Tag: Trump lies

Internet mocks Trump for ridiculous Christmas Eve boast that he is already building the wall

The president is completely self-destructing.

On Christmas Eve, with the government in the throes of a federal shutdown putting tens of thousands of workers in limbo, President Donald Trump boasted that he is already beginning work on the border wall:

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

I am in the Oval Office & just gave out a 115 mile long contract for another large section of the Wall in Texas. We are already building and renovating many miles of Wall, some complete. Democrats must end Shutdown and finish funding. Billions of Dollars, & lives, will be saved!

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Leaving aside the fact that Trump, not Democrats, shut down the government (and boasted that he would take credit for it), the president is obviously lying. Congress would need to appropriate funds to hire a contractor to work on the construction of a wall, and the Republican-controlled Senate is not doing any such thing.

Social media quickly pounced on Trump’s absurd boast:

View the complete December 24 article by Matthew Chapman on the AlterNet.org website here.

‘He takes no ownership — that’s just Trump’: President eschews responsibility for a shutdown he once craved

This stalemate is just the latest in a long line of threats from President Trump to shut down the government if he doesn’t get his way. (Video: Jenny Starrs /Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

In 2014, Donald Trump sued to have his name taken off a pair of Atlantic City casinos he built three decades earlier that had gone bankrupt.

It took the president just 10 days this month to remove his name from something else he once proudly owned but that wasn’t going great — the federal government shutdown.

After threatening a shutdown for months over border wall funding and vowing last week that he would “take the mantle” of responsibility, Trump tried to shift the blame Friday, just hours before a government funding bill expired at midnight.

View the complete December 22 article by David Nakamura on The Washington Post website here.

Watchdog uncovers evidence suggesting Trump broke pledge to forgo new foreign business deals

Cap Cana, Dominican RepublicE on the Jack Nicklaus Course Credit:: Stan Badz, US PGA Tour

So much for that pledge.

At the outset of his presidency, Donald Trump pledged to refrain from opening any new business deals in foreign countries.

So much for all that.

As a new undercover report from pro-transparency watchdog Global Witness uncovered earlier this week, the Trump Organization has been exploring the construction of a new beachside resort in the Dominican Republic, and local representatives said that a “new development with the Trump Organization” is underway.

View the complete December 20 article by Casey Michel on the ThinkProgress website here.

Cohen says Trump knew hush-money payments were wrong, contradicting his former boss

Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, said in a television interview Friday that Trump knew it was wrong to make hush-money payments to women who alleged they had affairs with him, directly contradicting claims from the president.

Cohen, who has admitted facilitating payments to two women in violation of campaign finance laws, told ABC News that he knew what he was doing was wrong.

Asked whether the president also knew it was wrong to make the payments, Cohen replied, “Of course.” He added that the purpose was to “help [Trump] and his campaign.”

View the complete December 14 article by John Wagner on The Washington Post website here.

President Trump’s claim that Democrats gave Iran $150 billion

“The Democrats and President Obama gave Iran 150 Billion Dollars and got nothing, but they can’t give 5 Billion Dollars for National Security and a Wall?”

— President Trump in a tweet, Dec. 12, 2018

This is an egregious version of a claim that President Trump has made repeatedly — about 30 times, according to our database of Trump’s false and misleading claims. We had originally looked into the details of the $150 billion for a fact check during President Barack Obama’s administration, fact-checked the claim during the 2016 presidential debatesand noted it in roundups of various Trump news conferencesand interviews.

Somehow it’s never been put to the Pinocchio Test. But if the president is going to keep getting this wrong, it’s time to give this falsehood a Pinocchio rating.

The Facts

There are two numbers that Trump loves to reference when discussing the international nuclear agreement negotiated with Iran when Obama was president: $150 billion and $1.7 billion. The latter was a cash transaction, said to be the settlement of a long-standing Iranian claim against the United States, with interest, that was curiously timed to arrive when Iran released four detained Americans. (We discussed this payment at length in this fact check.)

View the complete December 13 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.

Fact-checking Trump’s rowdy powwow with Pelosi and Schumer

President Trump hosted House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in the Oval Office on Dec. 11. Fireworks ensued.

Trump called on the Democrats to support $5 billion for a border wall as part of a spending package that would keep the government open past Dec. 21. Democrats instead offered to support $1.67 billion for other enhancements to border security. None of that is new. So the meeting played out like a ping-pong match — much of it in front of TV cameras and reporters — over which side would be blamed for a government shutdown.

Making his case for the wall, Trump made several faulty claims, some old and some new, which we’ve rounded up below. He also posted some Pinocchio-worthy tweets in the lead-up to the meeting. We threw them in as well.

View the complete December 12 article by Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Fumbled Claim of Capturing 10 Terrorists

The actual statistic is more nuanced than the president suggested

There is no public evidence to substantiate President Donald Trump’s claim on Tuesday, in the context of a discussion of security at the southern border, that 10 terrorists have been caught recently trying to enter the United States.

Trump’s comments sparked a small tempest on social media, but a recent State Department report showed no terrorist threat on the Mexico border, and Trump’s own administration effectively acknowledges the president may have mischaracterized the statistic.

“People are pouring into our country, including terrorists,” Trump said at a photo-op-turned-policy-debate at the White House, with Vice President Mike Pence and Congress’s top two Democrats, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York. “We captured 10 terrorists over the last very short period of time. Terrorists. These are very serious people. … These are people who were looking to do harm. We need the wall.”

View the complete December 12 article by John M Donnelly on The Roll Call website here.

REAL STORIES: Workers And Communities Hurt By Trump’s Broken Promises

Trump promised the massive tax cuts Republicans gave to the rich and big corporations would benefit workers, spur job growth and grow the economy. None of that happened. Instead, the Trump tax law led to more outsourcing, and workers at plants like GM have lost their jobs.

Hear from the workers who have lost their jobs and are hurting from Trump’s broken promises:

“President Trump … our area definitely needs help. You’re the president of the United States, you’re the CEO, please start holding these companies like General Motors and Harley-Davidson accountable for their actions.” – Recently laid-off GM worker Continue reading “REAL STORIES: Workers And Communities Hurt By Trump’s Broken Promises”

George Conway blasts Trump’s claim that Cohen filing ‘totally clears the President’

Was there ever any question about how, exactly, Trump detractor George Conway would spend Friday night?

The running criticism of President Trump by Conway, the husband of Kellyanne Conway, dates back to the earliest days of the administration. Since then, George Conway has become a celebrity in his own right for his Trump-bashing tweets and op-eds.

And that was before Trump gained the nickname Individual-1.

On Friday, as The Washington Post’s Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky reported, federal prosecutors offered new evidence that implicated the president in plans to buy the silence of two women Trump allegedly had affairs with as far back as 2014. The documents also spoke of Russian efforts to forge a political alliance with Trump before he became president.

View the complete December 8 article by Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., on The Washington Post website here.