David Koch calls AFP’s misleading ads “quite true”

July 14, 2014

Today’s Kansas City Star features a rare interview with one of the typically reclusive Koch brothers, David. The piece primarily focuses on the many institutions and edifices that bear his name, but in a noteworthy passage at the end of the article, David discusses the barrage of TV ads coming from the Kochs’ political arm, Americans for Prosperity.

David lauds AFP’s ads criticizing the Affordable Care Act, glowing that “these ads are very well done” and that the campaign is “really quite informative and… quite true.” PolitiFact would beg to differ with David’s assessment of AFP’s anti-ACA ads, having rated the claims in several of these spots to be false. What’s more, David specifically praises the ads’ demonstration of “real people who have real medical problems,” yet the ads in AlaskaLouisiana and Colorado all used paid actors.

The gravity of his comments — and the false ads themselves — is underscored by a report today from the Sunlight Foundation that AFP and other Koch-affiliated groups have already bought airtime for their ads on over 100 TV stations nationwide. With AFP alone planning to spend $125 million influencing this fall’s mid-term elections, TV viewers across the country can expect a deluge of Koch-backed misinformation over the next few months.

David Koch’s characterization of AFP’s lies as “quite true” has us wondering — when you lie about a lie, does that make you a meta-liar, or just pants on fire?

Paid for by American Bridge 21st Century Foundation