Donald Trump said WHAT??? Quick, check the Washington Post! Glenn Kessler is on the case, pounding out a truth bomb! Time to slap that lyin' POTUS with a Pinocchio the size of Freedom Tower!
Of all the notable deaths in 2025—Brian Wilson, Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, Olivia Nuzzi's career, and Ryan Lizza's dignity—none were more devastating to our country's moral order than the demise of the beloved "fact-checker" at the paper where democracy thrives on light, and dies in darkness.
Kessler left the Post in July after almost 30 years, accepting a generous buyout as part of the new leadership's effort to root out partisan hacks. The descendant of Dutch oil magnates who founded what is now Shell, Kessler explained that as much as he would like to continue saving democracy from Trump's lies, the "financial considerations were impossible to dismiss." Republic imperiled, bag secured. Hunter Biden would be proud.
Like a good captain, Kessler brought the ship down with him after setting it on fire. "The Fact Checker" would share his martyred fate. Pinocchio, an orphan, slouching toward the guillotine of truth's distortion. His sentence read: castration of the face.
In Kessler's absence, America struggles to endure. The braying masses need his expert guidance. Without it they might succumb to dangerous misinformation. After all, it was Kessler who debunked the racist "lab leak" conspiracy about the origins of COVID-19 and exposed the Republican plot to defame Joe Biden using "cheapfake" videos that made him look senile.
Kessler's crowning achievement—dismantling Sen. Tim Scott's (R., S.C.) bogus claims about the poverty his ancestors faced during the Great Depression—evinced a measure of courage in defense of democracy not seen since the bloodbath at Omaha Beach. Scott, the first black senator to represent a southern state since Reconstruction, had said his grandfather dropped out of school in the third grade. Kessler pounced, mobilizing a team of historians who found evidence suggesting Scott's grandfather may have actually dropped out in the fourth grade.
Without him, we are truly lost.
Since leaving the Post, Kessler has joined the distinguished array of former mainstream journalists who have embraced irrelevance by taking their "talents" to Substack. Jim Acosta, John Harwood, Jennifer Rubin, Joy Reid, Karen Attiah—a murderer's row of righteous nags. Kessler continues to follow his passion. He writes a regular column on "Trump's Bullshit," cashes checks on the Swedish-speaking circuit, and no longer has to pretend that Democrats also lie.
Claim: Glenn Kessler is a 2025 Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year.
Verdict: In grateful recognition of a debt we can never repay.