🧩 BND Motif Index · M326
But what about
The other side did it too, or worse, so the charge doesn't count.
- 5claims filed under it
- 2right shows it came up on
- 3claims retold online
- 1fact-checker
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
⤵️ under it: 🧩 Whataboutism 🧩 Obama built the cages
🔗 goes with: 🧩 Double standard 🧩 If it were the other side
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (0 left-leaning, 0 center, 2 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “Cry me a river. GOP has been doing exactly that in numerous past elections” “Didn't the Republicans do this exact thing a couple of years ago?” “Go look at Joe Biden” “HAMAS didn't take hostages?” “Hamas has committed terrorism but nothing on the scale of Israel” “many of his supporters defended the move by pointing to actions by former President Joe Biden’s administration” “There's a felon in the WH that votes..what about him?” “you didn’t seem to remind us of all the children from Gaza and the West Bank that have had the exact same thing happen to them”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 0
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the left so far.
Told on the right 1
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
- 2026-11-05 “Obama used executive power to bypass Congress on major domestic and foreign policy issues.” 2
Retold online 3
claims many people posted in their own words
- 2026-11-05 “Donald Trump is called a convicted felon and adjudicated sex offender; when felons are said to have voted, posters answer that a felon in the White House votes.”
- 2026-11-01 “Republicans have run spoiler candidates many times before, but the media and opponents only call it nefarious when Democrats do it.”
- 2026-10-07 “Arguments over whether Israel's conduct in Gaza is worse than Hamas's, and whether it amounts to genocide.”
Fact-checked 1
claims a fact-checker examined: the verdict is theirs, behind the link
- 2026-09-21 “President Joe Biden revoked 440 press passes.” 🔎 PolitiFact
M326 · first seen 2026-10-05 · last 2026-10-25 · what this is · how the index works