In his September 24 Washington Post column, Charles Krauthammer joined numerous other right-wing media figures in falsely claiming that Democratic senatorial candidate Chris Coons is “a once self-described 'bearded Marxist.'”

As Media Matters has noted, this false claim is entirely based on what Coons referred to as a “joke” in an article he wrote for his college newspaper in 1985. Moreover, in a September 21 interview on CNN's John King USA, Coons said that the “bearded Marxist” line was “clearly a tongue in cheek reference to how Republicans on campus, friends of mine, former roommates of mine, viewed my transformation from a young Republican to a Democrat.”

So it's clear that Krauthammer's claim was false. But here's what makes this worse: In the online version of Krauthammer's column, the Post actually links to a May 3 Politico article that proves Krauthammer was wrong -- that Coons' friends made the “bearded Marxist” joke.

Not only did the Post publish Krauthammer's falsehood, it linked right to a story that debunks it. Did anyone at the Post actually read that Politico article before linking to it?