Tag: Trump cabinet meeting

Fact-checking Trump’s wild Cabinet session

Washington Post logoWe originally had planned to offer a deconstruction of one of President Trump’s Four-Pinocchio tweets over the weekend, as an example of how many things the president can get wrong in fewer than 280 characters. But then the president had his wild Cabinet session with reporters, and we shifted course.

So please watch the video above for the deconstruction of the tweet. Below is a quick roundup of some of the more notable claims the president made to reporters.

“I don’t want to leave troops there. It’s very dangerous for — you know, we had 28 troops, as it turned out. People said 50. It was 28. And you had an army on both sides of those troops. Those troops could have been wiped out.”

It was Trump that had said 50 troops. But these tiny numbers belie the fact that Trump ordered the withdrawal of about 1,000 U.S. troops from northeastern Syria from about a dozen bases and outposts scattered across the region, where they worked alongside Syrian Kurdish partners. The hasty withdrawal, prompted by Trump’s decision to let Turkey invade, meant many of these bases had to be quickly abandoned.

View the complete October 22 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.

A defensive Trump calls a Cabinet meeting and uses it to boast, deflect and distract

As the partial government shutdown continued on Jan. 3, senators discussed what it will take to reopen the government. (Zoeann Murphy, Rhonda Colvin/The Washington Post)

The Debrief: An occasional series offering a reporter’s insights

President Trump, 12 days into a government shutdown and facing new scrutiny from emboldened Democrats, inaugurated the new year Wednesday with a Cabinet meeting. It quickly became a 95-minute stream-of-consciousness defense of his presidency and worldview, filled with falsehoods, revisionist history and self-aggrandizement.

Trump trashed his former secretary of defense, retired four-star Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, as a failure after once holding him out as a star of his administration.

“What’s he done for me?” Trump said.

View the complete January 2 article by Anne Gearan on The Washington Post website here.