There is some fake news going around as an email about the upcoming election. An email lists some disturbing facts about the 2020 Democratic Party Platform. This is a good example of why you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet even an email from a friend. In my case this came from a friend who is a Republican.

Before I get started let me give you couple of links.

https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/
This is a link to the official Democrats web site. There are 2 options. You may expand the headers on the page. Or download the PDF and get the whole document in readable form on your computer. I chose the PDF option.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/us/politics/democratic-party-platform.html
This link goes to a New York Times summary of the platform. I like the Times but I realize that not everybody does. You may be able to find a summary on another trusted news source.

The platform is a fairly long document (91 pages) so you may wish to examine a reliable summary. This email was far from reliable.

Now I didn’t check all for the claims. But the few I’ve checked seem wildly distorted. My guess this is by design so readers might be misled into supporting President Trump.

I chose 3 claims to check mainly because they had associated page numbers and that made it a bit easier to guess what was bothering the writer. Each of these was wrong but I did see a few items in there that seemed correct.

The Claims

Claim 1.

Universal healthcare and Medicaid for all Americans and illegal aliens. (Pg 61)

I did not see anything even close to this on page 61 and read that page carefully. The closest thing I found was this:

“This Administration’s cruelty and dehumanization of immigrants stretches the imagination and shocks the conscience: forcibly separating families and putting children in cages; deporting veterans who have fought to defend our freedoms; conducting militarized raids on our workplaces; endangering lives by denying COVID-19 testing and treatment based on immigration status, including to essential workers at the forefront of the pandemic response;”

The Democratic Platform is opposing the Trump Administration’s immigration policies including denying COVID-19 testing and treatment. I suppose it is this last part that angers the writer. I think it is just common sense to test and treat all here without checking immigration status. After all, you can catch COVID-19 for a non-citizen as well as a citizen.
I saw nothing about Medicaid for All. There was quite a bit about Republican states denying Medicaid expansion which would cover more low income citizens.

I did see the term “Medicare for All” once (on page 27). This may have been what the writer of this fake news may have meant. This is the context:

“We are proud our party welcomes advocates who want to build on and strengthen the Affordable Care Act and those who support a Medicare for All approach; all are critical to ensuring that health care is a human right.

The Democratic Platform is not advocating Medicare for All. But those who favor that approach should be included in the conversation about how to improve health care. The platform does indicate Universal healthcare would be the goal of that conversation.

Claim 2.

Immediate citizenship for illegals (Pg 63)

I saw nothing even similar to this. It maybe these few lines which include a reference to path to citizenship

Democrats will ensure that law-abiding individuals with Temporary Protected Status or Deferred Enforced Departure are not sent back to countries where they cannot live safely, and we will work to pave a path to citizenship for those who have been in the country for an extended period of time and built their lives in the United States.

Claim 3.

preferential treatment for gays wanting to immigrate to America. (Pg 63)

Again nothing like this. Perhaps the writer feels that equal treatment is somehow preferential treatment in this case. Here is what the Platform actually says:

We believe we should expand, not reduce, the annual visa cap for victims of human trafficking, including victims of sex trafficking, violence against women and children, and other heinous crimes; ensure that same sex-couples and their children receive equal treatment in the immigration and naturalization systems; reaffirm America’s commitment to family-based immigration; and preserve the critical role of diversity preferences in our immigration system.

Again, This is a good example of why you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet even email from a friend.