In its latest act of partisan truth-twisting, Wikipedia took a blowtorch to the reputations of President Donald Trump’s nominees for his Cabinet.
The partisan ploy failed to derail them, but it exposed the sinister agenda that informs everything the online encyclopedia touches.
A new study by the Media Research Center, released Wednesday, shows how Wikipedia distorted its descriptions of various Trump nominees after he announced his intent to name them.
The website removed existing coverage of a war hero’s medals, inserted unfounded accusations in place of exculpatory information and added entire sections of evidence-free attacks against people who have devoted their lives in service to America.
For example, Pete Hegseth’s original Wikipedia entry prominently displayed the eight medals the US Army combat veteran received for actions on the battlefield, along with their icons.
After Trump announced Hegseth as his choice for defense secretary, Wikipedia editors erased three of the medals from the former infantry officer’s main “infobox” and stripped out every icon, drastically reducing the amount of space devoted to his military achievements — a whole new form of stolen valor.
When one editor tried to restore some of these images, internal communications show, other editors overruled and reprimanded him — and even threatened to “block” him from making further changes.
His effort to bring back the “military icon depictions” would wrongly “plac[e] undue emphasis on one aspect of the individual,” they claimed.
Wikipedia editors polluted Hegseth’s page with numerous evidence-free allegations by the left’s favorite sources: anonymous ones.
And when Wikipedia chose to edit a description about a Fox News segment in which Hegseth accidentally injured a performer, it removed mitigating details that had previously been present, including a quote from the hurt individual stating that the damage was “only minor” and a description of how he just “walked it off.”
To Wikipedia, all accusations great and small merit inclusion when the target is a Trump nominee — but there’s no room to honor that nominee’s bravery, or for telling the complete story.
Wikipedia also transformed key Trump nominees’ pages into soapboxes for their critics.
After Trump announced his pick to lead the FBI, Wikipedia editors vandalized now-Director Kash Patel’s page with attacks from Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and other detractors.
Wikipedia also inserted extraneous information about a 2020 Nigerian hostage rescue mission into Patel’s biography — solely so that it could quote a former government official who accused Patel of lying about the action.
On top of that, Wikipedia added an entirely new, seven-paragraph section of character assassination titled “Promotion of conspiracy theories” to Patel’s page, just in case any readers managed to get through this absolute thicket of smears with a positive opinion of him.
To be clear, these are the tactics Wikipedia has always used on individuals who are inconvenient to its leftist agenda.
While we found substantive post-nomination changes to the pages of Tulsi Gabbard, Russell Vought and others, Wikipedia’s claws came out for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. much earlier — the moment he challenged Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination.
Wikipedia terraformed every section of RFK Jr.’s article, adding accusations of sexual impropriety and dredging up supposed scandals from the least-known corners of his career.
It also added a new piece of text at the top of one section: “Kennedy’s political rhetoric often uses conspiracy theories.”
Isn’t it odd that Wikipedia only found this relevant after RFK interrupted Biden’s expected coronation?
To ensure its ideological ends, as we’ve reported, Wikipedia has created an operational structure that places only radical leftists in positions of authority.
The online encyclopedia has created a blacklist to prevent any right-of-center outlets from being cited, our research has found — crucial, since Wikipedia’s entries are exclusively based on citations.
Wikipedia’s top brass and editors function as jackbooted enforcers, mission-focused on instilling a radical agenda in the site’s readers.
Co-founder Larry Sanger has criticized Wikipedia’s direction for years, pointing out its bias and calling specific attention to its slanted descriptions of public figures disliked by leftists.
He’s also called out the absurd attention devoted to controversies related to public figures Wikipedia dislikes, a recurring issue in our study of its treatment of Trump nominees.
Wikipedia feeds users a toxic brew of left-wing swill from chestless editors who want to upend America — yet top search engines like Google and many AI developers continue to rely on its biased narratives.
It’s past time for them, and all readers who value truth, to kick Wikipedia to the curb.
Dan Schneider is vice president of MRC Free Speech America, where Tom Olohan is a staff writer.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
