Tag: Trump lies

Trump Claims the U.S. Would Save Money Without Trade. That’s Not What a Trade Deficit Represents.

The following article by Linda Qiu was posted on the New York Times website July 26, 2018:

The president, in a speech in Illinois, escalated his misguided notion that a trade deficit means “lost” wealth into a claim an expert says “defies the most basic of economics.”

WHAT WAS SAID

“We lost $817 billion a year, over the last number of years in trade. In other words, if we didn’t trade, we’d save a hell of a lot of money.”

— President Trump, speaking in Granite City, Ill., on Thursday

THE FACTS

This is misleading.

Mr. Trump is exaggerating the United States’ trade deficit with the rest of the world, and grossly mischaracterizing what a trade deficit represents.

Over all, the United States ran a trade deficit in goods of $807 billion in 2017 and a trade surplus in services of $255 billion, for a net trade deficit of $552 billion. Over the past decade, the United States had a goods deficit of $724 billion and a net deficit of $518 billion — below Mr. Trump’s $817 billion figure.

What does this mean? Simply put, a trade deficit occurs when a country imports more goods and services than it exports to another. (It is also driven by a number of other economic factors like the growth rates of countries, the strength of their currencies and their savings and investment rates.)

View the complete article here.

Trup claims “positive things” he said were edited out of Cohen tape

The following article by Eric Lutz was posted on the Mic.com website July 25, 2018:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning went into defense mode, bashing his former lawyer Michael Cohen for recording what appears to be him discussing hush money payments to a Playboy model, and implying that “positive things” he said were edited out of the tape released by CNN the night before.

“What kind of a lawyer would tape a client?” Trump tweeted. “So sad! Is this a first, never heard of it before? Why was the tape so abruptly terminated (cut) while I was presumably saying positive things? I hear there are other clients and many reporters that are taped — can this be so?”

“Too bad!” the president added.

View the complete post here.

Obstruction of Justice

Donald Trump is attempting to distract from his growing legal problems and undermine the investigation into him and his campaign. The investigation has already resulted in indictments and guilty pleas from multiple senior members of Trump’s campaign.

It is long past time for every member of Congress to stand up for the rule of law and take necessary action to prevent Trump’s obstruction and allow for the special counsel and Justice Department to continue the investigation.

Without evidence, Trump claims Russia ‘will be pushing very hard for the Democrats’ in 2018 midterms

The following article by Felicia Sonmez was posted on the Washington Post website July 24, 2018:

President Trump claimed Tuesday, without evidence, that the Kremlin will support Democrats in the November midterm election, debuting a new line on Russian interference as the uproar over his shifting stances on the issue enters its second week.

Trump made the claim in a late-morning tweet eight days after he held a joint news conference in Helsinki with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, who acknowledged there that he had wanted Trump to win in 2016.

“I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election,” Trump said in his Tuesday tweet. “Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!”

View the complete post here.

Trump: I’m ‘concerned’ Russia may interfere in midterms to help Democrats

The following article by Brett Samuels was posted on the Hill website July 24, 2018:

President Trump on Tuesday said he is “very concerned” that Russia will attempt to interfere in this year’s midterm elections, claiming Moscow “will be pushing very hard” to support Democrats.

The tweet is the latest in a week’s worth of mixed messages Trump has sent on Russia since he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Monday.

Trump stood next to Putin in Helsinki and cast doubt on the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election — with the intention of helping to elect Trump. He blasted the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling as a “witch hunt” and said Putin offered a “strong and powerful” denial.

View the complete article here.

Over four days, false claims dominated Trump’s Twitter feed

The following article by Salvador Rizzo, glenn Kessler and Meg Kelly was posted on the Washington Post website July 24, 2018:

Credit: Pedro J. Perez via Morguefile.com

President Trump tweeted a series of false or misleading claims over four days, ranging from the Russia investigation to NATO funding to North Korea to the price of soybeans.

From July 20 to July 23, accurate statements on the president’s Twitter feed were swamped by faulty claims. We rounded up 14 tweets worth fact-checking. Let’s dive in.

“Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of ‘Justice’ and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!” (July 22)

View the complete article here.

As Trump’s latest lies implode, one party tries to smuggle out the truth

The following article by Greg Sargent was posted on the Washington Post website July 23, 2018:

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The release of new documents relating to the genesis of the Russia probe — and President Trump’s response to those documents this morning — throw the asymmetry between the parties that is the driving fact of our politics right now into perhaps its starkest relief yet.

Broadly speaking, many Republicans have tacitly enabled or actively aided in efforts to pervert the basic functions of government in service of preventing the full truth about Russian sabotage of U.S. democracy from becoming publicly known, all to shield Trump (and, increasingly, themselves) from accountability. By contrast, in many cases, Democrats have been doing all they can to smuggle out to the U.S. public and the world as much basic information that is being learned about that Russian sabotage effort — and about the Trump/GOP campaign to cover that up — as possible.

This morning, the New York Times’s Charlie Savage has a great piece on the White House’s decision over the weekend to release documents revealing the FBI’s application to a FISA court to run secret surveillance on former Trump campaign official Carter Page. The bottom line: The documents lay waste to much of the narrative about the FBI investigation pushed by Trump — and GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the House Intelligence Committee chairman who enshrined that story line in his much-discussed memo — while largely confirming that Democratic efforts to correct that narrative have been offered accurately and in good faith.

View the complete article here.

Trump again reverses course on Russian interference, calls it ‘all a big hoax’

The following article by Felicia Sonmez was posted on the Washington Post website July 23, 2018:

Over the course of three days, President Trump commented on Russian election interference in ways that repeatedly contradicted his own intelligence officials. (Video: Peter Stevenson/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

After a week of tortuous statements, walk-backs and clarifications on whether he believes the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign, President Trump appeared to have come full circle on Sunday night, dismissing the issue as “all a big hoax.”

In an evening tweet shortly after taking off for Washington following a weekend spent at his golf club in New Jersey, Trump questioned why President Barack Obama did not inform his campaign or the public about alleged Russian interference before Election Day.

“So President Obama knew about Russia before the Election,” Trump said. “Why didn’t he do something about it? Why didn’t he tell our campaign?”

View the complete article here.

Newly released documents prove GOP lied about FBI’s Russia probe

The following article by Emily Crockett was posted on the ShareBlue.com website July 23, 2018:

We now know that Trump and Republicans shamelessly lied to the American people about why the FBI decided to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

The Trump administration released a pile of documents on Saturday that proves what most sensible observers already knew: Trump and Republicans shamelessly lied to the American people about why the FBI decided to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

These documents — the FBI’s original requests for surveillance on Trump campaign aide Carter Page — come to us thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request from multiple news outlets.

The documents were heavily redacted, but they still told us a lot — most importantly that House Republicans lied, and probably knew they were lying, with their “release the memo” debacle earlier this year.

View the complete article here.

The facts missing from Trump and Putin’s news conference

The following article by Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly was posted on the Washington Post website July 16, 2018:

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin echoed each other and reiterated falsehoods in a news conference following their meeting on July 16. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

President Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia made a series of questionable claims at a news conference following their summit meeting in Helsinki on July 16.

Trump was asked whether he believed the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the presidential election in 2016, or whether he believed Putin’s denials. Remarkably, Trump said he had “confidence in both parties.”

This prompted a statement from Daniel Coats, the president’s director of national intelligence. “We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy,” Coats said.

View the complete post on the Washington Post website here.