For The Love Of Baby Jesus, Fact-Check Yourselves, People!

I want to discuss what we all must do to tamp down the fake news that has exploded onto the social media scene. It is cancerous to the point that the elitist mainstream media has fallen prey, quoting and using social media posts as if they were facts, triple-sourced by actual journalists.The fact of the matter is this. In the information age, when most people have smartphones with internet access, there is absolutely no excuse for not checking – at least in a cursory manner – to see if what you are posting, forwarding, re-posting, or retweeting isn’t fact-based. It takes less than ten seconds to highlight a subject and put it into a web browser to see what comes up.Case in point – and I have to admit some people I hold in high esteem have fallen to this. There is a popular sentiment being reposted across most social media platforms in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt that reads:“I think this goes without saying…but the chief of the @SecretService shouldn’t come from the company who sells Pepsi and Cheetos.”In less than 15 seconds, I discovered that this post is disingenuous at best and deceptive at worst.Kimberly Cheatle is the director of the US Secret Service. But to read the social media post you would think that Biden appointed her because of her connection to the woke PepsiCo company. That’s not the case…not by a long shot.Cheatle joined the US Secret Service in 1995. and was involved in the evacuation of Vice President Dick Cheney during the September 11 attacks. She served on Joe Biden's protective detail during the Obama administration. In 2017 and 2018, she served as deputy assistant director of the organization. She also served as the special agent in charge of the Grand Rapids, Michigan, office. Cheatle became the first woman to serve as assistant director of Protective Operations, a department tasked with the protection of the president and dignitaries, and managed a budget of over $133.5 million.Now, it is true that Cheatle parlayed her career with the US Secret Service into a plum private sector job, like all those from inside the Beltway do after their tenure in government, if, in fact, they actually retire before they mold.From 2019 to 2022, Cheatle served as senior director of global security at PepsiCo, where she directed and implemented security protocols for the company's facilities in North America.Then, in August 2022, Biden announced Cheatle’s appointment as director of the United States Secret Service, ending her private sector career. She assumed office on September 17, 2022.Now, does that sound like all she did to warrant the Secret Service directorship was “sell  Pepsi and Cheetos”? No, it doesn’t. To infer that someone with the experience that Cheatle has amassed during her career wasn’t qualified for her current position is disingenuous and smacks of political motive.Yet, I doubt most of the people who shared and reposted the aforementioned comment bothered to take the time to determine whether the inference wasn’t unfair. Was the information fact-based, or was is politically motivated?Now, don’t get me wrong. When a former president and current presidential candidate is involved in an assassination attempt, you can’t deny the systemic failure of the protection detail. And given that protection details at that level are supposed to be the elite of the Secret Service, the culpability and blame for the failure land at the director’s feet. So, I do believe it would be the honorable thing for Cheatle to tender her resignation and, failing to do so, she should be removed from the position.But the larger point here is this. When people who identify as conservative, constitutionalist, Republican, etc. unwittingly become dupe propagandists because they don’t take the time to divine truth from lie, fact from fiction, we give the Marxist Left all the ammunition they need to label us liars, dolts, and propagandists in the public square, providing them cover for their own propagandistic malfeasance…and there is no reason what so ever we should act that stupidly.Bottom line. If you have the time to scroll through social media, if you have the time to consider reposting something you have found on social media or even heard in passing, you have fifteen seconds to figure out if it is even remotely true before you do.If you can’t do that in defense of the truth, then you aren’t part of any solution. You are a huge part of the problem.For the love of Baby Jesus, be your own fact-checkers, people!Then, our segment on America’s Third Watch, broadcast nationally from our flagship station WGUL AM860 & FM93.7 in Tampa, Florida.Become a paid subscriber to commentUnderground USA is reader-financed…Please consider becoming a paid subscriber Get full access to Underground USA at www.undergroundusa.com/subscribe