Jennifer Rubin is a left-wing columnist for the Washington Post. So, naturally, she hates Ron DeSantis. On Friday, she published a column arguing that DeSantis’s conservative policies endanger Florida’s economy. The headline was, ‘Florida might pay for MAGA cruelty and know-nothingism.’ Just another objective day at the office at WaPo! Unfortunately, her entire column was based on a grotesque factual error.
The centerpiece of Rubin’s piece was this absurd claim:
‘DeSantis likes to brag that more people are moving to Florida than ever. Not so fast. ‘An estimated 674,740 people reported that their permanent address changed from Florida to another state in 2021.’ That’s more than any other state, including New York or California, the two states that have received the most attention for outbound migration during the pandemic, according to the American Community Survey released in June tracking state-by-state migration.’
This assertion came from a Business Insider article that, when Rubin wrote, had already been corrected. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The Post had to correct Rubin’s error:
‘A previous version of this article mischaracterized Floridians’ state-to-state migration in 2021. According to the Census Bureau, more people moved into Florida than any other state that year. This version has been corrected.’