When It Comes to the Truth of Opinion Columns, It’s Reader Beware

Thiessen went on to say that Democrats are falsely claiming that the new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who has given $2 million to Trump and the GOP since 2016, was appointed by Trump. In truth, Thiessen says, “He was appointed not by Trump but by the unanimous vote of the bipartisan Postal Service board of governors.”

That might sound fair enough to a casual reader. But a quick check of the USPS website, which a Washington Post factchecker could have easily made in minutes, shows that the six sitting members of that board of governors were all picked by Trump. They did indeed all vote unanimously, as Thiessen reported in his column, to confirm Trump’s nominee for the postmaster general position, but they could hardly be called a bipartisan body.

Actually, Trump curiously allowed the USPS to have no members on its board of governors for much of his first year as president, and by this point, with only five more months left in a four-year term, he has only filled six of the nine available seats. That’s significant, since under the USPS’s rules of operation, it takes the vote of seven governors to remove a postmaster general.