses of real reporting, actual fact-checking is getting rough, and honestly, it’s exhausting.
I know it might seem petty, given everything happening in the world, to focus on this kind of political gamesmanship. But it’s exactly because of the state of the world that we should have an easier way to fact-check the man and the administration responsible for sending our troops into war and painting a giant target on all Americans. His words, and theirs, matter.
This is an Open Thread
