Tag: Trump lies

Trump forgets a key rule: don’t make up discussions with real people

Last year, Trump made up an imagined conversation with the prime minister of India. Yesterday, he did it again.

At a White House event yesterday, a reporter asked Donald Trump about his concerns regarding border tensions between India and China. The president briefly reflected on his belief that “they like me in India,” and his affection for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, before answering the question.

“They have a big conflict going with India and China. Two countries with 1.4 billion people. Two countries with very powerful militaries. And India is not happy, and probably China is not happy. But I can tell you, I did speak to Prime Minister Modi. He’s not — he’s not in a good mood about what’s going on with China.”

Reuters reported this morning that this conversation apparently did not occur in reality. Continue reading “Trump forgets a key rule: don’t make up discussions with real people”

Fact-checking Trump’s letter blasting the World Health Organization

Washington Post logoIn previous administrations, a letter to an international organization signed by the U.S. president generally would have been carefully vetted and fact-checked. But President Trump’s May 18 letter to World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus contains a number of false or misleading statements. Here’s a sampling, as well as a guide to some of his claims:

“The World Health Organization consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal. The World Health Organization failed to independently investigate credible reports that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts, even those that came from sources within Wuhan itself.”

Richard Horton, the Lancet’s editor in chief, said no such study existed. “Dear President Trump — You cite The Lancet in your attack on WHO,” Horton tweeted. “Please let me correct the record. The Lancet did not publish any report in early December, 2019, about a virus spreading in Wuhan. The first reports we published were from Chinese scientists on Jan 24, 2020.” Continue reading.

Is Trump Taking Dubious Drug? His Doctor’s Note Doesn’t Say

Once again, the Trump White House is releasing very creatively-crafted information surrounding the president’s health. On Monday, after President Donald Trump claimed he is taking the anti-malaria drug he touted for weeks as a cure for coronavirus, hydroxychloroquine, the White House has released a letter that appears to try to suggest the president wasn’t lying and that he is taking the dangerous drug.

But the letter, from Physician to the President Sean P. Conley, does not actually say Trump is taking the drug.

“As has been previously reported, two weeks ago one of the President’s support staff tested positive for COVID-19. The President is in very good health and remains symptom-free. He receives regular COVID-19 testing, all negative to date,” the letter begins. Continue reading.

Trump Claimed Truckers in D.C. Are Honking in a ‘Sign of Love’ for Him. Drivers Say They’re There to Protest

WASHINGTON, DC — President Donald Trump says the sound of truck horns just south of the White House is a “sign of love” for him from truckers. But the truckers are actually honking their opposition to low shipping rates.

“They’re protesting in favor of President Trump,” the president claimed in the Rose Garden on Friday during an announcement about vaccine development. The blaring of truck horns wafted across the Ellipse and into the sun-splashed garden during that event and a ceremony Trump held in the afternoon to recognize good deeds during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Those are truckers that are with us all the way,” he said at the earlier event.

But the drivers who have lined Constitution Avenue with their big rigs didn’t come to Washington for Trump. They’re in the nation’s capital to protest low shipping rates that they say could force many of them out of business. Continue reading.

McConnell’s claim that Obama left behind no ‘game plan’ for the coronavirus outbreak

Washington Post logo“They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that’s no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this.”

— Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), in an online discussion hosted by the Trump campaign, May 11, 2020

There is little continuity in the top levels of the U.S. government when one political party replaces the presidential administration led by another. The natural inclination is to ignore much of the work left behind by the previous folks — and to reinvent the wheel all over again.

But former Obama administration officials cried foul after McConnell’s comments. “We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook…. that they ignored,” tweeted Ron Klain, the former “Ebola czar” in the Obama administration.

What’s going on? Continue reading.

Pompeo is Trump attack dog on China, COVID-19

The Hill logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo has positioned himself as the Trump administration’s most aggressive China critic, pushing the argument that Beijing holds responsibility for the coronavirus pandemic.

He’s drawn the ire of Chinese officials and state-backed media, who label him a “liar” and have called him “the common enemy of mankind” for his attacks on the Communist Party, shifting their attacks directly on the secretary and away from earlier accusations speculating the U.S. military spread COVID-19.

And despite mixed messages from U.S. officials and pushback from allies, the secretary continues to speculate whether the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese laboratory as he demands a global investigation. Continue reading.

Don’t fall for Trump’s false dichotomy: It’s not a choice between human lives and the economy

Trump wants us to think we must choose between lives and the economy — but he’s the reason both are in jeopardy

Donald Trump and his allies desperately want people to believe there’s a conflict between saving lives and saving the economy. In Trump’s daily propaganda dump disguised as a “coronavirus briefing,” the runner-up in the 2016 popular vote spends much of his time fantasizing about how he will soon “reopen” the economy and hinting that governors have overreached by instituting mandatory lockdowns to prevent the coronavirus from spreading. Republican politicians are assisting Trump is promoting this vapid dichotomy, demanding congressional investigations into the shutdowns and claiming that letting people die is a reasonable price to pay for (supposedly) rescuing the economy.

This effort at pitting lives against jobs is bolstered, of course, by Fox News and other right-wing pundits, who are hyping the idea that we need to let the coronavirus run rampant through the country in order to save the economy. Over the past week, right-wing astroturf groups linked to the DeVos family and other big donors have staged anti-lockdown protests, aimed at reinforcing this economy vs. lives framework. Trump and Fox News unsurprisingly jumped in, cheering on the protesters and using these tiny groups of knuckleheads as evidence that the country must make a stark choice.

Spoiler alert: This “choice” between saving lives and saving the economy is a false dichotomy. In fact, it isn’t a choice at all. You can’t do one without the other. Continue reading.

The Memo: Trump runs into trouble with expectations game

The Hill logoPresident Trump is mired in controversy over projections about the total number of deaths from COVID-19.

His detractors accuse him of pulling figures out of thin air, giving the nation false hope and seeking to boost his reelection odds.

Trump’s defenders, however, assert he is simply fulfilling the traditional role of a president in trying to bolster morale during a crisis. Continue reading.

Fact-checking Trump’s knocks at Obama in his Fox town hall

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s virtual town hall on Fox News on May 3 sounded like an oral reading of our Trump database of false or misleading claims (or our upcoming book, “Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth,” being published June 2 by Scribner). There were so many old chestnuts, from his false claims about NATO spending to his tale that the United States has spent $8 trillion on Middle East wars to his ahistorical bragging that he had built the greatest economy in the history of the world.

But the president’s favorite foil is his predecessor, Barack Obama. Anything Obama did is inherently suspect, in Trump’s telling, and anything Trump has done is surely superior.

We’ve also covered many of these in the past, such as his attacks on Obama’s successful handling of the swine flu pandemic. But here are two repeated claims that we have not had the opportunity to unravel previously. We will deal with them quickly in this roundup, so we won’t be awarding Pinocchios. Continue reading.

Trump’s comments on Democrats and ‘late-term abortion’

Washington Post logo“Virtually every Democrat candidate has declared their unlimited support for extreme late-term abortion, ripping babies straight from the mother’s womb, right up until the very moment of birth.”

— President Trump, at a campaign rally in Charlotte, March 2, 2020

Trump has repeated this fiery claim dozens of times in campaign rallies, speeches and tweets. The wording never changes. The verb is always “rip.” The womb is always mentioned. He never leaves out the “moment of birth.”

We keep adding it to our database of everything false or misleading from Trump, but the claim is so visceral and deceptive that it deserves its own fact check.

The Facts

Most abortions are performed in the earlier stages of pregnancy. About 1 percent happen after the fetus reaches the point of viability. In short, the president is describing something that rarely happens and that no Democrat is calling for anyway. Continue reading.