Donald J. Trump Is The World’s Number One Liar Page 5
Analysis by Daniel Dale, CNNWashington (CNN) - President Donald Trump told a story in January about the farmers, ranchers and builders who stood behind him at a 2017 event where he signed an executive order to weaken an Obama-era environmental regulation. "They were strong, tough men and women. And half of them were crying," Trump told an American Farm Bureau convention. We checked the video of the signing ceremony. Nobody standing behind Trump was crying. Most of them were smiling. Trump told the story again at a shale industry conference Wednesday. This time, there were even more imaginary tears. "Many of them were tough, strong men and women. And almost all of them were crying," Trump said. Trump makes some of his false claims with remarkable consistency, repeating the same invented tales and figures almost verbatim dozens of times. In other cases, his fiction gets more dramatic with additional renditions -- because the President wants to embellish, because he can't remember the set of non-facts he has made up, or because he just doesn't care about accuracy. This is Trump's lie-flation. There have been at least four other cases in October alone. more...
By Louis JacobsonAmid the pressure of a House impeachment inquiry, President Donald Trump has continued to stoke the idea that he’s the victim of a coup — shorthand for "coup d’etat," a French term that means the overthrow of the government. "As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the........People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!", Trump tweeted on Oct. 1. The following day, Trump’s campaign unveiled a new ad that said, "It’s nothing short of a coup, and it must be stopped." On several subsequent occasions he’s shared his allies’ uses of the word on Twitter. He retweeted "coup" comments by Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, on Oct. 3; former House speaker Newt Gingrich on Oct. 10; conservative broadcaster Mark Levin on Oct. 14; Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch on Oct. 19; and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., on Oct. 24. Earlier in the year, Trump referred to the special counsel report headed by Robert Mueller as a coup. However, his use of the word "coup" to describe impeachment, a constitutionally defined process, is not accurate, even as a figure of speech. What is a coup?Let’s start with a more literal definition. The key element of a coup is that it is carried out beyond the bounds of legality. "We define a coup d'état as the sudden and irregular (i.e., illegal or extra-legal) removal, or displacement, of the executive authority of an independent government," wrote the Coup D’etat Project at the University of Illinois’ Cline Center for Democracy in 2013. Violence is part of many coups, but being violent is not a necessary condition. Of the 12 types of coups recognized by the Cline Center, nine do not seem to have anything to do with what Trump is talking about, including military coups, rebel coups, popular revolts, dissident actions, palace coups, foreign coups, internationally mediated transitions, forced resignations, and self-coups, in which the leader strong-arms other branches of government to entrench power. more...
By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg KellyAs President Trump approaches his 1,000th day in office Wednesday, he has significantly stepped up his pace of spouting exaggerated numbers, unwarranted boasts and outright falsehoods. As of Oct. 9, his 993rd day in office, he had made 13,435 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered. That’s an average of almost 22 claims a day since our last update 65 days ago. One big reason for the uptick: The uproar over Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president on July 25 — in which he urged an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden, a potential 2020 election rival — and the ensuing House impeachment inquiry. We’ve added a new category of claims, Ukraine probe, and in just a few weeks it has topped 250 entries. In fact, Trump earned his fastest Bottomless Pinocchio ever with his repeated false statement that the whistleblower compliant about the call was inaccurate. The report accurately captured the content of Trump’s call and many other details have been confirmed, yet Trump has repeated this Four Pinocchio claim 29 times. (It takes 20 repeats of a Three or Four Pinocchio claim to merit a Bottomless Pinocchio, and there are now 27 entries.) Another false claim — that Biden forced the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor because he was investigating his son Hunter — just barely missed the cutoff for inclusion. (Trump has said it 18 times.) We presume the falsehood will earn a spot on the Bottomless Pinocchio page in the next update. Trump crossed the 10,000 mark on April 26. From the start of his presidency, he has averaged nearly 14 such claims a day. Almost one-fifth of these claims are about immigration, his signature issue — a percentage that has grown since the government shut down over funding for his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, his most repeated claim — 218 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and repairs of existing barriers as “a wall.” False or misleading claims about trade, the economy and the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign each account for about 10 percent of the total. Claims on those subjects are also among his most repeated. Trump has falsely claimed 204 times that the U.S. economy today is the best in history. He began making this claim in June 2018, and it quickly became one of his favorites. The president can certainly brag about the state of the economy, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton — or Ulysses S. Grant. Moreover, the economy is beginning to hit the head winds caused by Trump’s trade wars, with the manufacturing sector in an apparent recession. more...
By Daniel DaleWashington (CNN) - President Donald Trump said again on Friday that Americans need identification to buy groceries, which remains not true. "You know, if you want to go out and buy groceries, you need identification. If you want to do almost anything you need identification. The only thing you don't need identification for is to vote, the most important single thing you're doing -- to vote," Trump said at a campaign rally in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Trump added: "You know why? Because they cheat like hell, that's why." Voter fraud is exceedingly rare, and there is no evidence of mass cheating by Democrats. Friday wasn't the first time that Trump claimed Americans need identification for their grocery purchases. He said the same at a Florida rally in July 2018. The day after the Florida rally, his then-press secretary, Sarah Sanders, told reporters that Trump was referring to purchases of "beer or wine." But three months after that, Trump told the conservative Daily Caller that ID is required "if you buy, you know, a box of cereal." Grocery stores require identification for alcohol and tobacco purchases (for proof that customers are of legal age), purchases of certain medications, and when customers are paying by check. Costco, the membership chain, requires identification to become a member. And shoppers at other stores might occasionally be asked for identification when paying by credit card. But these are exceptions, not the rule. Millions of Americans buy groceries every day without being asked for any ID. Other false claims: It's not true that "you don't need identification" to vote anywhere in the country. Thirty-five states -- including Louisiana, where Trump was speaking on Friday -- have some kind of voter identification requirement, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some of these states require photo identification, while some allow other forms of identification. Trump made other false claims at the Friday rally. more...
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large(CNN) - In a July 25 phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked his counterpart to look into debunked allegations of corruption by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. This is a fact. The Truth. How do we know? Because the White House released a rough transcript of the conversation last week in which Trump said this: "There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me." See, it's right there. In the transcript the White House released itself. All of which makes this next fact absolutely mystifying and terrifying: In a new national Monmouth University poll just four in 10 self-identified Republicans believe that Trump mentioned Biden in his call with Zelensky. Are. You. Kidding. Me. It is right there in the transcript that the WHITE HOUSE released of the call! Remember that we aren't talking here about whether Trump pressured Zelensky to look into the Bidens. He did, but there is a little bit of wiggle room there in that Trump didn't say "Unless you do this, I will withhold military aid from you." This poll question deals only with whether Trump actually mentioned Biden's name in the call. Which he 100% did! How can so many Republicans say he didn't? Because Trump has conditioned them to not believe things that are, quite literally, right in front of their faces. "Stick with us," Trump told a group of veterans last July. "Don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. ... What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening." When you consider that the American President actually told people that "what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening," this poll finding doesn't seem so unbelievable. The primary work of Trump's candidacy -- and his presidency -- has been to erode the idea that objective truth exists. This is an administration that said the words "alternative facts" with a straight face. And a President who has misled or lied more than 12,000 times in his tenure in the White House. Virtually every day, Trump takes to Twitter to push ideas that are simply and provably false. No independent fact checker gives credence to the idea that Joe Biden called for the firing of Ukraine's top prosecutor to avoid an investigation into his son. There is zero evidence that the whistleblower in this Ukraine story is either a) a partisan or b) already proven wrong in his or her claims. (If anything, the whistleblower's credibility has gone up of late -- as his/her recounting of the Ukraine call was very, very close to the rough transcript released by the White House.) more...
By Sinéad BakerThe intelligence community's watchdog poured cold water on a claim by President Donald Trump that the rules for whistleblower complaints were changed just before a an explosive accusation was lodged about his dealings with Ukraine. The complaint drew attention to a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which the official memo released by the White House showed Trump used to ask Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son. Details about the call led Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry into Trump. On Monday, Trump angrily tweeted the suggestion that the rules had been changed just before the complaint hit, seeming to imply that standards had been lowered in order to admit the case against him. Trump wrote: "WHO CHANGED THE LONG STANDING WHISTLEBLOWER RULES JUST BEFORE SUBMITTAL OF THE FAKE WHISTLEBLOWER REPORT? DRAIN THE SWAMP!" He was echoing claims made by GOP senator Lindsey Graham, who said on Sunday: "I want to know why they changed the rules about whistleblowers not — the hearsay rule was changed just a short period of time before the complaint was filed." Republican Senators Chuck Grassley, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson also raised the possibility of the rules having changed on Monday, though with less certainty than Trump and Graham. In response, officials for Michael Atkinson, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Committee, released a four-page statement on Monday shooting down the theory. It did not name Trump or any of the senators. The statement said that having first-hand knowledge has never been a requirement, that the whistleblower used a process that has been in place for more than a year, and added that the whistleblower also does claim to have first-hand information. It said: "Although the form requests information about whether the Complainant possesses first-hand knowledge about the matter about which he or she is lodging the complaint, there is no such requirement set forth in the statute." more...
By Daniel Dale, CNN(CNN) - President Donald Trump spoke for 95 minutes at a campaign rally in New Mexico on Monday night, among the longest speeches he's given as President. We're still working through the long transcript, but we know he made at least 27 false claims -- most of them ones he's said before in recent months. Here's the list so far: Trump repeated his claim that a "Google executive," someone who "worked at Google," reported that Google bias may have cost Trump up to 10 million votes in the 2016 election. That flawed study (which we fact-checked last month) was conducted by a psychologist, not a Google employee or executive. Trump said Venezuela was "one of the wealthiest countries in the world" 15 years ago, when it wasn't. Venezuela was 67th in the world in GDP per capita in 2004. He boasted that he was the one who got the Veterans Choice health care program passed, saying, "They've tried to get that for 45 years. They haven't been able to get it. But I'm good at getting things." The program was created in 2014 in a bill signed by President Barack Obama. He said of his USMCA trade agreement, "Unions love it." The agreement is generally opposed in its current form by major US unions, who have demanded changes to the text; the president of the AFL-CIO federation says it will be a "disaster for workers" if it is not amended. He said, "They wanted a wall in San Diego -- good mayor in San Diego, by the way. They wanted a wall." There is no apparent basis for this repeated claim; even that mayor, Republican Kevin Faulconer, opposes the wall. more...
By John WagnerPresident Trump lashed out Sunday night at the news media for reporting that he would meet with Iranian leaders with “no conditions” — something Trump has said on camera at least twice and that senior administration officials repeated to reporters just last week. “The Fake News is saying that I am willing to meet with Iran, ‘No Conditions.’ That is an incorrect statement (as usual!),” Trump wrote to his more than 64 million Twitter followers. In fact, Trump said as much during a June 23 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” after host Chuck Todd asked if he had a message to deliver to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, about his country’s potential development of a nuclear weapon. “You can’t have a nuclear weapon. You want to talk? Good. Otherwise you can have a bad economy for the next three years,” Trump said. “No preconditions?” Todd asked. “Not as far as I’m concerned. No preconditions,” Trump replied. That echoed Trump’s comments at a July 30, 2018, joint news conference at the White House during a visit by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. Asked about a potential meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Trump said: “I believe in meeting. I would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet. I don’t know if they’re ready yet.” “I’m ready to meet anytime they want to,” Trump added. “No preconditions. If they want to meet, we’ll meet.” During a briefing at the White House on Tuesday, both Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed that Trump remained open to such talks. “The president has made clear, he’s happy to take a meeting with no preconditions,” Mnuchin told reporters. “The president’s made it very clear: He is prepared to meet with no preconditions,” Pompeo said shortly afterward. more...
By Daniel Dale, Holmes Lybrand and Tara Subramaniam, CNNWashington (CNN)President Donald Trump held a campaign rally on Monday in a North Carolina congressional district that is having a special election on Tuesday because of credible allegations of Republican election fraud. Trump did not mention those allegations. Instead, he repeated his baseless allegation of voter fraud in Democratic-dominated California. "A lot of illegal voting going on out there, by the way, a lot of illegal voting," Trump said during his 85-minute speech in Fayetteville. As we've pointed out before, there is zero evidence for this claim. Trump made at least 21 other false claims at the rally, most of them statements that have been debunked on multiple previous occasions. As we continue to pore over the text, here's the preliminary list. more...
By Brian Stelter, CNN BusinessBrave government employees are standing up to Trump's unbelievable claims about Hurricane Dorian and insisting on truth.Trump repeatedly said that Alabama was at risk, when the state wasn't, and then he insisted he was right when he was wrong. Federal agencies felt pressure to support his lies. And that's what makes this episode so troubling and so long-lasting. When folks talk about a war on truth, this is exactly what they're talking about. But here's the good news: Staffers at the agencies are not staying silent. Four new developments: In an email to staff, NOAA's acting chief scientist Craig McLean credited the National Weather Service's Birmingham office with correcting "any public misunderstanding in an expert and timely way," in other words, disputing the president's misinformation. Per WaPo, McLean said he is "pursuing the potential violations of our NOAA Administrative Order on Scientific Integrity." Also on Monday, NWS director Louis Uccellini spoke at a conference and praised the Birmingham office and said "they did what any office would do." When he asked the local staffers to stand up and be recognized, there was a long standing ovation, per attendees. Later in the day, the NYT, citing three anonymous sources, said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross "threatened to fire top employees" at NOAA over the Birmingham brouhaha. Ross denied the report. But the NYT said, very specifically, that Ross "phoned Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, from Greece where the secretary was traveling for meetings and instructed Dr. Jacobs to fix the agency's perceived contradiction of the president." Later that day, NOAA came out with a B.S. statement that tried to support Trump despite all the available evidence at hand. The statement "is now being examined by the Commerce Department's Office of Inspector General," the NYT reported. more...
By Jessica McDonaldJust as CNN was beginning its climate town hall event, President Donald Trump tweeted a list of “8 facts” boasting of the nation’s air quality and carbon emissions reductions. Several of his “facts,” however, are inaccurate or misleading. Contrary to the president’s claims, the United States — not China — is responsible for having released more carbon pollution than any other nation. Trump also erred when he said that no Americans live in regions with air pollution above the World Health Organization’s guideline level. The president’s counterprogramming arrived minutes after the first Democratic presidential candidate took the stage to talk about climate change. CNN dedicated seven hours to the event, which gave 10 of the top-polling candidates 40 minutes each to explain how they would approach the issue as president. In his Twitter thread, Trump began with carbon emissions before moving on to some of his favorite topics, including energy production and clean air and water. more...
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Looking for more information on Donald J. Trump (aka Don the Con, aka Don the Snake, aka Two face Donnie, aka The Don, aka Criminal Don). Here you can find information on lawsuits against Trump, Trump’s time is the white house, Trump Administration scandals and corruption, Trump before the white house, Trump’s Enablers, Flunkies, Minions and Sycophants, Trump Impeachments, Trump Insurrection, Trump Insurrection Videos, Trump Is a Crook, Trump Is Threat To National Security, Trump Russia Affair, Trump-Ukraine Affair, Trump vs. Trump, how Trump runs his properties and more. Find out if Trump is filling his pockets with foreign money and your tax dollars. Find out if Trump is a good a businessman or a bad businessman and how viral, nasty and disgusting Trump properties are. Find out if Trump is a crook and/or a conman. Find out if Trump lies about his lies and more.The more you know the better informed you will be to make your own determination on the real Donald J. Trump (aka Don the Con, aka Don the Snake, aka Two face Donnie, aka The Don, aka Criminal Don). Find out all you can about Donald J. Trump, for some you may find he is not the man you thought he was, for others you may be proven right, for others you may find he is far worse than you thought he was.
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