Fact-checking President Trump’s post-election news conference

President Trump’s lengthy post-election news conference broke little ground in terms of facts. Many of his assertions are repeats that we have covered extensively in our database of his false or misleading statements, which as of Oct. 30 totaled 6,420. But some of these things may appear new or fresh to readers, so here’s a quick tour of some of them.

The president also opened with a series of statistics to suggest he actually earned a “big victory” at the polls, despite Republicans losing control of the House of Representatives. We will start with those.

“Fifty-five is the largest number of Republican senators in the last 100 years.”

False. Republicans had a 55-seat majority in the Senate from 1997 to 2000 and from 2005 to 2006, according to the Senate Historian’s office. From 1921 to 1927, Republicans held 59, 53 and 54 seats — when the Senate only had 96 seats. (Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states.) Republicans thus represented more than 55 percent of the body in each of those two-year sessions.

View the November 8 article by Glenn Kessler and Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

‘Full Trumpism’: The president’s apocalyptic attacks reach a new level of falsity

President Trump criticized Georgia Democratic governor candidate Stacey Abrams at a Nov. 4 rally in Macon, Ga. (The Washington Post)

 President Trump is painting an astonishingly apocalyptic vision of America under Democratic control in the campaign’s final days, unleashing a torrent of falsehoods and portraying his political opponents as desiring crime, squalor and poverty.

As voters prepare to render their first verdict on his presidency in Tuesday’s midterm elections, Trump is claiming that Democrats want to erase the nation’s borders and provide sanctuary to drug dealers, human traffickers and MS-13 killers. He is warning that they would destroy the economy, obliterate Medicare and unleash a wave of violent crime that endangers families everywhere. And he is alleging that they would transform the United States into Venezuela with socialism run amok.

Trump has never been hemmed in by fact, fairness or even logic. The 45th president proudly refuses to apologize and routinely violates the norms of decorum that guided his predecessors. But at one mega-rally after another in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterm elections, Trump has taken his no-boundaries political ethos to a new level — demagoguing the Democrats in a whirl of distortion and using the power of the federal government to amplify his fantastical arguments.

President Trump has made 6,420 false or misleading claims over 649 days

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 Oct. 30, 2018. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

If President Trump’s torrent of words has seemed overwhelming of late, there’s a good reason for that.

In the first nine months of his presidency, Trump made 1,318 false or misleading claims, an average of five a day. But in the seven weeks leading up the midterm elections, the president made 1,419 false or misleading claims — an average of 30 a day.

Combined with the rest of his presidency, that adds up to a total of 6,420 claims through Oct. 30, the 649th day of his term in office, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.

View the complete November 2 article by Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly on The Washington Post website here.

Donald Trump touts nonexistent $450 billion in Saudi orders and 1 million jobs

The death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Istanbul has drawn attention to America’s business interests in the Middle East kingdom.

President Donald Trump brought money into the picture soon after Khashoggi disappeared, and has repeated the point several times since.

In an Oct. 20 exchange with reporters, Trump called Saudi Arabia’s initial arrests and firings of top officials in the case a “good first step.” As for how the United States should respond, Trump offered a dose of realpolitik.

View the complete October 23 article by Jon Greenberg on the PolitiFact.com website here.

Trump Fails To Distract Voters With ‘Conspiracy-Theory Laden Stump Speech’

Trump has repeatedly tried and failed to change the conversation ahead of the midterm elections with lies and conspiracies. His “announcement” yesterday was just more of the same. The media and Americans across the country know exactly what Trump’s doing, and they aren’t fooled.

Reporters saw right through Trump’s latest distraction, which was nothing more than a “fear-mongering stump speech.”

Vox: “President Donald Trump got cable news to carry him live and uninterrupted for nearly half an hour from the West Wing Thursday, where he gave what amounted to a fear-mongering stump speech in the final days before the midterm elections.”

Vox’s Laura McGann: “Trump’s giving his conspiracy theory-laden stump speech from the West Wing and it’s being aired on CNN unchallenged.”

Continue reading “Trump Fails To Distract Voters With ‘Conspiracy-Theory Laden Stump Speech’”

A witches’ brew of over-the-top Trump attacks

As President Trump barnstorms the country, going from rally to rally to bolster votes for Republican candidates, his rhetoric has turned increasingly darker.

We’ve documented before that at least 70 percent of the factual claims he makes at his rallies are false or misleading. Many of those claims — biggest tax cut ever passed, the border wall is being built — still are “greatest hits” lines at his rallies. He continues to frequently portray himself as a super-action hero, slashing regulations, creating jobs, even saving money on embassy construction.

But as the election — and Halloween — approaches, he has tossed in a witches’ brew of attacks on Democrats that are over-the-top even by his standards. The language changes from rally to rally, but the themes are the same. One can almost imagine him thinking, “I’ll toss in a little Venezuelan socialism here, a bit of MS-13 there” — as he mixes his latest batch of invective.

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

‘In the service of whim’: Officials scramble to make Trump’s false assertions real

The great election-eve middle-class tax cut began not as a factual proposal, but as a false promise.

When President Trump abruptly told reporters over the weekend that middle-income Americans would receive a 10 percent tax cut before the midterm elections, neither officials on Capitol Hill nor in his administration knew anything about such a tax cut. The White House released no substantive information. And although cutting taxes requires legislation, Congress is not scheduled to be back in session until after the Nov. 6 elections.

Yet Washington’s bureaucratic machinery whirred into action nonetheless — working to produce a policy that could be seen as supporting Trump’s whim.

View the complete October 23 article by Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker on the Washington Post website here.

Trump’s Midterm Strategy: Lies, Lies, And More Lies

Trump is a liar, we already know that. But as the midterms approach, Trump’s lies have increased at an exponential rate. Trump is desperate to change the subject away from health care, Medicare and Social Security — vital programs voters know Republicans will gut — so Trump tries to cover up the truth and scare Republicans into voting.

TRUMP LIES TO GET VOTES: Trump’s lies are getting even more blatant ahead of the midterm elections.

Yahoo Finance: “This Might Be Trump’s Boldest Lie Yet”

Washington Post: “‘In The Service Of Whim’: Officials Scramble To Make Trump’s False Assertions Real”

TRUMP LIED ABOUT THE CARAVAN: Trump and White House aides admitted that he was just making up claims about the immigrant caravan.

Associated Press: “Asked for evidence of his claim during a bill signing Tuesday, Trump says, ‘There’s no proof of anything.’ But he says ‘they could very well be’ in the caravan.”

Daily Beast: “Much of it is mistruths and embellishments, but Trumpland could care less.  ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s 100 percent accurate,’ a senior Trump administration official told The Daily Beast. ‘This is the play.’”

TRUMP LIED ABOUT TAX CUTS: Trump invented a new tax cut proposal to try to dupe voters ahead of the midterms.

Trump: “We are looking at putting in a very major tax cut for middle-income people.  And if we do that, it’ll be sometime just prior, I would say, to November. A major tax cut.  We are going to be putting in, and are studying very deeply right now, around the clock, a major tax cut for middle-income people.”

New York Times: “Trump Is Not Going To Cut Middle-Class Taxes This Year, Despite What He Says” Continue reading “Trump’s Midterm Strategy: Lies, Lies, And More Lies”

Behind the Trump Empire: Bombshell NYT Report Details ‘Sham Corporations,’ ‘Dubious Tax Schemes’ and ‘Outright Fraud’

The New York Times found the president received a whopping $413 million from his father.

Credit: OWN screengrab

President Donald Trump’s business empire and legacy as a billionaire has long come with the stench of shady dealings and unscrupulous practices, but much of that history has been shrouded from public oversight.

But in a new bombshell report from the New York Times, reporters detailed a stunning level of corruption and duplicitous dealings behind a massive $413 million inheritance the president received from his father, the real estate magnate Fred Trump.

“The president has long sold himself as a self-made billionaire, but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s,” wrote reporters David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Beuttner.

View the complete October 2 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet.org website here.

REAL STORIES: Trump Lies About Protecting Americans With Pre-Existing Conditions

Trump says he is protecting people with pre-existing conditions, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, Trump and Republicans are trying to end the ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Republicans are paying the price with voters who overwhelmingly want to keep these vital protections in place.

Trump is lying to the American people about protecting people with  pre-existing conditions. The truth is he wants to get rid of the ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

Associated Press: “President Donald Trump isn’t playing it straight when it comes to his campaign pledge not to undercut health coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions.”

FactCheck.org: “Trump’s comments contradict the Justice Department’s actions, which Trump approved, according to a June letter from the Justice Department to Congress on this lawsuit.” Continue reading “REAL STORIES: Trump Lies About Protecting Americans With Pre-Existing Conditions”