Tag: Trump lies

Trump’s false claim of ‘centuries’ of fighting between Turks and Kurds

Washington Post logo“If Syria wants to fight for their land, that’s up to Turkey and Syria, as it has been for hundreds of years, they’ve been fighting. And the Kurds have been fighting for hundreds of years — that whole mess. It’s been going along for a long time. Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine. It’s a lot of sand. They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So there’s a lot of sand that they can play with.”

— President Trump, remarks at the White House, Oct. 16

“We helped the Kurds. They’re no angels, but we helped the Kurds. And we never gave the Kurds a commitment that we’d stay for the next 400 years and protect them. They’ve been fighting with the Turks for 300 years, that people know of.”

— Trump, remarks at a Cabinet meeting, Oct. 21 Continue reading “Trump’s false claim of ‘centuries’ of fighting between Turks and Kurds”

Smugglers have been sawing through Trump’s border wall

Axios logoSmuggling gangs in Mexico have been using power tools to saw through new parts of President Trump’s border wall, making openings for people and drug loads to pass through, according to the Washington Post.

Why it matters: The border wall was one of Trump’s significant policies and rallying cries during the campaign, and it is “a physical symbol of his presidency, touting its construction progress in speeches, ads and tweets,” the Post writes.

Details: Smugglers have used a household tool called a reciprocating saw that sells at hardware stores for about $100, the Post reports, citing U.S. agents and officials. The tool’s blade can slice through the barrier’s steel in minutes.

  • They have also used ladders to go atop the barriers in areas around San Diego, per the Post.

View the complete November 2 article by Fadel Allassan on the Axios website here.

Trump has no China trade pact, but he does have a signing location in mind

2020 battleground state of Iowa is president’s preferred spot

President Donald Trump gave no indication Friday he and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are closer to signing a “Phase One” trade pact, but he does have a place in mind where a signing event for it could happen — a battleground state that has borne the brunt of the U.S.-China trade war.

“It could even be in Iowa,” he told reporters on the White House South Lawn as he departed for a campaign rally in Mississippi. “I would do it in the U.S. He would too,” he added, speaking for Xi.

Trump contended that Iowa is a “possibility” because the deal would be a windfall for farmers. As the president has escalated the trade conflict with China, Iowa has seen a drop-off in exports there of two of its biggest sources of income: pork and soybeans.

View the complete November 1 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

The Trump brothers’ claims that they no longer profit from foreign deals

Washington Post logo“When my father became commander in chief of this country, we got out of all international business.”

— Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, in an interview on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Oct. 15

“We’ve been international businesspeople for decades, but we can’t even do those kinds of deals anymore. We can’t even continue, and because we chose not to, because we didn’t think it was appropriate. So that’s the double standard. The media said, ‘Oh, you’re enriching yourselves.’ We’re like, ‘We literally stopped.’ ”

— Donald Trump Jr., executive vice president of the Trump Organization, in an interview on “Fox and Friends,” Oct. 30

The president’s sons say the Trump business empire no longer makes money from foreign deals.

It’s a false claim whether you take Eric Trump’s version (“we got out of all international business”) or Donald Trump Jr.’s formulation (“we literally stopped”).

View the complete November 1 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post webs here.

Trump insisted that the rough transcript of his Zelensky conversation left nothing out. He might have ‘set the trap for himself’ by doing so

AlterNet logoThe word “rough” has often been used to describe the transcript of President Donald Trump’s now-infamous July 25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump, however, has insisted that it was a full transcript of the conversation. And Washington Post reporter Philip Bump, in an October 30 article, explains why Trump might have “set the trap for himself” by doing so.

The bottom of the page of the transcript, Bump notes, states that the missive is “not a verbatim transcript of a discussion.” But on October 11, Trump insisted that it was “an exact transcript of my call, done by very talented people that do this.”

Trump also claimed, “The transcript is a perfect transcript. There shouldn’t be any further questions.”

View the complete October 30 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

The White House touts Trump’s deregulation. It’s actually been a bust.

Washington Post logoLast week, amid damning new testimony in the impeachment inquiry, the White House tried to change the subject by touting one of its supposed wins: President Trump’s “historic deregulation.”

“We are now reducing the size, scope, and cost of Federal regulations for the first time in decades, and we are already seeing the incredible results,” Trump said. In a Cabinet meeting, senior officials likewise offered inflated economic numbers about Trump’s “gangbusters” deregulatory achievements.

In reality, Trump’s regulatory rollback has largely been a bust. In some cases, in fact, it’s been an outright fraud: The Trump administration has added bureaucracy and uncertainty for businesses that it either willfully misunderstands or overtly dislikes.

View the complete commentary by Catherine Rampell on The Washington Post website here.

Staged Photo, Golf Outing: Where Was Trump During Raid?

Sunday morning the White House photographer for former President Barack Obama suggested that members of Donald Trump’s administration,  along with the president, posed for a Situation Room picture in the wake of a U.S. military raid that resulted in the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at a time other than the White House claimed.

Pete Souza, the former director of the White House Photography Office, noted that the timestamp of the photo did not match up with the reported time of the operation.

On Twitter, he wrote:  “The raid, as reported, took place at 3:30 PM Washington time. The photo, as shown in the camera IPTC data, was taken at “17:05:24”

View the complete October 27 article by Tom Boggioni from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

Trump administration has acquired little of the private land in Texas it needs for border barrier

Washington Post logoThe Trump administration has acquired just 16 percent of the private land in Texas it needs to build the president’s border barrier, casting doubt on his campaign promise to complete nearly 500 miles of new fencing by the end of next year, according to the latest construction data obtained by The Washington Post.

And of the 166 miles of border barrier the U.S. government is planning to build in Texas, new construction has been completed along just 2 percent of that stretch a year before the target completion date, according to the construction data. Just four miles of the planned border wall in Texas is on federal land — the other 162 lie on private property.

Faced with intense pressure to meet Trump’s 500-mile campaign pledge, administration officials have instead prioritized the lowest-hanging fruit of the barrier project, accelerating construction along hundreds of miles of flat desert terrain under federal control in Western states where the giant steel structure can be erected with relative ease.

View the complete October 26 article by Nick Miroff and Arelis R. Hernández on The Washington Post website here.

Fact-checking Trump’s spin about the ‘great outcome’ in Syria

Washington Post logoPresident Trump claimed a diplomatic victory after Russia and Turkey took control of areas in northeastern Syria previously overseen by U.S. forces, even lifting sanctions on Turkey. Here’s a quick guide to some of the key claims he made during his 15-minute address, in the order in which he made them.

“This was an outcome created by us, the United States, and nobody else. No other nation; very simple.”

Trump is claiming credit for ending a problem that he created. After a conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and against the advice of many foreign-policy aides, Trump decided to withdraw U.S. forces from critical positions in northeastern Syria and abandon Kurdish troops that had been U.S. allies. His action was in effect a green light for Turkish-backed troops to invade.

Turkey has long considered elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — who were critical to the defeat of the Islamic State’s caliphate — to be a terrorist threat. To prevent a Turkish invasion, the United States persuaded the SDF to pull back up to nine miles from the Turkish border. In August, the SDF destroyed its own military posts after assurances the United States would not let thousands of Turkish troops invade. But then Trump tossed that aside.

View the complete October 24 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.

‘This is a lie’: Critics slam Trump’s desperate claim that Ukraine didn’t know he withheld military aid

AlterNet logoDemocratic lawmakers and impeachment supporters on Wednesday called out President Donald Trump for suggesting on Twitter that Ukrainian officials were not aware that military aid was being withheld as part the administration’s efforts to convince the country’s leader to publicly launch an investigation involving former Vice President Joe Biden.

Trump’s tweet was a “relatively lackluster” response to career diplomat William Taylor’s 10 hours of “explosive” testimony Tuesday about the administration’s “pervasive” attempts to force a Ukrainian investigation into an energy company that employed Biden’s son Hunter. Taylor testisfied behind closed doors to the House Oversight, Intelligence, and Foreign Affairs committees as part of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into Trump.

Shortly before a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—which provoked a whistleblower complaint that led Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to finally launch an impeachment inquiry last month—Trump instructed acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to hold back $391 million in military aid for Ukraine.

View the complete October 23 article by Jessica Corbett from Common Dreams on the AlterNet website here.