It has long been understood by conservatives that the bulk of the media is biased in favor of Democrats and against Republicans, and that is especially true for the so-called "fact checker" organizations.

That reality was confirmed once again last week when former President Donald Trump accurately observed that Vice President Kamala Harris previously supported the leftist movement to "defund the police" but his correct claim was rated "misleading" and "mostly false" by PolitiFact.

To reach that absurd conclusion, the outlet acknowledged but ignored prior statements from Harris about "reimagining" public safety and shifting police funding to other recipients -- the literal definition of "defund" -- and instead noted that Harris never said she wanted to completely abolish the police, which isn't what Trump claimed.

A dishonest "fact check"

During a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, last week, former President Trump repeatedly riffed on how "radical" VP Harris is and the terrible policies she previously or currently supported and would potentially enact if elected to serve in the White House.

Referencing past statements from then-Sen. Harris (D-CA) during the 2020 anti-police riots, Trump asserted, "She wants to defund the police," but then noted that in the intervening four years since then, "Now she's pulled back on it."

PolitiFact highlighted how there is no official definition for "defund the police" and how it holds different meanings for different activists that range from completely shutting down entire police departments to merely diverting some police funding to other non-police areas of the budget.

As noted, the outlet admitted that Harris had supported some reductions in and shifting of police funding at that time, with multiple examples of her saying America needed to "reimagine" public safety, complaining that police budgets were too large in some cities, and that more cops on the street wasn't the answer to address rising crime rates.

But the "fact checker" also pointed out that Harris never explicitly called for shuttering entire departments, that she pragmatically acknowledged America was "not going to get rid of the police," and that the Biden administration had approved numerous grants to boost law enforcement in certain areas.

As such, PolitiFact determined that it was "mostly false" for Trump to claim that Harris backed the nebulous and ill-defined "defund the police" movement.

Harris supported "redirecting resources" away from police departments

ABC News also looked at VP Harris' record in relation to the left's "defund the police" movement and provided several examples of her previously calling for a shifting of funding away from police departments in 2020, though it also noted how she has held contradictory positions at other points in her political career.

In a June 2020 conversation with comedic actor and radio host Nick Cannon, then-Sen. Harris said we needed "to reimagine public safety in America" and suggested that "for too long, people have confused achieving public safety with putting more cops on the street."

"So when we're talking about policing, I think of it in a number of ways, and there is that, which is that we have to redirect resources. And Nick, you may know this, in many cities in America over one-third of their city budget is placed, is paid to policing," she added. "Meanwhile, schools are suffering ... We have to have this conversation about redirecting resources where they are needed to truly support communities to be healthy and therefore safe."

Just a few days earlier in June 2020, in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopolous, Harris was asked about then-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti cutting $150 million from the LAPD budget to be reinvested elsewhere and replied, "The issue right now in America is that many cities spend over one-third of their entire city budget on policing. But meanwhile, we've been defunding public schools for years in America. I applaud Eric Garcetti for doing what he's done."

Yet, the outlet also observed that in her 2009 memoir, then-San Francisco District Attorney Harris had expressed her support for more funding for more police officers, and after she was picked to be the VP nominee in 2020, distanced herself from the anti-police "defund" movement, then in 2023 supported the administration disbursing more than $334 million in grants to local police departments to hire more officers.