Tag: Trump lies

Trump said he had an ‘obligation to end corruption’ in Ukraine but tried to gut Billions targeted to do just that

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump for a few days earlier this month repeatedly insisted he was all about fighting corruption. So dedicated to this new slogan was the American president that one might assume it had been part of his 2016 campaign stump speech (it was not.)

On TV and on Twitter Trump insisted his attempts to extort the president ofUkraine (photo) in a scheme to get dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for $400 million in congressionally-appropriated military aid, were merely about ensuring that nation, bedeviled by corruption in years past, was on a new path.

“To me everything is about corruption,” Trump told reporters in early October. “We want to find out about what happened with 2016,” he insisted, furthering his conspiracy theory that the Obama administration investigated him in an attempt to illegally interfere in the election, and that Ukraine and the Democrats colluded, while Russia did not attack the U.S. election. All of which is false.

View the complete October 23 by David Badash from the New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

Trump and Mulvaney’s claim that corruption concerns held up Ukraine aid

Washington Post logo“We have an obligation to investigate corruption. And that’s what it was.”

— President Trump, in an interview on “Hannity” on Fox News, Oct. 21, 2019

“There were two reasons that we held up the aid. We talked about this at some length. The first one was the rampant corruption in Ukraine. Ukraine — by the way, Chris, it’s so bad in Ukraine that in 2014, Congress passed a law making it, making us, requiring us, to make sure that corruption was moving in the right direction. So, corruption is a big deal, everyone knows it. The president was also concerned about whether or not other nations, specifically European nations, were helping with foreign aid to the Ukraine as well.”

— White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Oct. 20, 2019

Trump and Mulvaney say they held up $250 million in security assistance for Ukraine this year because of concerns about corruption.

Congress approved the aid in September 2018. A top Defense Department official certified to congressional committees on May 23 that Ukraine had made sufficient progress on anti-corruption efforts to merit the security funds. The Pentagon announced the $250 million aid package June 18.

That’s how it typically works. But, on Trump’s orders, the White House informed the Pentagon on July 18 that Ukraine’s aid was being frozen, and didn’t release the funds until Sept. 11, weeks before the deadline.

Pinocchio Test

View the complete October 23 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

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.

AP FACT CHECK: Trump exaggerates scope of cease-fire deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump describes it, the U.S. swooped into an intractable situation in the Middle East, achieved an agreement within hours that had eluded the world for years and delivered a “great day for civilization.”

It was a mission-accomplished moment that other Republican leaders, Democrats and much of the world found unconvincing.

Trump spent much of the past week trying to justify his decision to pull U.S. troops away from America’s Kurdish allies in Syria, leaving those Kurdish fighters vulnerable on several fronts and already reeling from attacks by Turkish forces.

View the complete October 21 article by Calvin Woodward, Hope Yen and Lolita C. Baldor on the Associated Press website here.

Trump’s claim the Saudis will pay ‘100 percent of the cost’

Washington Post logoYou read where we’re sending some troops to Saudi Arabia. That’s true. Because we want to help Saudi Arabia. They have been a very good ally. They’ve agreed to pay for the cost of those troops. They’ve agreed to pay fully for the cost of everything we’re doing over there. . . . Saudi Arabia is paying for 100 percent of the cost, including the cost of our soldiers. And that negotiation took a very short time — like, maybe, about 35 seconds.”

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

“We are sending troops and other things to the Middle East to help Saudi Arabia. But are you ready? Saudi Arabia, at my request, has agreed to pay us for everything we’re doing. That’s a first. But Saudi Arabia — and other countries, too, now — but Saudi Arabia has agreed to pay us for everything we’re doing to help them.”

— Trump, remarks to reporters, Oct. 11

“Then the president said, ‘Well, the reason I’m taking the troops out of Syria is because I promised them at campaign to bring the troops home.’ My question to him was, ‘Is Saudi Arabia home? Is Saudi Arabia home? Why are our troops going to Saudi Arabia if you promised to bring them home?’ He said, ‘Well, the Saudi Arabians are paying for it.’ Really, we’re putting our troops in harm’s way for Saudi Arabia because they’re paying — it just didn’t add up.”

— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), recounting to reporters a conversation at the White House with Trump, Oct. 17 Continue reading “Trump’s claim the Saudis will pay ‘100 percent of the cost’”

President Trump’s claim that ‘when I came in, we had no ammunition’

Washington Post logo“When I took over, it was a mess. … One of our generals came in to see me and he said, ‘Sir, we don’t have ammunition.’ I said, ‘That’s a terrible thing you just said.’ He said, ‘We don’t have ammunition.’ Now we have more ammunition than we’ve ever had.”

“We were very low. I could even say it stronger. I don’t want to say, ‘No ammunition,’ but that gets a lot closer.”

— Trump, in remarks at the White House, Sept. 16

This is a good example of how Trump’s most-repeated claims tend to become more exaggerated over time. The president has insisted in recent weeks that when he took office in 2017, the U.S. military brass told him there was no more ammunition.

As the two quotes above show, the claim quickly grew from snowball to avalanche. Trump hedged in September: “We were very low … I don’t want to say ‘no ammunition.’ ” But one month later, the hedges were gone: “One of our generals came in to see me and he said, ‘Sir, we don’t have ammunition.’ I said, ‘That’s a terrible thing you just said.’ He said, ‘We don’t have ammunition.’ ”

Had the president stuck to his formulation in September, we might have skipped this fact check. Near the end of President Barack Obama’s term, military leaders publicly warned that stockpiles of precision-guided munitions were running low.

View the complete October 18 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

Trump allegedly lied on his taxes as recently as 2017, documents show

We already knew that President Trump’s tax practices have been called into question. The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation last year that showed that the so-called “self-made billionaire” had in fact used a complex series of tax dodges to inherit hundreds of millions of dollars from his father by undervaluing the family’s real estate holdings on tax returns. It was of course assumed that Trump had employed various sketchy tax schemes — why else would he go to such trouble to avoid handing over his tax returns? — but the specifics of what he’d been up to over the past decade had been elusive. But in a new investigation published Wednesday, ProPublica has provided a glimpse into how Trump has systematically used reporting discrepancies on his real estate empire to avoid paying his fair share of taxes.

The report is based on documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, and it shows how Trump’s organization gave different information to his lender than he did to New York City tax authorities regarding occupancy, expenses, and profits for several of his buildings. For the taxman, Trump allegedly undervalued his assets, so that his taxes would be artificially lower; for lenders, he allegedly inflated the numbers to make things seem more profitable. The discrepancy between the reports constitutes “versions of fraud,” Nancy Wallace, a finance professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told ProPublica. “This kind of stuff is not OK.” Continue reading “Trump allegedly lied on his taxes as recently as 2017, documents show”

Trump says immigrants are unwelcome in Minnesota. What’s unwelcome is his bigotry.

Washington Post logoIN A season of bigotry, President Trump has often reveled in the role of bigotry’s loudest troubadour, spouting hateful rhetoric designed to sow and exploit racial, ethnic and nationalist discord. At a campaign rally in Minneapolis on Thursday, he returned to the theme, at the expense of Minnesota’s community of Somalis, eliciting jeers and boos at their very mention from his audience.

Telegraphing what is certain to be among his favorite refrains in the 2020 campaign, Mr. Trump remarked on the “impact” of Minnesota’s 50,000 Somalis, who began arriving there a quarter-century ago as refugees and now represent roughly 1 percent of the state’s population. Referring to an executive order he issued recently, the president said he will prohibit refugee resettlements unless states and cities expressly consent to them.

“Believe me,” he said of his policy to grant communities what amounts to a veto on refugee resettlement, “no other president would be doing that.”

View the complete editorial by The Washington Post Editorial Board on their website here.

Pols seek answers on sick immigrant medical program

Pressley, Markey say Trump administration not following through on reinstatement

CONGRESSWOMAN AYANNA PRESSLEY and Sen. Ed Markey say the Trump administration has not followed through on its pledge to reinstate a program that helps seriously ill immigrants remain in the country legally without risk of deportation.

The program, called medical deferred action, provides temporary legal immigration status for sick immigrants that cannot otherwise be treated in their home countries. The program was canceled and then reinstated by the Trump administration over the past two months.

At a roundtable event at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts on Wednesday, Pressley said attorneys working for patients in the program say they have received no confirmation of the reversal from the Trump administration.

View the complete October 9 article by Sarah Betancourt on The Commonwealth Magazine website here.