Tag: Trump lies

6 Ways Trump’s Intelligence Chiefs Contradicted Him

Trump’s top intelligence chiefs testified before Congress today about the intelligence community’s newest assessment of global threats. In their report and testimony, the nation’s top intelligence officials contradicted Trump on some major foreign policy and national security issues. See for yourself:

  1. North Korea is not moving toward complete denuclearization.

Washington Post: “Coats, speaking on behalf of the assembled officials, said that North Korea was ‘unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities,’ which the country’s leaders consider ‘critical to the regime’s survival.’ That assessment threw cold water on the White House’s more optimistic view that the United States and North Korea will achieve a lasting peace and that the regime will ultimately give up its nuclear weapons.”

  1. Iran is not in violation of the Iran deal.

Washington Post: “Conversely, the intelligence officials assessed that the government of Iran was not trying to build a nuclear weapon, despite the Trump administration’s persistent claims that the country has been violating the terms of an international agreement forged during the Obama administration. Officials told lawmakers that Iran was in compliance with the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.” Continue reading “6 Ways Trump’s Intelligence Chiefs Contradicted Him”

Why does the president keep talking about women and duct tape on the border?

Credit: Evan Vucci, AP

While discussing the temporary end to the government shutdown on Friday afternoon, President Trump appeared to meander out of the Rose Garden and into a “Law & Order: SVU” episode. Once there, he described a horrific scene that seems to exist only in his own mind, but that he’s been repeating in speeches for weeks: There are migrant women at the border. They are being tortured. They have tape on their mouths.

Specifically: “Women are tied up, with duct tape on their faces, put in the backs of vans,” the president said, citing human traffickers who he alleges are the perpetrators of this violence against migrants.

But women are not tied up, experts have said. They do not have tape on their mouths. When Trump repeated this claim a few weeks ago, my colleague Katie Mettler contacted many authorities on trafficking who have spent time at the border, and none of them had seen or heard anything resembling the violence he described.

View the complete January 26 column by Monica Hesse on The Washington Post website here.

“Even If He Did Do It, It Wouldn’t Be A Crime”: Rudy Giuliani On President Trump

Credit: CNN Screen Shot

On Sunday, Rudy Giuliani, one of President Trump’s lawyers, made a startling admission to the Times and NBC’s “Meet the Press”: that Trump had been involved in discussions to build a Trump Tower Moscow throughout the 2016 campaign, contradicting Trump’s public statements and raising ever more serious questions about the President’s ties to Vladimir Putin. Giuliani told the Times that Trump had said the discussions were “going on from the day I announced to the day I won.”

Giuliani also said that Trump may have spoken to Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, before Cohen gave false testimony to Congress about the timing of the Moscow discussions, claiming that they had ended in January, 2016. When, in November, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, he told prosecutors that they continued at least through June, 2016. Giuliani told the Times that Trump may have acknowledged these conversations in the written answers that he gave to the special counsel, Robert Mueller, late last year. “There was no question that he was asked by the special counsel a question that said, ‘Did you talk to him before he testified?’ ” Giuliani told the Times. The issue of whether Trump influenced Cohen’s false testimony was raised when BuzzFeed reported, on Thursday night, that according to two federal law-enforcement officials, Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress. In response, Mueller’s office issued a rare statement, saying that BuzzFeed’s descriptions of statements, documents, and testimony obtained by the office “are not accurate.” (BuzzFeed has stood by its story.) Continue reading ““Even If He Did Do It, It Wouldn’t Be A Crime”: Rudy Giuliani On President Trump”

George Conway Mocks Rudy Giuliani’s Backpedaling With Brutal 5-Word ‘Translation’

Kellyanne Conway’s husband called out the president’s attorney.

George Conway, attorney and husband to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, isn’t buying Rudy Giuliani’s latest defense of President Donald Trump.

On Monday, Giuliani tried to walk back his previous claim that Trump had conversations about a possible Trump Tower project in Moscow throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. On “Meet the Press,” the former New York City mayor said that Trump can “remember having conversations” on the subject with disgraced former attorney Michael Cohen throughout 2016.

“There weren’t a lot of them, but there were conversations,” said Giuliani, who is an attorney for Trump. “Can’t be sure the exact date. … Probably up to ― could be up to as far as October, November.”

View the complete January 22 article by Ed Mazza on the Huffington Post website here.

 

Giuliani Can’t Keep Trump’s Story Straight

This past weekend, Rudy Giuliani doubled down on his claim that negotiations on Trump Tower Moscow continued as late as November 2016. Then he took it back. This was just the beginning of a weekend of confessions and backtracking by the president’s lead attorney. Read below for more:

Giuliani doubled down on his claim that negotiations on Trump Tower Moscow continued as late as November 2016. If true, this means Trump continued to work with Russia on a lucrative business deal, even after the FBI had warned him of Russia’s election interference.

Giuliani: “It’s our understanding that they went on throughout 2016. … Can’t be sure [of] the exact dates, but the president can remember having conversations with him about it.”

Giuliani said Trump said that Trump Tower Moscow discussions were “going on from the day I announced to the day I won.” Continue reading “Giuliani Can’t Keep Trump’s Story Straight”

Trump and Cohen discussed Trump Tower Moscow right up until 2016 election

Rudy Giuliani told Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that President Trump “can remember having conversations” with Michael Cohen about Trump Tower Moscow right up until the election — as late as November 2016.

One big quote: “No. It’s our understanding that it, that [talks] went on throughout 2016, not a lot of them, … but the president can remember having conversations with [Cohen] about it. … Probably up to, could be up to as far as October, November.”

Between the lines: Giuliani’s rounds on Sunday morning TV related to the BuzzFeed report over the weekend that Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress about a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

View the complete January 20 article on the Axios website here.

President Trump made 8,158 false or misleading claims in his first two years

The Fact Checker is keeping a running list of the false or misleading claims Trump says most regularly. Here’s our latest tally as of Jan. 20, 2019. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

Two years after taking the oath of office, President Trump has made 8,158 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.

That includes an astonishing 6,000-plus such claims in the president’s second year.

Put another way: The president averaged nearly 5.9 false or misleading claims a day in his first year in office. But he hit nearly 16.5 a day in his second year, almost triple the pace.

View the complete January 21 article by Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly on The Washington Post website here.

Trump keeps mentioning taped-up women at the border. Experts have no idea what he’s talking about.

The Trump administration has repeatedly made this claim, but the data isn’t clear. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

President Trump has a new favorite anecdote, one that fixates on tape.

Specifically, in public remarks at the White House, at the border and at farming conventions, the president has been talking about tape on the mouths of migrant women. On at least eight occasions over a period of 12 days this month, the president has argued publicly for his proposed wall on the southern border by claiming without evidence that traffickers tie up and silence women with tape before illegally driving them through the desert from Mexico to the United States in the backs of cars and windowless vans.

In Trump’s telling, the adhesive is sometimes blue tape. Other times it is electrical tape or duct tape.

View the complete January 17 article by Katie Mettler on The Washington Post website here.

Can Trump claim credit for $26 billion in savings on prescription drugs?

The president claims his policies are working, pointing to a $26 billion decline in generic drug prices. But that’s not the whole story. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

“Drug prices declined in 2018, the first time in nearly half a century. During the first 19 months of my Administration, Americans saved $26 Billion on prescription drugs. Our policies to get cheaper generic drugs to market are working!”

— President Trump, in a tweet, Jan. 11, 2019

This is an interesting tweet by the president because it can be read two ways — either the sentences are distinct statements or they are intended to flow together to make one point.

The consumer price index for prescription drugs fell by 0.6 percent in 2018, the first time in 46 years and only the second time since the government began keeping track in 1970. Prices had risen nearly 3 percent in 2017 and 6.2 percent in 2016. (We will lay aside an academic debate about whether the CPI for prescription drugs actually measures changes with enough accuracy.)

View the complete January 16 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.

Trump claims he never said Mexico would cut a check for the wall. Let’s go to the tape.

Back in April 2015 — an era so distant in American history that it barely shimmers in and out of view, cloaked in the haze of everything that’s happened since — Donald John Trump promised the United States that he would build a wall on the border with Mexico and that Mexico would cover the cost.

It was at an event in New Hampshire covered by Paul Steinhauser of NH1 News, targeting the state which, as it turns out, would provide Trump with his first victory in electoral politics. But at the time — despite Steinhauser’s accurate assessment that it wasn’t — it seemed like a joke. The TV guy was going to build a wall for free, huh? Okay. Good luck.

The point, though, is that Trump’s insistence that Mexico would pay for the wall is, in fact, older than his campaign itself. At that New Hampshire event, he even said how it would happen, in broad strokes.

View the complete January 10 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.