Tag: Trump lies

In the Trump administration, the truth comes out after vigorous denials

The following article by Ashley Parker was posted on the Washington Post website June 4, 2018:

Both President Trump’s legal and political teams were vigorous in their denials: The president had absolutely not dictated a misleading statement on behalf of his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to explain away a controversial meeting he had with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower.

“Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent,” Jay Sekulow, one Trump’s personal attorneys at the time, said in response to a Washington Post story last summer that first reported the president’s role in dictating his son’s response. Continue reading “In the Trump administration, the truth comes out after vigorous denials”

President Trump has made 3,251 false or misleading claims in 497 days

The following article by Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly was posted on the Washington Post website June 1, 2018:

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 May 31, 2018. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

In the 497 days since he took the oath of office, President Trump has made 3,251 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.

That’s an average of more than 6.5 claims a day. Continue reading “President Trump has made 3,251 false or misleading claims in 497 days”

Trump falsely accuses the New York Times of making up a source. It was an official who briefed reporters.

The following article by Seung Min Kim was posted on the Washington Post website May 26, 2018:

Pres. Trump talks to reporters and members of the media as he walks from the Oval Office to board Marine One on Wednesday. Credit: Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post

President Trump on Saturday falsely accused the New York Times of using an unnamed source “who doesn’t exist” in a story on negotiations between the United States and North Korea, but the official cited spoke to reporters Thursday in a briefing arranged by the White House.

“The Failing @nytimes quotes ‘a senior White House official,’ who doesn’t exist, as saying ‘even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed,’” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.”

The senior White House official cited by the Times spoke to dozens of reporters Thursday at the White House and on a conference call to brief them on Trump’s decision earlier that day to cancel his June 12 summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Continue reading “Trump falsely accuses the New York Times of making up a source. It was an official who briefed reporters.”

Trump Repeats Claim That James Clapper ‘Admitted’ to Campaign Spying. It’s Still Wrong.

The following article by Linda Qiu was posted on the New York Times website May 24, 2018:

James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said and has continued to say the exact opposite.

WHAT WAS SAID

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Clapper has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign. Large dollars were paid to the Spy, far beyond normal. Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE – a terrible thing!

Twitter Ads info and privacy

THE FACTS

False.

President Trump made a version of this claim on Wednesday morning, misquoting James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama. It was not true at the time and it remains inaccurate.

Continue reading “Trump Repeats Claim That James Clapper ‘Admitted’ to Campaign Spying. It’s Still Wrong.”

A short history of phony anti-Trump conspiracy theories

The following article by Simon Maloy was posted on the Media Matters website May 23, 2018:

Right-wing media help Trump spin lies about the Russia investigation, and it’ll only get worse

Credit: Sarah Wasko, Media Matters

President Donald Trump has moved beyond Twitter griping and is using the powers of his office to try to discredit the Russia investigation. This past weekend, Trump demanded that the Department of Justice “look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration.” He met with top DOJ officials on Monday to pressure them to start an investigation into their own department’s investigation of Trump’s campaign.

To observers outside the conservative media bubble, Trump’s directive was a critical moment of this presidency. “The president has now crossed one of the brightest red lines in the American rule of law: demanding the Department of Justice open a politically motivated investigation designed to sabotage the criminal and counterintelligence probe into the president’s own campaign,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes said on his show Monday. Charlie Savage of The New York Times wrote that Trump “inched further toward breaching an established constraint on executive power: The White House does not make decisions about individual law enforcement investigations.” Continue reading “A short history of phony anti-Trump conspiracy theories”

Trump’s Big Lies About the FBI

The following article by Joe Conason was posted on the Creators.com website May 22, 2018:

Arguing with Donald Trump and the president’s most fervent supporters is usually a wasted effort. If they truly believe his paranoid whining about “the deep state conspiracy” to oust him, they’re not much interested in facts or logic.

Trump’s increasing efforts to promote confusion over the origins and conduct of the Russia investigation nevertheless deserve to be refuted. So do his repeated complaints that he is the victim of a political scandal even worse than Watergate.

He can continuously bamboozle his Fox-befuddled followers because the Russia saga is complex and convoluted — and because they all live in his world of “alternative truths.” It is not the real world that the rest of us inhabit. Continue reading “Trump’s Big Lies About the FBI”

Giuliani: Trump doesn’t know ‘for sure’ that there was an FBI informant in his campaign

The following article by Jenna Johnson was posted on the Washington Post website May 18, 2018:

Less than one month on the job, Trump’s new lawyer has already made a mess. Credit: JM Rieger, The Washington Post

President Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani said Friday that he has been told “off the record” that there was at least one informant for the FBI or Justice Department embedded in Trump’s presidential campaign, but he admitted that he and the president do not know whether that’s true.

Trump alleged in a Thursday morning tweet that during the Obama administration, the FBI placed “an embedded informant” inside his presidential campaign to improperly spy on him. Trump tweeted that if this information is true, “this is bigger than Watergate!” On Friday morning, the president tweeted this quote that he attributed to Fox Business Network anchor David Asman: “Apparently the DOJ put a Spy in the Trump Campaign. This has never been done before and by any means necessary, they are out to frame Donald Trump for crimes he didn’t commit.” Trump then added his own commentary: “Really bad stuff!” Continue reading “Giuliani: Trump doesn’t know ‘for sure’ that there was an FBI informant in his campaign”

‘Bigger than Watergate’: Trump joins push by allies to expose role of an FBI source

The following article by Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey was posted on the Washington Post website May 17, 2018:

It’s been a year since special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia – and since Trump’s barbs started. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

President Trump’s allies are waging an increasingly aggressive campaign to undercut the Russia investigation by exposing the role of a top-secret FBI source. The effort reached new heights Thursday as Trump alleged that an informant had improperly spied on his 2016 campaign and predicted that the ensuing scandal would be “bigger than Watergate!”

The extraordinary push begun by a cadre of Trump boosters on Capitol Hill now has champions across the GOP and throughout conservative media — and, as of Thursday, the first anniversary of Robert S. Mueller III’s appointment as special counsel, bears the imprimatur of the president. Continue reading “‘Bigger than Watergate’: Trump joins push by allies to expose role of an FBI source”

In new financial disclosure, Trump reports apparent payment through his personal attorney to adult-film star

The following article by David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell was posted on the Washington Post website May 16, 2018:

President Trump reported a reimbursement of over $100,000 last year to his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in new financial disclosure documents. (Reuters)

In new financial-disclosure documents, President Trump reported reimbursing his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, more than $100,000 last year — an apparent reference to the $130,000 that Cohen paid just before the 2016 election, to ensure the silence of an adult-film actress who claimed she’d had an affair with Trump.

The information was included as a footnote in the 92-page form filed with the Office of Government Ethics. The ethics agency said it had concluded Trump should list a debt to Cohen in the “liabilities” section of his financial statement. It also notified the Justice Department, which enforces a law against willfully omitting information from these forms. Continue reading “In new financial disclosure, Trump reports apparent payment through his personal attorney to adult-film star”

The news media does apologize for mistakes, unlike the White House

The following article by Glenn Kessler was posted on the Washington Post website May 16, 2018:

Most of the “Fake News” awards are about reports that were wrong — and quickly corrected. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

“Here’s where the president has a point, though. When does the mainstream media apologize to him? When did The Washington Post apologize for saying that he moved the MLK statue, when he did not?”
— Steve Cortes, former Trump campaign adviser, on CNN, May 14, 2018

A reader sent this clip to The Fact Checker, suggesting that it was worthy of a fact check. Regular readers know that we try to delve into weighty policy issues. We can’t claim this is about something weighty. Yet the missing Martin Luther King Jr. statue is an issue that keeps coming up, for reasons that are hard to understand. But perhaps it’s because the president listed it as item No. 4 in his “fake news awards” in early 2018.

This is also a good example of what-aboutism. Cortes, a frequent Trump surrogate on television, was trying to defend the White House for its refusal to apologize after an aide privately made a morbid joke about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has an aggressive form of brain cancer. So Cortes responded with a “what-about” answer: What about the mainstream media’s refusal to apologize? Continue reading “The news media does apologize for mistakes, unlike the White House”