Greg Gutfeld and Ron DeSantis face the consequences of telling historical truths.

Some of our older readers might remember a TV game show called “Truth or Consequences.” If contestants answered a question incorrectly, which they usually did because the questions were odd, they had to perform a ridiculous stunt.

These days, the American left is playing a variation of that game. Call it “Truth and Consequences.”

If a conservative tells the truth about certain subjects, Democrats and the left will try to inflict consequences. The consequences may include denunciation by the President of the United States, his Vice President, and/or his campaign manager.

Consider the case of Greg Gutfeld. The Fox News comedian/pundit is under fire for saying, citing the book of a Holocaust survivor, that some Jews survived concentration camps by having skills useful to the Nazis. “You had to be useful; utility kept you alive,” said Gutfeld.

It’s beyond dispute that Gutfeld spoke the truth. Jews who were useful to the Nazis sometimes avoided death for that reason.

The Nazis spared a wide range of skilled Jews. Ann Coulter notes that Wolf Blitzer’s father said his skills as a railroad engineering and management expert enabled him to survive Auschwitz.

Jacques Stroumsa survived Auschwitz because he was an excellent violin player and a first-rate engineer. His two sisters also survived because of their skills and/or utility. The rest of his family, including his parents and his pregnant wife, were killed.

Notwithstanding the truth of Gutfeld’s statement, he has been roundly condemned by the left, including by Joe Biden. The White House called the statement “an obscenity.” It claimed that Gutfeld was “defending a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie” and saying there was something “good” about the Holocaust.

Gutfeld was doing neither. As we have seen, he was stating a fact.

And in no way does the fact that the Nazis sometimes spared people it could put to use — whether by helping them achieve their goals or simply by entertaining them — constitute something “good” about the Holocaust. The cold utilitarianism of the Nazis in matters of life and death casts them and the Holocaust in a sinister and inhumane light.

But Biden and his fellow leftists don’t care about the truth of Gutfeld’s statement. They see is it as a “gotcha” — a way to bring down a guy who has gained prominence by ridiculing the left.

Gutfeld did not bring up the Holocaust gratuitously. He made his statement during a debate about Florida’s new history curriculum which instructs students, among other things about slavery, that some slaves gained useful skills. The liberal with whom Gutfeld was arguing brought up the Holocaust in this context.

The statement about slavery contained in the Florida curriculum is true. Of course, slaves who performed certain jobs as part of their servitude gained skills they would later put to use when freed. To claim otherwise is to demean the adaptability and work ethic of the freedmen.

In fact, the left-wing College Board’s AP African-American History deemed the following statement to be “essential knowledge” about slavery:

In addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers in the North and South. Once freed, African-Americans used these skills to provide for themselves and others.

I don’t recall anyone objecting to this statement. Indeed, the left defended the College Board’s AP program to the hilt and attacked Ron DeSantis for not approving it.

Clearly, the statement in the Florida curriculum adopted under DeSantis is true. And clearly, it is not a defense of slavery. The new curriculum is harshly critical of that evil institution.

But Democrats (and some of DeSantis’ GOP rivals) are using the statement to inflict adverse consequences on Ron DeSantis, who has defended it. Kamala Harris, who doesn’t know much about history, visited Florida to attack its governor for supporting the new curriculum. She accused DeSantis of “pushing propaganda to our children.” But true statements aren’t propaganda.

The former Florida House Leader joined the attempt to inflict consequences on DeSantis and his administration for telling the truth. She ranted:

[DeSantis is] saying that to be ripped away from your homelands and brought to another country against your will, or to be born into the atrocity of the dehumanizing institution that was slavery, that those horrors are some way somehow outweighed by the benefit that you get a trade. Are you kidding me?

DeSantis is saying no such thing (nor was the College Board when it made basically the statement contained in the new Florida curriculum says). The former House Leader, who by the way was a strong advocate for the College Board’s AP course on black history, isn’t kidding. She’s lying.

Biden’s campaign manager joined in the dishonesty. He called DeSantis’ defense of the new Florida curriculum “disgusting,” adding that that it’s “a symptom of the extremism that’s infected the Republican candidates running for president.”

This is a double lie. The statement in the Florida curriculum is factual, not disgusting or extreme. And to my knowledge, no other GOP candidate has defended it. In fact, Byron Donalds, a black Florida congressman who supports Trump, has criticized DeSantis for defending the true statement about the skills some slaves were able to develop and put to later use. Chris Christie, ever the opportunist, has piled on as well.

The statement by Biden’s campaign manager supports my view that the outrage over DeSantis’ defense of the true statement about slavery is feigned. It’s intended to tag the Florida governor and other potential opponents of Biden as extremists.

It’s not about truth, it’s about consequences.