updated Wed. June 12, 2024
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The Wilson Quarterly
January 31, 2018
The best example came with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad campaign against Senator John Kerry in 2004, the first modern example of “fake news” swaying an election. The effort was based on the polemical book about Mr. Kerry by the conservative conspiracy theorist and best-selling author, JeromeÃâà...
New York Times
January 20, 2018
A major Republican donor, Mr. Pickens supported Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which leveled false allegations against John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign. Along the way, he had five wives, became a major philanthropist and saw the football stadium at Oklahoma State University, his almaÃâà...
Lexington Herald Leader
December 22, 2017
... in the 2004 presidential campaign, a group of Vietnam veterans calling themselves the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth claimed that Democratic nominee John Kerry had fabricated his war exploits. They had served with Kerry, just not during the time when he had earned his multiple combat commendations.
The New Yorker
November 7, 2017
The 2004 campaign against John Kerry centered on the outlandish challenge to the Democratic candidate's war record sponsored by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a main funder of which, Harold Simmons, would later become a major supporter of American Crossroads. (Bush's first race forÃâà...
Vanity Fair
July 12, 2017
A reckoning of a different sort came in 2004, when John Kerry's presidential campaign was targeted in a series of TV ads by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group ostensibly organized to call into question Kerry's wartime record as a decorated navy officer but in truth motivated by lingering anger over Kerry's post-serviceÃâà...
HuffPost
July 2, 2017
“Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” produced the ad and created the smear that Kerry and his team never effectively pushed back. Since then, the term swiftboating has been used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Fox News Radio host John Gibson has since written “How the Left SwiftboatedÃâà...
CNN
July 20, 2015
Instead, Bush praised Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that lobbed attacks questioning Kerry's service record in Vietnam -- attacks McCain unequivocally criticized in 2004 as "dishonest and dishonorable." When his campaign was asked if Jeb Bush saw a double standard, a spokesman rejected theÃâà...
Huffington Post (blog)
July 2, 2008
In 2004, the Republican Party's “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” acting as a surrogate for the George W. Bush reelection campaign, launched the sleaziest, most despicable smears against a veteran's war record ever undertaken during an American presidential campaign. This well-heeled group of extremeÃâà...
New York Times
June 21, 2008
... sent a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the 2004 attack advertisements, taking him up on a challenge he issued last November: that he would give $1 million to anyone who could disprove a single charge the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made against Mr. Kerry.
