Amused
Elite Member
- Apr 14, 2001
- 55,850
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This is a perfect example of the very anti-intellectualism instilled by the right-wing media cult (who has taken a page in cult indoctrination from the anti-science crowd, conspiracy theorists and alt-med cults).
Take any mistake, no matter if it was retracted, no matter if it was corrected, no matter if it was admitted, and call it an intentional lie. A deception. Point out how the media (or modern medicine or science or big pharma or "monstatan") "got it wrong" and thus cannot be trusted. In fact, they didn't just get it wrong, it was a conspiracy to deceive you! A lie to manipulate you!
Use this as proof that "everyone else is lying to them." That only you can be trusted to give them the "truth."
Bingo! New cult member!
Younigue
Diamond Member
- Feb 5, 2017
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Chaotic42
Lifer
- Jun 15, 2001
- 33,929
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I'd love to see a full version with him doing the full breakdown and them shaking their heads.
mikeymikec
Lifer
- May 19, 2011
- 17,677
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Now if you wanted to take the piss out of a typical Trump supporter, this is prime material!
You've got some deflection in there in that your response had nothing to do with what I wrote, you managed to work in why a typical Trump supporter labels everything critical of Trump as "fake news", and you've got some pretty neat projection going on there!
5/7
PS: I'm from the UK, so what I'd consider to be the "main stream media" is obviously not what you consider it to be. Though MAYBE former Obama staffers own all the UK media too! There's probably a connection with the Chinese and global warming too if you look hard enough.
PPS: A prediction can't really be a lie now, can it. You've got to think these things through logically.
Last edited:
I guess this is "humorous" if you're the the kind of person that's stuck in the past, and spouts "your candidate lost, get over it" whenever anyone says anything about Trump.
So... Good job?
KMFJD
Lifer
- Aug 11, 2005
- 29,141
- 42,121
- 136
Weird how you guys never use that logic when it comes to Trump.
No matter how many times his "mistakes" have been clarified and revealed to be the absolute correct and best action, no matter how many times accusations against him are proven wrong, you continue to assume the absolute worst from his every action.
It's humorous because people still act like huffpost is some bastion of truth and couldn't ever be wrong or biased.
ch33zw1z
Lifer
- Nov 4, 2004
- 37,760
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Amused
Elite Member
- Apr 14, 2001
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Just wow. Outright, intentional lies and utter misinformed incompetence when you're the head of the free world and have the most advanced intelligence service at your disposal is not a "mistake."
Were you honestly maintaining a straight face when you typed that?
So uh, what were you talking about exactly?
When he said he was being tapped by Obama? (proven true, thanks Rice)
When he said he paid his taxes, and was worth billions? (proven true, thanks to the "leaked" tax return)
When he said ... BLAH, I can't waste my time on this, here is a simple copy/paste.
PROMISES MADE AND KEPT SO FAR:
Campaign Promise 1: To replace Antonin Scalia with a like-minded justice from a list of 20
- The Nomination of Neil Gorsuch who is one of the most qualified people ever nominated to the SCOTUS whose nomination to the 10th Circuit Court was unanimously approved by Republicans, and Democrats including Cuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden in 2006. And before the opposition says "but, Merrick Garland" tell them to look up up the Biden Rule
- Trump has attempted to enact a Travel Ban that is 100% CONSTITUTIONAL AND is made from the seven (six, now) "countries of concern" outlined by the Hussein Administration. This has been blocked by an extremely liberal Hawaiian judge who was appointed by Obama. (The blocking of this travel ban might piss me off more than anything that has happened during his presidency, because judges should be blind to politics, but that is proving to be false.) Hopefully this will go to the Supreme Court and be overturned quickly.
- Trump has implemented a YUGE crackdown on sanctuary cities, threatening to defund them
- The revival of the Dakota and Keystone XL Pipelines creating American jobs
- Trump pulled us out of the TPP which would have been absolutely disastrous for the US
- Trump has signed an Executive Order promoting women in STEM jobs (careers real feminists strive for, not "dance therapy" feminists)
- Trump has Launched a Council empowering female leaders and female entrepreneurs
- Trump met with Justin Trudeau (what a joke) to discuss the tweaking of NAFTA to benefit the US more, after he threatens to leave it
- Trump ordered a two-for-one repeal for all new regulations enacted by federal agencies
- Trump has rolled back ridiculous Obama-era regulations that have made it nearly impossible for small businesses to hire employees
- Trump has signed an Executive Order to give major funding to "Historically Black Colleges and Universities," helping out inner-cities immensely
- Trump's EPA granted $10 million to aid the Flint, Michigan water crisis
- Trump signed an Executive Order protecting our police
- Trump has implemented a YUGE crackdown on illegal immigration and he has started the WALL initiative
- Trump has increased our military budget because we don't want to use our military, but want to be prepared to use it
- Trump has placed a five year and lifetime lobbying ban on government officials for when they leave office
- Trump signed an Executive Order cracking down on drug cartels
- Trump has enacted Joint Resolution 38 putting hundreds, if not thousands of coal miners back to work
- Trump negotiated a deal with Carrier promising to bring manufacturing and jobs back to the US.
- Trump has met with CEOs from huge companies to work on bringing jobs back to America
- There was an increase of 298,000 jobs in February alone (liberals will say that counts in Obama's fiscal year, but we know the truth)
- Trump met with Intel CEO who promised $7 Billion investment and over 3,000 high paying (not "shovel ready" bullshit jobs) in America
- Trump met with the CEO of Softbank who has promised 50,000 more American jobs and has already fulfilled 3,000 of those jobs
Campaign Promise 18: Pushing NATO allies to pay their fair share or face the reality of the US possibly leaving
- Trump has put major pressure on the members of NATO to pay their fair and equal share because there are only a handful of countries in NATO who currently pay as much as agreed upon
- Trump has taken major steps towards America's energy independence
- Trump enacted a hiring freeze to all federal employees, cutting down on the over-bloated bureaucracy
- Trump signed a Bill allowing NASA funding, including an exploration to Mars
- Rescinding (one of) Obama's incredibly unconstitutional actions regarding transgender bathrooms in schools
- Trump got rid of the idiotic penalty in Obamacare that fines you if you choose not to participate in the program
- He called for a drone strike in Afghanistan killing Qari Yasin, a Pakistani Al-Qaeda leader
- He donated his first quarterly salary to the National Park Service
- (Even though it was Mike Pence) The defunding of clinics that perform abortions. Because no matter whether you are pro-choice/pro-life, the government should not be funding abortions. (Also, if people bring up the Hyde Amendment which is supposed to not let any federal funding go towards abortions, LET THEM KNOW that US taxpayers pay for about 24% of abortions despite of that "amendment")
- Huge spikes in the NASDAQ average index and the DOW average index starting November 8th. (This will count for Obama unfortunately, but we know where the real credit belongs.)
- He has placed sanctions on Iran after they tested ballistic missiles
- He has met with/talked to over 30 foreign leaders.
- Trump has moved on to tax reform, lowering taxes for Americans
- He negotiated down the Price of the new Air Force One one billion dollars in a meeting that lasted just one hour
- He issued major cuts to the costs of the F-35 saving billions
- He has opened the eyes of the American public to just how unbelievably corrupt (pretty believable to most) the Hussein Administration was.
Amused
Elite Member
- Apr 14, 2001
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I only have 1(7)2 lies, so you're going to have to share!
Let's count 'em down!
172. April 3, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate?”
In fact: There is no such thing as “answers to the debate.” Clinton’s campaign was tipped off to two questions during the Democratic primary, one for a debate and one for a town hall.
171. April 2, 2017 — Interview with the Financial Times
The repeated claim: “We have an $800 billion trade deficit.”
In fact: The trade deficit was $502 billion in 2016. It was $750 billion if you count only trade in goods and exclude trade in services, but Trump, as usual, did not specify that he was talking about goods alone.
170. April 2, 2017 — Interview with the Financial Times
The claim: “And if we don’t get the ... Freedom Caucus there that would be fine. They’re friends of mine. Many of them have already left, and many of them as you know have already given us their vote.”
In fact: There has been only one defection from the Freedom Caucus under Trump. Rep. Ted Poe quit in March, after the Freedom Caucus helped to kill Trump’s health bill, but he was the first member to leave since 2015.
169. April 2, 2017 — Interview with the Financial Times
The claim: “You know if you issue hundreds of tweets, and every once in a while you have a clinker, that’s not so bad. Now my last tweet, you know the one that you are talking about perhaps, was the one about being in quotes wire tapped, meaning surveilled. Guess what, it is turning out to be true.”
In fact: It is not turning out to be true. Nobody has produced evidence to support it; the leaders of the FBI and NSA say they have seen no corroborating evidence, as have Republican leaders in Congress.
168. March 31, 2017 — RemarksRemarks at signing of executive orders on trade
The repeated claim: “Year after year, decade after decade, trade deficit upon trade deficit — reaching more than $700 billion last year alone, and lots of jobs.”
In fact: The trade deficit was $502 billion the previous year, 2016. It was $750 billion if you count only trade in goods and exclude trade in services, but Trump, as usual, did not specify that he was talking about goods alone.
167. March 29, 2017 — Twitter
The repeated claim: “Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong.”
In fact: Again: the Times never apologized for its Trump coverage. Trump was referring to a post-election letter, a kind of sales pitch, in which Times leaders thanked readers and said they planned to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
166. March 27, 2017 — Twitter
The repeated claim: “Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia …”
In fact: It is inaccurate to describe this as a “Bill & Hillary deal.” The U.S. government approved a deal in which a Russian state-owned company bought a controlling stake in Toronto-based Uranium One, which controlled 20 per cent of America’s uranium production capacity. Hillary Clinton’s State Department was one of nine government entities that reviewed the purchase; there is no evidence Clinton was personally involved in the process in any way; only then-President Barack Obama could have made the decision to block the deal.
165. March 27, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into … Podesta Russian Company.”
In fact: There is no “Podesta Russian Company.” Podesta sat on the board of an American company, Joule, which received Russian investment and had at least one Russian investor on the board as well.
164. March 24, 2017 — Remarks on failed Obamacare repeal and replacement
The repeated claim: “I was in Tennessee the other day, and they’ve lost half of their state in terms of an insurer; they have no insurer.”
In fact: Every part of Tennessee is covered by a health insurer, the state told FactCheck.org; some areas have one insurer selling plans through the Obamacare “marketplace,” some have two.
163. March 24, 2017 — Remarks on failed Obamacare repeal and replacement
The repeated claim: “And I never said — I guess I’m here, what, 64 days? I never said repeal and replace Obamacare — you’ve all heard my speeches — I never said repeal it and replace it within 64 days. I have a long time.”
In fact: Again, Trump never specifically said the repeal and replacement would happen within precisely 61 days. But this claim is so misleading as to be false. He repeatedly promised that he would repeal and replace Obamacare “immediately” — sometimes adding that he would ask Congress to put a bill on his desk on the very first day of his presidency. (Also, he had been in office 64 days when he made this remark.)
162. March 24 — Interview with the Washington Post’s Robert Costa
The claim: “I never said I was going to repeal and replace in the first 61 days.”
In fact: Sure, Trump never specifically said the repeal and replacement would happen within precisely 61 days. But this claim is so misleading as to be false. He repeatedly promised that he would repeal and replace Obamacare “immediately” — sometimes adding that he would ask Congress to put a bill on his desk on the very first day of his presidency. (Also, he had been in office 64 days when he made this remark.)
161. March 24, 2017 — Remarks at “jobs announcement” with Charter Communications
The claim: “Today I am thrilled to announce that Charter Communications has just committed to investing $25 billion — with a B, $25 billion — you’re sure that’s right, right? With a B, right — $25 billion here in the United States, and has committed further to hiring 20,000 American workers over the next four years.”
In fact: Charter did not “just” make this commitment — the company had already announced these plans, industry experts told USA Today.
160. March 23 — Remarks at meeting with representatives of trucking industry
The claim about Obamacare: “So you know the problems, and it’s put a lot of the trucking businesses out of business, which is pretty tough.”
In fact: There is no evidence of this. Asked in a CNBC interview that day how Obamacare has impacted the industry, the chief executive of the American Trucking Association cited rising costs, “administrative burdens” and a lack of choice; even he did not mention companies going out of business.
159. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “Sweden. I make the statement, everyone goes crazy. The next day they have a massive riot, and death, and problems.”
In fact: Nobody died in the Sweden riot that occurred two days after Trump falsely suggested that a terrorist incident had occurred in Sweden the previous night.
158. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “NATO, obsolete, because it doesn’t cover terrorism. They fixed that.”
In fact: NATO has long addressed terrorism.
157. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “… and I said that the allies must pay. Nobody knew that they weren’t paying. I did. I figured it.”
In fact: Barack Obama, among many other Americans, chided NATO allies for failing to meet a guideline of spending 2 per cent of their gross domestic product on defence. The fact that several NATO countries do not meet the guideline was widely known.
156. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “Brexit, I was totally right about that. You were over there I think, when I predicted that, right, the day before.”
In fact: Trump did not predict Brexit the day before; the day before the vote, he said, “I don’t think anybody should listen to me (because) I haven’t really focused on it very much,” but that his “inclination” would be that Britain should vote to leave the European Union. This was a recommendation, not a prediction.
155. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The repeated claim: “Now remember this. When I said wiretapping, it was in quotes.”
In fact: Trump did use the word in quotation marks in two of his four tweets falsely alleging that Barack Obama had spied on him, but he also made the same allegation without quotation marks in the two other tweets.
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Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
3:35 AM - 4 Mar 2017
Follow
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!
3:49 AM - 4 Mar 2017
Follow
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!
3:52 AM - 4 Mar 2017
Follow
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
4:02 AM - 4 Mar 2017
154. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “Here, headline, for the front page of the New York Times, ‘Wiretapped data used in inquiry of Trump aides.’ That’s a headline. Now they then dropped that headline, I never saw this until this morning. They then dropped that headline, and they used another headline without the word wiretap, but they did mean wiretap. Wiretapped data used in inquiry. Then changed after that, they probably didn’t like it. And they changed the title. They took the wiretap word out.”
In fact: The Times never changed its headline; it simply used different words in its print and online headlines, which is normal.
153. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The repeated claim: “I mean mostly they register wrong, in other words, for the votes, they register incorrectly, and/or illegally. And they then vote. You have tremendous numbers of people.”
In fact: Every credible expert, including Republican secretaries of state for individual states, says the number of people voting illegally is tiny.
152. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The repeated claim: “Brexit, I predicted Brexit, you remember that, the day before the event. I said, no Brexit is going to happen, and everybody laughed, and Brexit happened.”
In fact: Nope. Trump did not predict Brexit the day before.
151. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: On his campaign claim that Ted Cruz’s father was seen with Lee Harvey Oswald: “But that was in the newspaper. I wasn’t, I didn’t say that. I was referring to a newspaper … I’m just quoting the newspaper.”
In fact: The newspaper in question is the National Enquirer — and when he made the claim, Trump did not make clear that he was quoting the Enquirer. He said directly: “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous.”
150. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “I went to Kentucky two nights ago, we had 25,000 people in a massive Basketball Arena.”
In fact: The capacity of the arena is about 18,000.
149. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “I said the day before the opening, but I was saying Brexit was going to pass, and everybody was laughing, and I turned out to be right on that.”
In fact: Still nope. Trump did not predict Brexit the day before.
148. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “And the New York Times and CNN and all of them, they did these polls, which were extremely bad and they turned out to be totally wrong.”
In fact: The final New York Times poll was precisely correct: it had Hillary Clinton winning the national popular vote by 3 per cent; she ended up winning by 3 per cent. CNN’s final poll had her up 5 per cent, still within the margin of error.
147. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “I assume this is going to be a cover too, have I set the record? I guess, right? Covers, nobody’s had more covers.”
In fact: Richard Nixon has the record for most Time magazine covers: 55. Trump has not appeared on the cover even half that many times.
146. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The repeated claim: “Wiretapped data used in inquiry of Trump aides. Ok? Can you possibly put that down? Front page, January 20th. Now in their second editions, they took it all down under the internet. They took that out. Ok?”
In fact: Still nope. The New York Times never changed the online headline that referenced wiretapped data.
145. March 20, 2017 — Campaign rally in Louisville
The repeated claim: “Last year, our country lost almost $800 billion in trade.”
In fact: This is false even aside from his dubious characterization of trade deficits as “losing.” The 2016 trade deficit was $502 billion. Trump would have been correct enough if he had specified he was talking specifically about the deficit in trade of manufactured goods — $750 billion in 2016 — but he did not.
144. March 20, 2017 — Campaign rally in Louisville
The repeated claim: “With just one negotiation on one set of airplanes, I saved the taxpayers of our country over $700 million.”
In fact: Trump was not responsible for these savings: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
143. March 20, 2017 — Campaign rally in Louisville
The claim: “You know, I’ve only been there for, what, 52 days, right? Somebody said to me, when are you starting on NAFTA? I said, wait a minute, I did this, this, this. I knocked out unbelievable numbers of regulations. We’re negotiating much better deals — these terrible deals that were made. I’ve been here like 51 days.”
In fact: Trump had been in office 60 days.
142. March 20, 2017 — Campaign rally in Louisville
The claim: “We’ve also cleared the way for the Keystone and the Dakota Access pipelines. And as I was signing it, I said, where are they getting the steel? Where? And I said, you know what, if people want to build pipelines in the United States, they should use American steel, and they should build it and create it right here. That pipe is going to be manufactured right here.”
In fact: This is misleading at best, for two reasons. First: Trump’s executive order is significantly more ambiguous, saying merely that the government should develop a plan to make pipelines use American steel “to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law.” Second: though Trump created the impression that he is forcing the Keystone pipeline to use American steel, that pipeline has already been granted an exemption, Politico reports, because it is not a “new” pipeline.
Let's count 'em down!
172. April 3, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate?”
In fact: There is no such thing as “answers to the debate.” Clinton’s campaign was tipped off to two questions during the Democratic primary, one for a debate and one for a town hall.
171. April 2, 2017 — Interview with the Financial Times
The repeated claim: “We have an $800 billion trade deficit.”
In fact: The trade deficit was $502 billion in 2016. It was $750 billion if you count only trade in goods and exclude trade in services, but Trump, as usual, did not specify that he was talking about goods alone.
170. April 2, 2017 — Interview with the Financial Times
The claim: “And if we don’t get the ... Freedom Caucus there that would be fine. They’re friends of mine. Many of them have already left, and many of them as you know have already given us their vote.”
In fact: There has been only one defection from the Freedom Caucus under Trump. Rep. Ted Poe quit in March, after the Freedom Caucus helped to kill Trump’s health bill, but he was the first member to leave since 2015.
169. April 2, 2017 — Interview with the Financial Times
The claim: “You know if you issue hundreds of tweets, and every once in a while you have a clinker, that’s not so bad. Now my last tweet, you know the one that you are talking about perhaps, was the one about being in quotes wire tapped, meaning surveilled. Guess what, it is turning out to be true.”
In fact: It is not turning out to be true. Nobody has produced evidence to support it; the leaders of the FBI and NSA say they have seen no corroborating evidence, as have Republican leaders in Congress.
168. March 31, 2017 — RemarksRemarks at signing of executive orders on trade
The repeated claim: “Year after year, decade after decade, trade deficit upon trade deficit — reaching more than $700 billion last year alone, and lots of jobs.”
In fact: The trade deficit was $502 billion the previous year, 2016. It was $750 billion if you count only trade in goods and exclude trade in services, but Trump, as usual, did not specify that he was talking about goods alone.
167. March 29, 2017 — Twitter
The repeated claim: “Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong.”
In fact: Again: the Times never apologized for its Trump coverage. Trump was referring to a post-election letter, a kind of sales pitch, in which Times leaders thanked readers and said they planned to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
166. March 27, 2017 — Twitter
The repeated claim: “Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia …”
In fact: It is inaccurate to describe this as a “Bill & Hillary deal.” The U.S. government approved a deal in which a Russian state-owned company bought a controlling stake in Toronto-based Uranium One, which controlled 20 per cent of America’s uranium production capacity. Hillary Clinton’s State Department was one of nine government entities that reviewed the purchase; there is no evidence Clinton was personally involved in the process in any way; only then-President Barack Obama could have made the decision to block the deal.
165. March 27, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into … Podesta Russian Company.”
In fact: There is no “Podesta Russian Company.” Podesta sat on the board of an American company, Joule, which received Russian investment and had at least one Russian investor on the board as well.
164. March 24, 2017 — Remarks on failed Obamacare repeal and replacement
The repeated claim: “I was in Tennessee the other day, and they’ve lost half of their state in terms of an insurer; they have no insurer.”
In fact: Every part of Tennessee is covered by a health insurer, the state told FactCheck.org; some areas have one insurer selling plans through the Obamacare “marketplace,” some have two.
163. March 24, 2017 — Remarks on failed Obamacare repeal and replacement
The repeated claim: “And I never said — I guess I’m here, what, 64 days? I never said repeal and replace Obamacare — you’ve all heard my speeches — I never said repeal it and replace it within 64 days. I have a long time.”
In fact: Again, Trump never specifically said the repeal and replacement would happen within precisely 61 days. But this claim is so misleading as to be false. He repeatedly promised that he would repeal and replace Obamacare “immediately” — sometimes adding that he would ask Congress to put a bill on his desk on the very first day of his presidency. (Also, he had been in office 64 days when he made this remark.)
162. March 24 — Interview with the Washington Post’s Robert Costa
The claim: “I never said I was going to repeal and replace in the first 61 days.”
In fact: Sure, Trump never specifically said the repeal and replacement would happen within precisely 61 days. But this claim is so misleading as to be false. He repeatedly promised that he would repeal and replace Obamacare “immediately” — sometimes adding that he would ask Congress to put a bill on his desk on the very first day of his presidency. (Also, he had been in office 64 days when he made this remark.)
161. March 24, 2017 — Remarks at “jobs announcement” with Charter Communications
The claim: “Today I am thrilled to announce that Charter Communications has just committed to investing $25 billion — with a B, $25 billion — you’re sure that’s right, right? With a B, right — $25 billion here in the United States, and has committed further to hiring 20,000 American workers over the next four years.”
In fact: Charter did not “just” make this commitment — the company had already announced these plans, industry experts told USA Today.
160. March 23 — Remarks at meeting with representatives of trucking industry
The claim about Obamacare: “So you know the problems, and it’s put a lot of the trucking businesses out of business, which is pretty tough.”
In fact: There is no evidence of this. Asked in a CNBC interview that day how Obamacare has impacted the industry, the chief executive of the American Trucking Association cited rising costs, “administrative burdens” and a lack of choice; even he did not mention companies going out of business.
159. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “Sweden. I make the statement, everyone goes crazy. The next day they have a massive riot, and death, and problems.”
In fact: Nobody died in the Sweden riot that occurred two days after Trump falsely suggested that a terrorist incident had occurred in Sweden the previous night.
158. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “NATO, obsolete, because it doesn’t cover terrorism. They fixed that.”
In fact: NATO has long addressed terrorism.
157. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “… and I said that the allies must pay. Nobody knew that they weren’t paying. I did. I figured it.”
In fact: Barack Obama, among many other Americans, chided NATO allies for failing to meet a guideline of spending 2 per cent of their gross domestic product on defence. The fact that several NATO countries do not meet the guideline was widely known.
156. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “Brexit, I was totally right about that. You were over there I think, when I predicted that, right, the day before.”
In fact: Trump did not predict Brexit the day before; the day before the vote, he said, “I don’t think anybody should listen to me (because) I haven’t really focused on it very much,” but that his “inclination” would be that Britain should vote to leave the European Union. This was a recommendation, not a prediction.
155. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The repeated claim: “Now remember this. When I said wiretapping, it was in quotes.”
In fact: Trump did use the word in quotation marks in two of his four tweets falsely alleging that Barack Obama had spied on him, but he also made the same allegation without quotation marks in the two other tweets.
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
3:35 AM - 4 Mar 2017
- https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=837989835818287106
51,39051,390 Retweets
145,714145,714 likes
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump
Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!
3:49 AM - 4 Mar 2017
- https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=837993273679560704
37,00137,001 Retweets
125,339125,339 likes
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump
I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!
3:52 AM - 4 Mar 2017
- https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=837994257566863360
37,77137,771 Retweets
133,601133,601 likes
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
4:02 AM - 4 Mar 2017
- https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=837996746236182529
53,67153,671 Retweets
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154. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “Here, headline, for the front page of the New York Times, ‘Wiretapped data used in inquiry of Trump aides.’ That’s a headline. Now they then dropped that headline, I never saw this until this morning. They then dropped that headline, and they used another headline without the word wiretap, but they did mean wiretap. Wiretapped data used in inquiry. Then changed after that, they probably didn’t like it. And they changed the title. They took the wiretap word out.”
In fact: The Times never changed its headline; it simply used different words in its print and online headlines, which is normal.
153. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The repeated claim: “I mean mostly they register wrong, in other words, for the votes, they register incorrectly, and/or illegally. And they then vote. You have tremendous numbers of people.”
In fact: Every credible expert, including Republican secretaries of state for individual states, says the number of people voting illegally is tiny.
152. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The repeated claim: “Brexit, I predicted Brexit, you remember that, the day before the event. I said, no Brexit is going to happen, and everybody laughed, and Brexit happened.”
In fact: Nope. Trump did not predict Brexit the day before.
151. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: On his campaign claim that Ted Cruz’s father was seen with Lee Harvey Oswald: “But that was in the newspaper. I wasn’t, I didn’t say that. I was referring to a newspaper … I’m just quoting the newspaper.”
In fact: The newspaper in question is the National Enquirer — and when he made the claim, Trump did not make clear that he was quoting the Enquirer. He said directly: “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous.”
150. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “I went to Kentucky two nights ago, we had 25,000 people in a massive Basketball Arena.”
In fact: The capacity of the arena is about 18,000.
149. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “I said the day before the opening, but I was saying Brexit was going to pass, and everybody was laughing, and I turned out to be right on that.”
In fact: Still nope. Trump did not predict Brexit the day before.
148. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “And the New York Times and CNN and all of them, they did these polls, which were extremely bad and they turned out to be totally wrong.”
In fact: The final New York Times poll was precisely correct: it had Hillary Clinton winning the national popular vote by 3 per cent; she ended up winning by 3 per cent. CNN’s final poll had her up 5 per cent, still within the margin of error.
147. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The claim: “I assume this is going to be a cover too, have I set the record? I guess, right? Covers, nobody’s had more covers.”
In fact: Richard Nixon has the record for most Time magazine covers: 55. Trump has not appeared on the cover even half that many times.
146. March 22, 2017 — Interview with TIME on Trump’s falsehoods
The repeated claim: “Wiretapped data used in inquiry of Trump aides. Ok? Can you possibly put that down? Front page, January 20th. Now in their second editions, they took it all down under the internet. They took that out. Ok?”
In fact: Still nope. The New York Times never changed the online headline that referenced wiretapped data.
145. March 20, 2017 — Campaign rally in Louisville
The repeated claim: “Last year, our country lost almost $800 billion in trade.”
In fact: This is false even aside from his dubious characterization of trade deficits as “losing.” The 2016 trade deficit was $502 billion. Trump would have been correct enough if he had specified he was talking specifically about the deficit in trade of manufactured goods — $750 billion in 2016 — but he did not.
144. March 20, 2017 — Campaign rally in Louisville
The repeated claim: “With just one negotiation on one set of airplanes, I saved the taxpayers of our country over $700 million.”
In fact: Trump was not responsible for these savings: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
143. March 20, 2017 — Campaign rally in Louisville
The claim: “You know, I’ve only been there for, what, 52 days, right? Somebody said to me, when are you starting on NAFTA? I said, wait a minute, I did this, this, this. I knocked out unbelievable numbers of regulations. We’re negotiating much better deals — these terrible deals that were made. I’ve been here like 51 days.”
In fact: Trump had been in office 60 days.
142. March 20, 2017 — Campaign rally in Louisville
The claim: “We’ve also cleared the way for the Keystone and the Dakota Access pipelines. And as I was signing it, I said, where are they getting the steel? Where? And I said, you know what, if people want to build pipelines in the United States, they should use American steel, and they should build it and create it right here. That pipe is going to be manufactured right here.”
In fact: This is misleading at best, for two reasons. First: Trump’s executive order is significantly more ambiguous, saying merely that the government should develop a plan to make pipelines use American steel “to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law.” Second: though Trump created the impression that he is forcing the Keystone pipeline to use American steel, that pipeline has already been granted an exemption, Politico reports, because it is not a “new” pipeline.
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141. March 20, 2017 — Campaign rally in Louisville
The repeated claim: “You see them coming back. You see car companies who were going to build elsewhere, and now they’re saying that because of Trump we’re going to build in Michigan, we’re going to build in Ohio, we’re going to build in Kentucky. They’re saying it loud and clear.”
In fact: The auto companies that have announced U.S. investments since Trump’s victory have not, in fact, said they were doing so because of Trump — and independent analysts said it was unlikely Trump was a major factor. GM, for example, did not offer any indication that it made its new investment of $1 billion because of Trump, and automotive experts said it was unlikely Trump was a significant reason. The parent company of Chrysler said Trump had no influence on its newly announced $1 billion investment in Michigan and Ohio, telling ThinkProgress, “This plan was in the works back in 2015.”
141. March 20, 2017 — Campaign rally in Louisville
The claim: “Many of our best and brightest are leaving the medical profession entirely because of Obamacare.”
In fact: There is no evidence of this. “We see no significant number exiting related to the Affordable Care Act,” the executive vice president of the U.S. Association of Medical Colleges told The Associated Press.
140. March 20, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “The NSA and FBI tell Congress that Russia did not influence electoral process.”
In fact: The leaders of the NSA and FBI did not say this to Congress. Trump was fact-checked in real time by FBI Director James Comey; asked about this tweet, Comey said, “We’ve offered no opinion.”
139. March 20, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Just heard Fake News CNN is doing polls again despite the fact that their election polls were a WAY OFF disaster. “
In fact: CNN’s election polls were not “way off.” Its final national poll had Hillary Clinton winning the national popular vote by five percentage points; she ended up winning it by three percentage points, within the margin of error, though she lost in the Electoral College.
138. March 18, 2017 — Twitter
The repeated claim: “Germany owes … vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!”
In fact: This is not how it works — Germany doesn’t owe money to NATO or to the United States. The alliance has asked members to spend 2 per cent of their gross domestic product on defence by 2024. Germany is spending closer to 1 per cent. But it does not have military debt to NATO, and extra money it spends in the future would not go to NATO.
137. March 17, 2017 — Joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel
The claim about NATO: “Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years, and it is very unfair to the United States. These nations must pay what they owe.”
In fact: This is not how it works — Germany doesn’t owe money to NATO or to the United States. The alliance has asked members to spend 2 per cent of their gross domestic product on defence by 2024. Germany is spending closer to 1 per cent. But it does not have military debt to NATO, and extra money it spends in the future would not go to NATO.
136. March 17, 2017 — Joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel
The claim: “And just to finish your question, we said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn’t make an opinion on it. That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox.”
In fact: It is not true that Trump was merely quoting a lawyer when he claimed he had been wiretapped by Barack Obama. Fox News senior legal analyst Andrew Napolitano said on Fox that sources told him the Obama administration had asked British intelligence to spy on Trump, and, earlier, he had asked a question about possible Obama wiretapping. But Trump went much further. The president declared that he himself had found out Obama was indeed wiretapping him: “President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election,” he wrote on Twitter. At no point, during his Twitter storm on March 4, did he say he was simply quoting Napolitano.
135. March 17, 2017 — Joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel
The repeated claim: “I was in Tennessee — we had a tremendous crowd the other night, and they have — half of the state is uncovered. The insurance companies have left, and the other half has one insurance company and that will probably be bailing out pretty soon also. They’ll have nobody.”
In fact: Every part of Tennessee is covered by a health insurer, the state told FactCheck.org; some areas have one insurer selling plans through the Obamacare “marketplace,” some have two.
134. March 17, 2017 — Joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel
The claim: “Germany has done very well in its trade deals with the United States, and I give them credit for it.”
In fact: Germany does not have trade deals with the United States, as New York Times correspondent Binyamin Applebaum noted on Twitter.
133. March 17, 2017 — Remarks to Republican Study Committee
The repeated claim: “I was in Tennessee — I was just telling the folks — and half of the state has no insurance company, and the other half is going to lose the insurance company. The people don’t know what to do.”
In fact: Every part of Tennessee is covered by a health insurer, the state told FactCheck.org; some areas have one insurer selling plans through the Obamacare “marketplace,” some have two.
132. March 17, 2017 — Remarks at “veterans’ affairs listening session”
The claim: “They also want people to know that Obamacare is dead; it’s a dead health care plan. It’s not even a health care plan, frankly … Obamacare is dead.”
In fact: We allow Trump rhetorical license to call Obamacare “collapsing” and even “exploding,” though experts say neither is true. But it is plainly false to say the law is “dead.” While its marketplaces have problems, they are still functioning and providing insurance to millions; so is its Medicaid expansion.
131. March 17, 2017 — Remarks at “veterans’ affairs listening session”
The claim: “In Tennessee, where I just left, half of the state has no insurance and — no carrier. It’s gone. And they’re going to leave the other half of the state very soon.”
In fact: Every part of Tennessee is covered by a health insurer, the state told FactCheck.org; some areas have one insurer selling plans through the Obamacare “marketplace,” some have two.
130.March 15, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson
The repeated claim about the F-35: “On the airplanes, I saved $725 million, probably took me a half an hour if you added up all of the times.”
In fact: Trump was not responsible for these savings: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
129. March 15, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson
The claim about his source for his allegation that President Barack Obama had wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower: “Well, I’ve been reading about things. I read in, I think it was January 20, a New York Times article where they were talking about wiretapping. There was an article, I think they used that exact term.” Added: “Well, because The New York Times wrote about it.”
In fact: This claim contains a kernel of truth, but it is so misleading that it is largely false. The Times article did use the word “wiretapped,” but it did not mention Obama, and it did not mention Trump Tower. Rather, it said only that U.S. authorities were examining intercepted communications related to Trump associates’ possible ties with Russian officials; it suggested that there had been wiretaps of foreign officials, not Americans.
128. March 15, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson
The claim: “And don’t forget, when I say wiretapping, those words were in quotes. That really covers, because wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff. But that really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that’s a very important thing.”
In fact: Trump did use quotation marks in two of his four tweets accusing Barack Obama of improperly surveilling him. However, in the other two, he made the same accusation without quotation marks. “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process,” he wrote in one; “I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!” he wrote in the other.
127. March 15, 2017 — Campaign rally in Nashville
The claim: “I’ve already authorized the construction of the long-stalled and delayed Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. “
In fact: Trump’s executive order merely invited TransCanada Corp. to apply again to get the Keystone pipeline approved. He has not granted final approval.
126. March 15, 2017 — Campaign rally in Nashville
The claim: “I’ve already authorized the construction of the long-stalled and delayed Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. A lot of jobs. I’ve also directed that new pipelines must be constructed with American steel. They want to build them here, they use our steel.”
In fact: His executive order is significantly more ambiguous: it says the government should develop a plan to make pipelines use American steel “to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law.” That’s not a “must” — and the Keystone pipeline has already been granted an exemption by the administration, Politico reports, because it is not “new.”
A Donald Trump falsehood
He said what? Does the U.S. have an undefended border that anyone can cross? (TORONTO STAR/WHITE HOUSE/YOUTUBE)
125. March 15, 2017 — Campaign rally in Nashville
The claim: “Our budget calls for one of the single largest increases in defence spending history in this country.”
In fact: Trump’s proposed increase in defence spending, of about 10 per cent, is not one of the biggest ever. “In just the past 40 years, there have been eight years with larger increases in percentage terms than the one he’s now proposing”; The Associated Press reported; “there have been 27 years since 1940 in which the military spending was as high or higher than the proposed increase,” the New York Times reported.
124. March 15, 2017 — Speech at the American Center for Mobility in Detroit
The claim: “Today, that number (of automotive jobs in Michigan) is roughly 165,000 — and would have been heading down big league if I didn’t get elected, I will tell you that right now. That I can tell you. Plenty of things were stopped in their tracks. They were stopped in their tracks. A lot of bad things were going to happen. A lot of places were going to get built that aren’t going to get built right now in other locations.”
In fact: There is no evidence that Trump’s election, or Trump’s efforts, have stopped numerous auto plants from being built outside America. Ford cancelled a major plant in Mexico, but its chief executive said the decision would have been made whether or not Trump was president. There are no other public examples of significant cancellations, and “auto industry experts we spoke to were hard-pressed to name any overseas plants that have been scrapped due to Trump’s influence,” FactCheck.org reported.
123. March 15, 2017 — Speech at the American Center for Mobility in Detroit
The claim: “Our trade deficit last year reached nearly $800 billion. Who’s making these deals?”
In fact: The 2016 trade deficit was $502 billion. Trump would have been correct enough if he had specified he was talking specifically about the deficit in trade of manufactured goods —$750 billion in 2016 — but he did not.
122. March 15, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, ‘went to his mailbox’ and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!”
In fact: There was nothing fake about this report. The Trump administration issued a statement that confirmed the authenticity of the documents, and the reporter, David Cay Johnston, showed other reporters the plain envelope in which they had arrived in the mail; there is no indication whatsoever that he is lying, and another Trump tax return was simply mailed to the Times last year. Finally, though Johnston is not a household name, Trump overstates his obscurity. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001, he wrote the bestselling book The Making of Donald Trump, and Trump has known him for decades.
121. March 13, 2017 — Remarks at first Cabinet meeting
The repeated claim: “We have four empty seats, which is a terrible thing, because the Senate Democrats are continuing to obstruct the confirmation of our nominees for the Department of Labor, the Department of Agriculture, the Director of National Intelligence, and the United States Trade Representative, somebody I want very badly. We’re in the midst of getting going, Wilbur, and they won’t approve somebody who is highly qualified, and everybody understands that. The main victim of this very partisan obstruction is the American public.”
In fact: Democratic obstruction was not the reason for the holdup in confirming Trump’s final nominees. Trump’s first choice for labour secretary withdrew under criticism, and Republicans scheduled a hearing on his replacement for later in March. Trump was slow in selecting someone for agriculture secretary, and the process has been bogged down in background checks and ethics paperwork. Republicans did not schedule a hearing on the trade representative until March 14, the day after this cabinet meeting.
120. March 13, 2017 — Remarks at White House “listening session” on health care
The repeated claim about Obamacare: “First of all, it covers very few people.”
In fact: By no objective measure does Obamacare cover “very few” people. Twenty million people have gained coverage under the law. One study estimated that 2.6 million people initially received notices that their coverage was being cancelled; the number that actually did was likely far lower. Even if it wasn’t, the coverage gains would far exceed the coverage losses.
119. March 13, 2017 — Remarks at White House “listening session” on health care
The claim about the Republican health reform plan: “We’ll get that out — without penalties too, by the way. People don’t mention all of the facts.”
In fact: The Republican plan does get rid of Obamacare’s penalties for failing to obtain health insurance. But it introduces a different kind of penalty: a surcharge, of 30 per cent, on people who have a break of two months or more in insurance coverage. So it is a punishment that is applied when the person gets insurance again, not when they are actually uninsured, but it is a punishment nonetheless.
118. March 7, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!”
In fact: According to a report from the U.S. government’s Directorate of National Intelligence, 113 of these 122 “re-engagers” were released from the Guantanamo Bay prison by the administration of George W. Bush, only nine by the Obama administration.
117. March 6, 2017 — Facebook
The claim: “I’m very pleased to announce the great company ExxonMobil is going to be investing $20 billion in the Gulf Coast and the Gulf Coast region. It’ll be 45,000 jobs, and they’re great jobs; $100,000 average. And this is something that was done to a large extent because of our policies and the policies of this new administration having to do with regulation and so many other things.”
In fact: Trump’s policies may have had some impact on Exxon’s decisions, but he is taking far too much credit for this particular investment: even the official White House statement acknowledges that it “began in 2013.”
116. March 4, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!” “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
In fact: The leaders of the FBI and NSA, as well as Republican leaders in Congress with access to intelligence, said there is no evidence that this occurred.
115. March 3, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “It is so pathetic that the Dems have still not approved my full Cabinet.”
In fact: The Democrats are not responsible for the holdup here: Trump is. At the time, he had two open cabinet slots: labour secretary and agriculture secretary. One delay was the result of his controversial choice for labour secretary, Andrew Puzder, withdrawing from consideration. The other delay, in confirming Sonny Perdue as secretary of agriculture, was the result of the administration not actually submitting the Perdue nomination to the Senate.
114. March 2, 2017 — Speech on the USS Gerald R. Ford
The repeated claim: “I am sending the Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.”
In fact: His proposed increase, of about 10 per cent, is not one of the largest in history, experts say. “Trump’s historical increase is actually quite average,” Laicie Heeley, a defense budget analyst at the Stimson Center think tank, told Politifact.
113. Feb. 28, 2017 — Speech to joint session of Congress
The claim: “We’ve defended the borders of other nations while leaving our own borders wide open for anyone to cross.”
In fact: The U.S., of course, does not have an undefended or open border, though people manage to sneak past the defences. The Border Patrol, which has a budget of $14 billion, apprehended 415,816 people in 2016.
112. Feb. 28, 2017 —Speech to joint session of Congress
The claim: “I am sending the Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.”
In fact: His proposed increase, of about 10 per cent, is not one of the largest in history, experts say. “Trump’s historical increase is actually quite average,” Laicie Heeley, a defense budget analyst at the Stimson Center think tank, told Politifact.
111. Feb. 28, 2017 — Remarks while signing executive order on Waters of the United States
The claim: “But a few years ago, the EPA decided that navigable waters can mean nearly every puddle or every ditch on a farmer’s land or anyplace else that they decide. Right? It was a massive power grab.”
In fact: This claim about puddles has been a common Republican talking point, but it is not accurate. The Environmental Protection Agency has specifically excluded puddles from this regulation; a fact sheet on its website says, “THE CLEAN WATER RULE DOES NOT REGULATE PUDDLES.” While critics of the regulation argue that the law can still be read to cover puddles, it is just not true that the EPA decided that nearly every puddle is included.
110. Feb. 28, 2017 — Remarks while signing executive order on Waters of the United States
The claim about the waters rule: “The EPA’s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands.”
In fact: There is no evidence for this claim.
109. Feb. 28, 2017 — Remarks while signing executive order on Waters of the United States
The claim: “In one case in Wyoming, a rancher was fined $37,000 a day by the EPA for digging a small watering hole for his cattle. His land.”
In fact: The rancher did more than dig a small hole, FactCheck.org found: without a permit, he “constructed a dam on Six Mile Creek, a waterway deemed by the EPA to be a tributary of the Blacks Fork River, which in turn is a tributary of the Green River.”
108. Feb. 28, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Fox and Friends
The repeated claim: “We saved $700-million-plus on a F-35 after I got involved.”
In fact: These savings did not come after Trump got involved: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
107. Feb. 28, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Fox and Friends
The claim: “You look at the kind of numbers we’re doing. We were probably GDP of a little more than 1 per cent.”
In fact: This is an exaggeration. U.S. gross domestic product grew by 1.6 per cent in 2016; no economic analyst would round this to 1 per cent or call it “a little more than 1 per cent.” GDP grew by 2.6 per cent the year prior.
106. Feb. 28, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Fox and Friends
The repeated claim: “You see what I’ve done. Ford has announced, General Motors, Fiat has announced. They’re all building big plants, they’re all coming back into the United States. They were fleeing. They were fleeing our country.”
In fact: Trump is taking credit for investments he was not responsible for. GM did not offer any indication that it made its new investment of $1 billion because of Trump, and independent automotive analysts said it was unlikely Trump was a major factor; GM invested $2.9 billion last year, before Trump was elected. The parent company of Chrysler said Trump had no influence on its newly announced $1 billion investment in Michigan and Ohio, telling ThinkProgress, “This plan was in the works back in 2015.” Further, all of these companies were maintaining a major presence in the U.S. before Trump was elected.
105. Feb. 28, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Fox and Friends
The claim: “Look just at the money I’ve saved. I’ve saved billions and billions of dollars.”
In fact: There is no evidence of this.
104. Feb. 27, 2017 — Meeting with the National Governors Association
The claim: “Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.”
In fact: We let a lot of Trump’s hyperbole slide, but this one is egregious. Numerous experts warned that the repeal of Obamacare was far more complicated than Trump was suggesting when he said he would do it immediately upon becoming president. And a Politico health journalist, Dan Diamond, tweeted multiple examples of Barack Obama calling healthcare complicated. Finally, Trump himself said repeal and replacement was “very complicated stuff” a week and a half before he took office.
103. Feb. 27, 2017 — Meeting with the National Governors Association
The repeated claim: “I got involved in an airplane contract, I got involved in some other contracts, and we cut the hell out of the prices. I mean, we saved a lot of money, tremendous amount of money, beyond anything that the generals that were involved…On one plane, on a small order of one plane, I saved $725 million. And I would say I devoted about, if I added it up, all those calls, probably about an hour.”
In fact: Trump was taking personal credit for savings he did not personally secure. These savings did not come after Trump “got involved”: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price of the F-35 well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
102. Feb. 27, 2017 — Interview with Breitbart News
The repeated claim about the New York Times: “In fact, they had to write a letter of essentially apology to their subscribers because they got the election so wrong.”
In fact: The Times never apologized for its Trump coverage; Trump was referring to a post-election letter, a kind of sales pitch, in which Times leaders thanked readers and said they planned to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
101. Feb. 27, 2017 — Interview with Breitbart News
The claim about New York Times journalist Michael Barbaro: “For instance, when people read the story on the women – first of all, the reporter who wrote the story has a website full of hatred of Donald Trump. So, he shouldn’t be allowed to be a reporter because he’s not objective.”
In fact: Barbaro does not have a website.
100. Feb. 27, 2017 — Interview with Breitbart News
The claim: “They did a front-page article on women talking about me, and the women went absolutely wild because they said that was not what they said. It was a big front-page article, and the Times wouldn’t even apologize and yet they were wrong. You probably saw the women. They went on television shows and everything.”
In fact: One woman, not multiple women, went on television to complain about the Times article in which she was quoted. (Rowanne Brewer Lane alleged that the Times put a “negative” spin on her quotes.) The Times interviewed “dozens” of women; the others did not offer criticism of the piece.
The repeated claim: “You see them coming back. You see car companies who were going to build elsewhere, and now they’re saying that because of Trump we’re going to build in Michigan, we’re going to build in Ohio, we’re going to build in Kentucky. They’re saying it loud and clear.”
In fact: The auto companies that have announced U.S. investments since Trump’s victory have not, in fact, said they were doing so because of Trump — and independent analysts said it was unlikely Trump was a major factor. GM, for example, did not offer any indication that it made its new investment of $1 billion because of Trump, and automotive experts said it was unlikely Trump was a significant reason. The parent company of Chrysler said Trump had no influence on its newly announced $1 billion investment in Michigan and Ohio, telling ThinkProgress, “This plan was in the works back in 2015.”
141. March 20, 2017 — Campaign rally in Louisville
The claim: “Many of our best and brightest are leaving the medical profession entirely because of Obamacare.”
In fact: There is no evidence of this. “We see no significant number exiting related to the Affordable Care Act,” the executive vice president of the U.S. Association of Medical Colleges told The Associated Press.
140. March 20, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “The NSA and FBI tell Congress that Russia did not influence electoral process.”
In fact: The leaders of the NSA and FBI did not say this to Congress. Trump was fact-checked in real time by FBI Director James Comey; asked about this tweet, Comey said, “We’ve offered no opinion.”
139. March 20, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Just heard Fake News CNN is doing polls again despite the fact that their election polls were a WAY OFF disaster. “
In fact: CNN’s election polls were not “way off.” Its final national poll had Hillary Clinton winning the national popular vote by five percentage points; she ended up winning it by three percentage points, within the margin of error, though she lost in the Electoral College.
138. March 18, 2017 — Twitter
The repeated claim: “Germany owes … vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!”
In fact: This is not how it works — Germany doesn’t owe money to NATO or to the United States. The alliance has asked members to spend 2 per cent of their gross domestic product on defence by 2024. Germany is spending closer to 1 per cent. But it does not have military debt to NATO, and extra money it spends in the future would not go to NATO.
137. March 17, 2017 — Joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel
The claim about NATO: “Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years, and it is very unfair to the United States. These nations must pay what they owe.”
In fact: This is not how it works — Germany doesn’t owe money to NATO or to the United States. The alliance has asked members to spend 2 per cent of their gross domestic product on defence by 2024. Germany is spending closer to 1 per cent. But it does not have military debt to NATO, and extra money it spends in the future would not go to NATO.
136. March 17, 2017 — Joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel
The claim: “And just to finish your question, we said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn’t make an opinion on it. That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox.”
In fact: It is not true that Trump was merely quoting a lawyer when he claimed he had been wiretapped by Barack Obama. Fox News senior legal analyst Andrew Napolitano said on Fox that sources told him the Obama administration had asked British intelligence to spy on Trump, and, earlier, he had asked a question about possible Obama wiretapping. But Trump went much further. The president declared that he himself had found out Obama was indeed wiretapping him: “President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election,” he wrote on Twitter. At no point, during his Twitter storm on March 4, did he say he was simply quoting Napolitano.
135. March 17, 2017 — Joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel
The repeated claim: “I was in Tennessee — we had a tremendous crowd the other night, and they have — half of the state is uncovered. The insurance companies have left, and the other half has one insurance company and that will probably be bailing out pretty soon also. They’ll have nobody.”
In fact: Every part of Tennessee is covered by a health insurer, the state told FactCheck.org; some areas have one insurer selling plans through the Obamacare “marketplace,” some have two.
134. March 17, 2017 — Joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel
The claim: “Germany has done very well in its trade deals with the United States, and I give them credit for it.”
In fact: Germany does not have trade deals with the United States, as New York Times correspondent Binyamin Applebaum noted on Twitter.
133. March 17, 2017 — Remarks to Republican Study Committee
The repeated claim: “I was in Tennessee — I was just telling the folks — and half of the state has no insurance company, and the other half is going to lose the insurance company. The people don’t know what to do.”
In fact: Every part of Tennessee is covered by a health insurer, the state told FactCheck.org; some areas have one insurer selling plans through the Obamacare “marketplace,” some have two.
132. March 17, 2017 — Remarks at “veterans’ affairs listening session”
The claim: “They also want people to know that Obamacare is dead; it’s a dead health care plan. It’s not even a health care plan, frankly … Obamacare is dead.”
In fact: We allow Trump rhetorical license to call Obamacare “collapsing” and even “exploding,” though experts say neither is true. But it is plainly false to say the law is “dead.” While its marketplaces have problems, they are still functioning and providing insurance to millions; so is its Medicaid expansion.
131. March 17, 2017 — Remarks at “veterans’ affairs listening session”
The claim: “In Tennessee, where I just left, half of the state has no insurance and — no carrier. It’s gone. And they’re going to leave the other half of the state very soon.”
In fact: Every part of Tennessee is covered by a health insurer, the state told FactCheck.org; some areas have one insurer selling plans through the Obamacare “marketplace,” some have two.
130.March 15, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson
The repeated claim about the F-35: “On the airplanes, I saved $725 million, probably took me a half an hour if you added up all of the times.”
In fact: Trump was not responsible for these savings: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
129. March 15, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson
The claim about his source for his allegation that President Barack Obama had wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower: “Well, I’ve been reading about things. I read in, I think it was January 20, a New York Times article where they were talking about wiretapping. There was an article, I think they used that exact term.” Added: “Well, because The New York Times wrote about it.”
In fact: This claim contains a kernel of truth, but it is so misleading that it is largely false. The Times article did use the word “wiretapped,” but it did not mention Obama, and it did not mention Trump Tower. Rather, it said only that U.S. authorities were examining intercepted communications related to Trump associates’ possible ties with Russian officials; it suggested that there had been wiretaps of foreign officials, not Americans.
128. March 15, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson
The claim: “And don’t forget, when I say wiretapping, those words were in quotes. That really covers, because wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff. But that really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that’s a very important thing.”
In fact: Trump did use quotation marks in two of his four tweets accusing Barack Obama of improperly surveilling him. However, in the other two, he made the same accusation without quotation marks. “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process,” he wrote in one; “I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!” he wrote in the other.
127. March 15, 2017 — Campaign rally in Nashville
The claim: “I’ve already authorized the construction of the long-stalled and delayed Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. “
In fact: Trump’s executive order merely invited TransCanada Corp. to apply again to get the Keystone pipeline approved. He has not granted final approval.
126. March 15, 2017 — Campaign rally in Nashville
The claim: “I’ve already authorized the construction of the long-stalled and delayed Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. A lot of jobs. I’ve also directed that new pipelines must be constructed with American steel. They want to build them here, they use our steel.”
In fact: His executive order is significantly more ambiguous: it says the government should develop a plan to make pipelines use American steel “to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law.” That’s not a “must” — and the Keystone pipeline has already been granted an exemption by the administration, Politico reports, because it is not “new.”
A Donald Trump falsehood
He said what? Does the U.S. have an undefended border that anyone can cross? (TORONTO STAR/WHITE HOUSE/YOUTUBE)
125. March 15, 2017 — Campaign rally in Nashville
The claim: “Our budget calls for one of the single largest increases in defence spending history in this country.”
In fact: Trump’s proposed increase in defence spending, of about 10 per cent, is not one of the biggest ever. “In just the past 40 years, there have been eight years with larger increases in percentage terms than the one he’s now proposing”; The Associated Press reported; “there have been 27 years since 1940 in which the military spending was as high or higher than the proposed increase,” the New York Times reported.
124. March 15, 2017 — Speech at the American Center for Mobility in Detroit
The claim: “Today, that number (of automotive jobs in Michigan) is roughly 165,000 — and would have been heading down big league if I didn’t get elected, I will tell you that right now. That I can tell you. Plenty of things were stopped in their tracks. They were stopped in their tracks. A lot of bad things were going to happen. A lot of places were going to get built that aren’t going to get built right now in other locations.”
In fact: There is no evidence that Trump’s election, or Trump’s efforts, have stopped numerous auto plants from being built outside America. Ford cancelled a major plant in Mexico, but its chief executive said the decision would have been made whether or not Trump was president. There are no other public examples of significant cancellations, and “auto industry experts we spoke to were hard-pressed to name any overseas plants that have been scrapped due to Trump’s influence,” FactCheck.org reported.
123. March 15, 2017 — Speech at the American Center for Mobility in Detroit
The claim: “Our trade deficit last year reached nearly $800 billion. Who’s making these deals?”
In fact: The 2016 trade deficit was $502 billion. Trump would have been correct enough if he had specified he was talking specifically about the deficit in trade of manufactured goods —$750 billion in 2016 — but he did not.
122. March 15, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, ‘went to his mailbox’ and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!”
In fact: There was nothing fake about this report. The Trump administration issued a statement that confirmed the authenticity of the documents, and the reporter, David Cay Johnston, showed other reporters the plain envelope in which they had arrived in the mail; there is no indication whatsoever that he is lying, and another Trump tax return was simply mailed to the Times last year. Finally, though Johnston is not a household name, Trump overstates his obscurity. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001, he wrote the bestselling book The Making of Donald Trump, and Trump has known him for decades.
121. March 13, 2017 — Remarks at first Cabinet meeting
The repeated claim: “We have four empty seats, which is a terrible thing, because the Senate Democrats are continuing to obstruct the confirmation of our nominees for the Department of Labor, the Department of Agriculture, the Director of National Intelligence, and the United States Trade Representative, somebody I want very badly. We’re in the midst of getting going, Wilbur, and they won’t approve somebody who is highly qualified, and everybody understands that. The main victim of this very partisan obstruction is the American public.”
In fact: Democratic obstruction was not the reason for the holdup in confirming Trump’s final nominees. Trump’s first choice for labour secretary withdrew under criticism, and Republicans scheduled a hearing on his replacement for later in March. Trump was slow in selecting someone for agriculture secretary, and the process has been bogged down in background checks and ethics paperwork. Republicans did not schedule a hearing on the trade representative until March 14, the day after this cabinet meeting.
120. March 13, 2017 — Remarks at White House “listening session” on health care
The repeated claim about Obamacare: “First of all, it covers very few people.”
In fact: By no objective measure does Obamacare cover “very few” people. Twenty million people have gained coverage under the law. One study estimated that 2.6 million people initially received notices that their coverage was being cancelled; the number that actually did was likely far lower. Even if it wasn’t, the coverage gains would far exceed the coverage losses.
119. March 13, 2017 — Remarks at White House “listening session” on health care
The claim about the Republican health reform plan: “We’ll get that out — without penalties too, by the way. People don’t mention all of the facts.”
In fact: The Republican plan does get rid of Obamacare’s penalties for failing to obtain health insurance. But it introduces a different kind of penalty: a surcharge, of 30 per cent, on people who have a break of two months or more in insurance coverage. So it is a punishment that is applied when the person gets insurance again, not when they are actually uninsured, but it is a punishment nonetheless.
118. March 7, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!”
In fact: According to a report from the U.S. government’s Directorate of National Intelligence, 113 of these 122 “re-engagers” were released from the Guantanamo Bay prison by the administration of George W. Bush, only nine by the Obama administration.
117. March 6, 2017 — Facebook
The claim: “I’m very pleased to announce the great company ExxonMobil is going to be investing $20 billion in the Gulf Coast and the Gulf Coast region. It’ll be 45,000 jobs, and they’re great jobs; $100,000 average. And this is something that was done to a large extent because of our policies and the policies of this new administration having to do with regulation and so many other things.”
In fact: Trump’s policies may have had some impact on Exxon’s decisions, but he is taking far too much credit for this particular investment: even the official White House statement acknowledges that it “began in 2013.”
116. March 4, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!” “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
In fact: The leaders of the FBI and NSA, as well as Republican leaders in Congress with access to intelligence, said there is no evidence that this occurred.
115. March 3, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “It is so pathetic that the Dems have still not approved my full Cabinet.”
In fact: The Democrats are not responsible for the holdup here: Trump is. At the time, he had two open cabinet slots: labour secretary and agriculture secretary. One delay was the result of his controversial choice for labour secretary, Andrew Puzder, withdrawing from consideration. The other delay, in confirming Sonny Perdue as secretary of agriculture, was the result of the administration not actually submitting the Perdue nomination to the Senate.
114. March 2, 2017 — Speech on the USS Gerald R. Ford
The repeated claim: “I am sending the Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.”
In fact: His proposed increase, of about 10 per cent, is not one of the largest in history, experts say. “Trump’s historical increase is actually quite average,” Laicie Heeley, a defense budget analyst at the Stimson Center think tank, told Politifact.
113. Feb. 28, 2017 — Speech to joint session of Congress
The claim: “We’ve defended the borders of other nations while leaving our own borders wide open for anyone to cross.”
In fact: The U.S., of course, does not have an undefended or open border, though people manage to sneak past the defences. The Border Patrol, which has a budget of $14 billion, apprehended 415,816 people in 2016.
112. Feb. 28, 2017 —Speech to joint session of Congress
The claim: “I am sending the Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.”
In fact: His proposed increase, of about 10 per cent, is not one of the largest in history, experts say. “Trump’s historical increase is actually quite average,” Laicie Heeley, a defense budget analyst at the Stimson Center think tank, told Politifact.
111. Feb. 28, 2017 — Remarks while signing executive order on Waters of the United States
The claim: “But a few years ago, the EPA decided that navigable waters can mean nearly every puddle or every ditch on a farmer’s land or anyplace else that they decide. Right? It was a massive power grab.”
In fact: This claim about puddles has been a common Republican talking point, but it is not accurate. The Environmental Protection Agency has specifically excluded puddles from this regulation; a fact sheet on its website says, “THE CLEAN WATER RULE DOES NOT REGULATE PUDDLES.” While critics of the regulation argue that the law can still be read to cover puddles, it is just not true that the EPA decided that nearly every puddle is included.
110. Feb. 28, 2017 — Remarks while signing executive order on Waters of the United States
The claim about the waters rule: “The EPA’s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands.”
In fact: There is no evidence for this claim.
109. Feb. 28, 2017 — Remarks while signing executive order on Waters of the United States
The claim: “In one case in Wyoming, a rancher was fined $37,000 a day by the EPA for digging a small watering hole for his cattle. His land.”
In fact: The rancher did more than dig a small hole, FactCheck.org found: without a permit, he “constructed a dam on Six Mile Creek, a waterway deemed by the EPA to be a tributary of the Blacks Fork River, which in turn is a tributary of the Green River.”
108. Feb. 28, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Fox and Friends
The repeated claim: “We saved $700-million-plus on a F-35 after I got involved.”
In fact: These savings did not come after Trump got involved: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
107. Feb. 28, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Fox and Friends
The claim: “You look at the kind of numbers we’re doing. We were probably GDP of a little more than 1 per cent.”
In fact: This is an exaggeration. U.S. gross domestic product grew by 1.6 per cent in 2016; no economic analyst would round this to 1 per cent or call it “a little more than 1 per cent.” GDP grew by 2.6 per cent the year prior.
106. Feb. 28, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Fox and Friends
The repeated claim: “You see what I’ve done. Ford has announced, General Motors, Fiat has announced. They’re all building big plants, they’re all coming back into the United States. They were fleeing. They were fleeing our country.”
In fact: Trump is taking credit for investments he was not responsible for. GM did not offer any indication that it made its new investment of $1 billion because of Trump, and independent automotive analysts said it was unlikely Trump was a major factor; GM invested $2.9 billion last year, before Trump was elected. The parent company of Chrysler said Trump had no influence on its newly announced $1 billion investment in Michigan and Ohio, telling ThinkProgress, “This plan was in the works back in 2015.” Further, all of these companies were maintaining a major presence in the U.S. before Trump was elected.
105. Feb. 28, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Fox and Friends
The claim: “Look just at the money I’ve saved. I’ve saved billions and billions of dollars.”
In fact: There is no evidence of this.
104. Feb. 27, 2017 — Meeting with the National Governors Association
The claim: “Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.”
In fact: We let a lot of Trump’s hyperbole slide, but this one is egregious. Numerous experts warned that the repeal of Obamacare was far more complicated than Trump was suggesting when he said he would do it immediately upon becoming president. And a Politico health journalist, Dan Diamond, tweeted multiple examples of Barack Obama calling healthcare complicated. Finally, Trump himself said repeal and replacement was “very complicated stuff” a week and a half before he took office.
103. Feb. 27, 2017 — Meeting with the National Governors Association
The repeated claim: “I got involved in an airplane contract, I got involved in some other contracts, and we cut the hell out of the prices. I mean, we saved a lot of money, tremendous amount of money, beyond anything that the generals that were involved…On one plane, on a small order of one plane, I saved $725 million. And I would say I devoted about, if I added it up, all those calls, probably about an hour.”
In fact: Trump was taking personal credit for savings he did not personally secure. These savings did not come after Trump “got involved”: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price of the F-35 well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
102. Feb. 27, 2017 — Interview with Breitbart News
The repeated claim about the New York Times: “In fact, they had to write a letter of essentially apology to their subscribers because they got the election so wrong.”
In fact: The Times never apologized for its Trump coverage; Trump was referring to a post-election letter, a kind of sales pitch, in which Times leaders thanked readers and said they planned to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
101. Feb. 27, 2017 — Interview with Breitbart News
The claim about New York Times journalist Michael Barbaro: “For instance, when people read the story on the women – first of all, the reporter who wrote the story has a website full of hatred of Donald Trump. So, he shouldn’t be allowed to be a reporter because he’s not objective.”
In fact: Barbaro does not have a website.
100. Feb. 27, 2017 — Interview with Breitbart News
The claim: “They did a front-page article on women talking about me, and the women went absolutely wild because they said that was not what they said. It was a big front-page article, and the Times wouldn’t even apologize and yet they were wrong. You probably saw the women. They went on television shows and everything.”
In fact: One woman, not multiple women, went on television to complain about the Times article in which she was quoted. (Rowanne Brewer Lane alleged that the Times put a “negative” spin on her quotes.) The Times interviewed “dozens” of women; the others did not offer criticism of the piece.
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99. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The claim: “Maybe they are just bad at polling or maybe they’re not legit, but it’s one or the other, look at how inaccurate — look at CBS, look at ABC, also, look at NBC, take a look at some of these polls.”
In fact: These organizations’ election polls were quite accurate. Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by three points. CBS’s final poll had her winning by four. ABC’s had her winning by three. NBC’s was the worst, with Clinton up by five, but the result was still within the poll’s margin of error.
98. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The repeated claim: “Ford and Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, Sprint, Intel, and so many others are now, because of the election result, making major investments in the United States, expanding production and hiring more workers.”
In fact:GM did not offer any indication that it made its new investment of $1 billion because of Trump, and independent automotive analysts said it was unlikely Trump was a major factor; GM invested $2.9 billion last year, before Trump was elected. The parent company of Chrysler said Trump had no influence on its newly announced $1 billion investment in Michigan and Ohio, telling ThinkProgress, “This plan was in the works back in 2015.”
97. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The claim: “By the way, you folks are in here — this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks and I tell you that because you won’t read about it, OK. But there are lines that go back six blocks.”
In fact: There was no line at all.
96. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The claim: “Obamacare covers very few people — and remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them.”
In fact: By no objective measure does Obamacare cover “very few” people. Twenty million people have gained coverage under the law. One study estimated that 2.6 million people initially received notices that their coverage was being cancelled; the number that actually did was likely far lower. Even if it wasn’t, the coverage gains would far exceed the coverage losses.
95. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The repeated claim: “We have authorized the construction, one day, of the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines.”
In fact: Trump has not actually approved construction of Keystone XL. His executive order merely invited TransCanada to reapply for approval.
94. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The claim: “Our Border Patrol, I’ll tell you what they do, they came and endorsed me, ICE came and endorsed me. They never endorsed a presidential candidate before, they might not even be allowed to.
In fact: Indeed, these two government bodies are not allowed to endorse candidates — and they didn’t. Trump was endorsed by unions of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees, not the government bodies themselves.
93. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The claim: “In fact, in covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people. The fake news. They dropped off the word ‘fake.’ And all of a sudden the story became the media is the enemy. They take the word ‘fake’ out.”
In front of a roaring crowd, Trump again calls the media the ‘enemy of the people’
In fact: This is a strange one. The media accurately reported that Trump tweeted: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @abc, @cbs, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Reports did not take the word “fake” out. Trump uses “fake news” to refer to media coverage broadly, and broadly mentioned five specific outlets, so there was nothing dishonest about reporting that he had attacked the media here.
92. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The claim: “Because they have no sources, they just make ’em up when there are none. I saw one story recently where they said, ‘Nine people have confirmed.’ There’re no nine people.”
In fact: The Washington Post did not make up its sources: its story, about national security adviser Michael Flynn allegedly discussing U.S. sanctions with Russia’s ambassador before the election, resulted in Trump firing Flynn.
91. Feb. 23, 2017 — White House meeting with manufacturing CEOs
The claim: “Gary, as you know — you all know Gary from Goldman, Gary Cohn. And we’re really happy — just paid $200 million in tax in order to take this job, by the way. Which is very much unlike Gary. But he’s great.”
In fact: Cohn, Trump’s National Economic Council director, did not pay $200 million in tax to take the job. In fact, he did perhaps the exact opposite — sell stock worth more than $200 million. According to Bloomberg, Cohn, formerly president of Goldman Sachs, was preparing to divest “roughly $220 million of Goldman equity he already held or was awaiting, as well as stakes in company-run investment funds”; he also got an additional $65 million payout. Also relevant: he might not have to pay any tax on the sales for a long while. White House appointees who are forced to sell stock to avoid conflicts of interests are allowed to defer capital gains taxes if they plow their proceeds into several kinds of approved investments.
90. Feb. 23, 2017 — White House meeting with manufacturing CEOs
The claim: “We don’t have any good deals. In fact, I’m trying to find a country where we actually have a surplus of trade as opposed to — everything is a deficit.”
In fact: The U.S. has surpluses with more than half of all countries in merchandise trade, figures from the U.S. International Trade Commission show — and merchandise trade is a measure that doesn’t count the services trade at which the U.S. excels. Major countries with which the U.S. has a surplus in merchandise trade include Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Argentina, and the United Kingdom.
89. Feb. 23, 2017 — White House meeting with manufacturing CEOs
The claim: “With Mexico, we have $70 billion in deficits, trade deficits, and it’s unsustainable. We’re not going to let it happen. Can’t let it happen. We’re going to have a good relationship with Mexico, I hope. And if we don’t, we don’t. But we can’t let that happen — $70 billion in trade deficits.”
In fact: The US trade deficit with Mexico was $63 billion in 2016, U.S. government figures show, counting only trade in goods. It is always billions smaller when trade in services is included.
88. Feb. 23, 2017 — White House meeting with manufacturing CEOs
The claim: “With China, we have close to a $500 billion trade deficit.”
In fact: The U.S. trade deficit with China was $347 billion in 2016, U.S. government figures show, counting only trade in goods. It is always billions smaller when trade in services is included.
87. Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The claim: “By the way, do you think that one media group back there, one network will show this crowd. Not one. Not one. They won’t show the crowd.”
In fact: CNN, Fox News and NBC all televised wide shots showing the size of the crowd at the rally.
86. Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The claim: “By the way, we did very well with women. You know, my wife said when some of these phoney polls were put out, the CNN poll was so far off, the phoney polls. When some of these, she said, what’s wrong with you and women.”
In fact: The final CNN poll of the campaign came close to nailing Trump’s showing with women. The poll had Clinton up 52 per cent to 39 per cent, a 13-point lead; exit polls from the actual voting that Clinton had won with women 54 per cent to 41 per cent — 13 points.
85. Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The claim: “We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden.”
In fact: No security incident of note happened the previous night in Sweden.
84. Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The repeated claim: “We’ve allowed thousands and thousands of people into our country and there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing.” Added: “Tens of thousands of people into our country, and we don’t know anything about those people.”
In fact: Refugees to the U.S. are rigorously vetted. The process includes multiple kinds of background and security checks and at least two interviews with U.S. representatives. Regardless of their paperwork situation — some have detailed documents, some do not — the U.S. knows far more than nothing about the refugees it approves.
83.Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The claim: “Ford, General Motors, Fiat-Chrysler are bringing in and bringing back thousands of jobs, investing billions of dollars because of the new business climate that we are creating in our country. In Arizona, Intel, great company, just announced it will open a new plant that will create at least 10,000 brand new beautiful American jobs.”
In fact: GM did not offer any indication that it made its new investment of $1 billion because of Trump, and independent automotive analysts said it was unlikely Trump was a major factor; GM invested $2.9 billion last year, before Trump was elected. The parent company of Chrysler said Trump had no influence on its newly announced $1 billion investment in Michigan and Ohio, telling ThinkProgress, “This plan was in the works back in 2015.” Intel says its new plant, on which it began and then halted work under Barack Obama, will employ up to 3,000 people; the 10,000 figure is an estimate of how many will be created “indirectly.”
82.Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The claim: “Jobs are already starting to pour back in. They’re coming back in like you haven’t seen in a long time.”
In fact: There is no evidence of jobs returning to the U.S. at levels unseen in a “long time.” Even if we give Trump credit for the good January jobs report — calculated while Barack Obama was still in office — there is no sign of a boom that is without recent precedent. The U.S. economy added 227,000 jobs in January. It did better than that during 11 months out of the last two years. For example, it added 233,000 in February 2016, 275,000 in July 2016 and 271,000 in December 2015.
81.Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The repeated claim about the F-35 fighter plane: “I also got Boeing in. I said do me a favour, give me a competing offer. And now they’re competing and fighting and we’ve gotten hundreds of millions of dollars off the price of a plane that was going to be ordered … So they’re going to make plenty of money, but it’s going to be a lot less than they would have made without Trump.”
In fact: Trump did not personally secure these savings: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
80. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan.”
In fact: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all earned bigger margins in the electoral college than Trump did.
79. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim about former campaign manager Paul Manafort: “He said that he has absolutely nothing to do and never has with Russia. He said that very forcefully. I saw his statement. He said it forcefully. Most of the papers do not print it because it’s not good for their stories.”
The 5 other front page stories the Star could run after Trump’s wild presser
In fact: The New York Times story Trump was criticizing included Manafort’s denial, in which he said he never “knowingly” had contact with Russian intelligence officers. Other major outlets that followed up on the story also printed a denial from Manafort.
78. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “I will say that I never get phone calls from the media. How do they write a story like that in the Wall Street Journal without asking me or how do they write a story in the New York Times put it on the front page.”
In fact: Media outlets almost always call his administration for comment on major stories. The Journal, in its story about U.S. intelligence declining to share some information with Trump, prominently quoted a denial from an anonymous administration official. The Times also sought comment for its story, but the administration declined to provide one.
77. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “Remember, I used to give you a news conference every time I made a speech, which was like every day. OK?”
In fact: This is not even close to true. Trump indeed gave near-daily speeches during the campaign, but he did not do a single news conference over the last three months of the campaign.
76. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban.”
In fact: We don’t usually fact-check claims like “smooth” — it’s vague, and it’s a matter of opinion — but the rollout of the travel ban was so obviously not smooth that we’re making an exception here. The implementation of the ban resulted in mass confusion among U.S. allies like Canada, caused travel problems for thousands of visa-holders and permanent residents, necessitated a series of clarifications and reversals by U.S. officials, and appeared so hasty that a federal appeals court has found that the administration may have violated residents’ constitutional right to due process.
75. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “That’s the other thing that was wrong with the travel ban. You had Delta with a massive problem with their computer system at the airports.”
Trump vows to defeat terrorism in U.S. Central Command visit
Speaking to a military crowd at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, President Donald Trump said America is determined to defeat terrorists and he said our country needs to make sure that people who want to destroy us aren't allowed in.(THE ASSOCIATED PRESS )
In fact: The Delta outage had nothing to do with the chaos created by the travel ban. The travel ban caused mass confusion on a Saturday; the Delta outage occurred more than a day and a half later, on a Sunday night.
74. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim about labour secretary nominee Alex Acosta: “He’s a member and has been a member of the National Labor Relations Board.”
In fact: Acosta is not currently a member of the board. He served on it from 2002 to 2003.
73. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim about the news media: “I mean, you have a lower approval rate than Congress. I think that’s right.”
In fact: The media is unpopular with Americans, but Congress has consistently been even less popular. Last year, Gallup found that just 9 per cent had confidence in Congress; 20 per cent had confidence in newspapers, 21 per cent in television news. While the new Congress is now up to a 28 per cent approval rating, Gallup found in September that 32 per cent said they had trust in the media.
72. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “Now, when WikiLeaks, which I had nothing to do with, comes out and happens to give, they’re not giving classified information.”
In fact: Trump may have been attempting to refer specifically to WikiLeaks release of emails related to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which were not classified. But he ended up wrongly suggesting that WikiLeaks does not provide classified information at all. The organization made its name releasing hundreds of thousands of pages of classified U.S. material.
71. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “The failing New York Times wrote a big, long front-page story yesterday. And it was very much discredited, as you know.”
In fact: The article, headlined “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence,” has not been discredited.
70. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “And the people mentioned in the story, I notice they were on television today saying they never even spoke to Russia.”
In fact: One of the people mentioned in the New York Times story, Trump associate Roger Stone, went on television to deny having any contact with any Russians. But the other people mentioned in the story did not issue such categorical denials in any medium. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, told the New York Times that he never “knowingly” had contact with Russian intelligence officers, adding that such people do not “wear badges.” Former Trump adviser Carter Page he had only “said hello to a few Russian officials over the course of the last year or so”; he also gave a speech in Moscow.
69. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim about the 9th Circuit appeals court: “In fact, we had to go quicker than we thought because of the bad decision we received from a circuit that has been overturned at a record number. I have heard 80 per cent — I find that hard to believe; that’s just a number I heard — that they’re overturned 80 per cent of the time.”
In fact: This statement is false in one way, possibly misleading in another. It is false that the 9th Circuit is overturned by the Supreme Court at a “record number.” Even in the study conservatives usually cite in criticizing the 9th Circuit, the court had the second-highest reversal rate between 1999 and 2008. Between 2010 and 2015, it was third-highest. In the most recent court term for which complete data is readily available, the 9th Circuit was again in second place.
It may be misleading to discuss reversal rates this way at all. The Supreme Court overturns a majority of cases it agrees to hear — but those cases represent a tiny fraction of total cases decided by a circuit court. So even if 80 per cent of 9th Circuit cases that reach the Supreme Court are overturned, that still means more than 99 per cent of the circuit’s total decisions are not overturned.
68. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim about the 9th Circuit appeals court: “I think that circuit is — that circuit is in chaos and that circuit is frankly in turmoil.”
In fact: The court is functioning as normal. There is no sign of chaos or turmoil.
67. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20 per cent of the uranium in our country.” Added: “Hillary Clinton gave them 20 per cent of our uranium.”
In fact: Clinton didn’t personally give Russia uranium. The State Department, which Clinton led as secretary of state, was one of nine government entities that reviewed the Russian purchase of the Toronto-based firm Uranium One, which controlled the rights to about 20 per cent of U.S. uranium capacity. There is no evidence Clinton was personally involved in the process in any way. Further, only the president could have made the decision to block the deal; Clinton did not have final authority either way.
66. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “This administration is running like a fine- tuned machine, despite the fact that I can’t get my cabinet approved. And they’re outstanding people like Senator Dan Coats who’s there, one of the most respected men of the Senate. He can’t get approved. How do you not approve him?”
In fact: We’ll ignore the dubious “fine-tuned machine” claim — there is no sign that Coats, Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, “can’t get approved” or is even facing obstruction. The Republican who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, Sen. Richard Burr, told The Hill they are waiting for the FBI and others to finish background checks, and that they will hold a hearing when the Senate returns from its one-week break.
65. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “Walmart announced it will create 10,000 jobs in the United States just this year because of our various plans and initiatives.”
In fact: The Walmart expansion plan that is creating the jobs was announced in October, before Trump was elected. The company did not reveal the precise 10,000 figure until after Trump took office, but it is directly connected to the previous announcement.
64. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “General Motors likewise committed to invest billions of dollars in its American manufacturing operation, keeping many jobs here that were going to leave. And if I didn’t get elected, believe me, they would have left. And these jobs and these things that I’m announcing would never have come here.”
In fact: GM made a new $1 billion commitment to U.S. factories, not “billions”; it committed $2.9 billion last year, before Trump was elected. GM did not offer any indication that it made the decision because of Trump, and independent automotive analysts said it was unlikely the company had done so. “Mostly theatre to play in the news cycle created by President-elect Trump’s tweets,” Autotrader analyst Michelle Krebs said. “These investments and hiring plans have long been in the works and are a continuation of what the company has been doing in recent years.”
63. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House“listening session” with members of Congress
The claim: “Well, I always said about President Obama, it’s great to play golf, but play golf with heads of countries. And, by the way, people like yourself (congressmen), when you’re looking for votes, don’t play with your friends who you play with every week.”
In fact: Trump did not “always” say this about Obama, if he said it at all. He criticized Obama’s golfing at least 11 times on Twitter without ever declaring that it would be great for Obama to play with foreign leaders. He also said, “I don’t want to touch a golf club.”
62. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House “listening session” with members of Congress
The claim: “The fake-news media doesn’t like talking about the economy; I never see anything about the stock market sets new records every day. I never see it.”
In fact: We cannot fact-check what Trump does or doesn’t personally see, but his suggestion that the media ignores market records is inaccurate. The Dow Jones industrial average has received extensive coverage, even more than the usual daily stream of business stories, as it has reached new heights over the last month.
61. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House “listening session” with members of Congress
The claim: “Will anybody show up to that press conference? Historically, they didn’t care about these things. For me, they show up.”
In fact: Obviously, journalists have always cared about presidential press conferences.
60. Feb. 12, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Just leaving Florida. Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road that the FAKE NEWS media refuses to mention. Very dishonest!”
In fact: There were some supporters along the road, but they were far outnumbered by protesters, according to reporters on scene.
The claim: “Maybe they are just bad at polling or maybe they’re not legit, but it’s one or the other, look at how inaccurate — look at CBS, look at ABC, also, look at NBC, take a look at some of these polls.”
In fact: These organizations’ election polls were quite accurate. Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by three points. CBS’s final poll had her winning by four. ABC’s had her winning by three. NBC’s was the worst, with Clinton up by five, but the result was still within the poll’s margin of error.
98. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The repeated claim: “Ford and Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, Sprint, Intel, and so many others are now, because of the election result, making major investments in the United States, expanding production and hiring more workers.”
In fact:GM did not offer any indication that it made its new investment of $1 billion because of Trump, and independent automotive analysts said it was unlikely Trump was a major factor; GM invested $2.9 billion last year, before Trump was elected. The parent company of Chrysler said Trump had no influence on its newly announced $1 billion investment in Michigan and Ohio, telling ThinkProgress, “This plan was in the works back in 2015.”
97. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The claim: “By the way, you folks are in here — this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks and I tell you that because you won’t read about it, OK. But there are lines that go back six blocks.”
In fact: There was no line at all.
96. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The claim: “Obamacare covers very few people — and remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them.”
In fact: By no objective measure does Obamacare cover “very few” people. Twenty million people have gained coverage under the law. One study estimated that 2.6 million people initially received notices that their coverage was being cancelled; the number that actually did was likely far lower. Even if it wasn’t, the coverage gains would far exceed the coverage losses.
95. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The repeated claim: “We have authorized the construction, one day, of the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines.”
In fact: Trump has not actually approved construction of Keystone XL. His executive order merely invited TransCanada to reapply for approval.
94. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The claim: “Our Border Patrol, I’ll tell you what they do, they came and endorsed me, ICE came and endorsed me. They never endorsed a presidential candidate before, they might not even be allowed to.
In fact: Indeed, these two government bodies are not allowed to endorse candidates — and they didn’t. Trump was endorsed by unions of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees, not the government bodies themselves.
93. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The claim: “In fact, in covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people. The fake news. They dropped off the word ‘fake.’ And all of a sudden the story became the media is the enemy. They take the word ‘fake’ out.”
In front of a roaring crowd, Trump again calls the media the ‘enemy of the people’
In fact: This is a strange one. The media accurately reported that Trump tweeted: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @abc, @cbs, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Reports did not take the word “fake” out. Trump uses “fake news” to refer to media coverage broadly, and broadly mentioned five specific outlets, so there was nothing dishonest about reporting that he had attacked the media here.
92. Feb. 24, 2017 — Speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference
The claim: “Because they have no sources, they just make ’em up when there are none. I saw one story recently where they said, ‘Nine people have confirmed.’ There’re no nine people.”
In fact: The Washington Post did not make up its sources: its story, about national security adviser Michael Flynn allegedly discussing U.S. sanctions with Russia’s ambassador before the election, resulted in Trump firing Flynn.
91. Feb. 23, 2017 — White House meeting with manufacturing CEOs
The claim: “Gary, as you know — you all know Gary from Goldman, Gary Cohn. And we’re really happy — just paid $200 million in tax in order to take this job, by the way. Which is very much unlike Gary. But he’s great.”
In fact: Cohn, Trump’s National Economic Council director, did not pay $200 million in tax to take the job. In fact, he did perhaps the exact opposite — sell stock worth more than $200 million. According to Bloomberg, Cohn, formerly president of Goldman Sachs, was preparing to divest “roughly $220 million of Goldman equity he already held or was awaiting, as well as stakes in company-run investment funds”; he also got an additional $65 million payout. Also relevant: he might not have to pay any tax on the sales for a long while. White House appointees who are forced to sell stock to avoid conflicts of interests are allowed to defer capital gains taxes if they plow their proceeds into several kinds of approved investments.
90. Feb. 23, 2017 — White House meeting with manufacturing CEOs
The claim: “We don’t have any good deals. In fact, I’m trying to find a country where we actually have a surplus of trade as opposed to — everything is a deficit.”
In fact: The U.S. has surpluses with more than half of all countries in merchandise trade, figures from the U.S. International Trade Commission show — and merchandise trade is a measure that doesn’t count the services trade at which the U.S. excels. Major countries with which the U.S. has a surplus in merchandise trade include Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Argentina, and the United Kingdom.
89. Feb. 23, 2017 — White House meeting with manufacturing CEOs
The claim: “With Mexico, we have $70 billion in deficits, trade deficits, and it’s unsustainable. We’re not going to let it happen. Can’t let it happen. We’re going to have a good relationship with Mexico, I hope. And if we don’t, we don’t. But we can’t let that happen — $70 billion in trade deficits.”
In fact: The US trade deficit with Mexico was $63 billion in 2016, U.S. government figures show, counting only trade in goods. It is always billions smaller when trade in services is included.
88. Feb. 23, 2017 — White House meeting with manufacturing CEOs
The claim: “With China, we have close to a $500 billion trade deficit.”
In fact: The U.S. trade deficit with China was $347 billion in 2016, U.S. government figures show, counting only trade in goods. It is always billions smaller when trade in services is included.
87. Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The claim: “By the way, do you think that one media group back there, one network will show this crowd. Not one. Not one. They won’t show the crowd.”
In fact: CNN, Fox News and NBC all televised wide shots showing the size of the crowd at the rally.
86. Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The claim: “By the way, we did very well with women. You know, my wife said when some of these phoney polls were put out, the CNN poll was so far off, the phoney polls. When some of these, she said, what’s wrong with you and women.”
In fact: The final CNN poll of the campaign came close to nailing Trump’s showing with women. The poll had Clinton up 52 per cent to 39 per cent, a 13-point lead; exit polls from the actual voting that Clinton had won with women 54 per cent to 41 per cent — 13 points.
85. Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The claim: “We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden.”
In fact: No security incident of note happened the previous night in Sweden.
84. Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The repeated claim: “We’ve allowed thousands and thousands of people into our country and there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing.” Added: “Tens of thousands of people into our country, and we don’t know anything about those people.”
In fact: Refugees to the U.S. are rigorously vetted. The process includes multiple kinds of background and security checks and at least two interviews with U.S. representatives. Regardless of their paperwork situation — some have detailed documents, some do not — the U.S. knows far more than nothing about the refugees it approves.
83.Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The claim: “Ford, General Motors, Fiat-Chrysler are bringing in and bringing back thousands of jobs, investing billions of dollars because of the new business climate that we are creating in our country. In Arizona, Intel, great company, just announced it will open a new plant that will create at least 10,000 brand new beautiful American jobs.”
In fact: GM did not offer any indication that it made its new investment of $1 billion because of Trump, and independent automotive analysts said it was unlikely Trump was a major factor; GM invested $2.9 billion last year, before Trump was elected. The parent company of Chrysler said Trump had no influence on its newly announced $1 billion investment in Michigan and Ohio, telling ThinkProgress, “This plan was in the works back in 2015.” Intel says its new plant, on which it began and then halted work under Barack Obama, will employ up to 3,000 people; the 10,000 figure is an estimate of how many will be created “indirectly.”
82.Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The claim: “Jobs are already starting to pour back in. They’re coming back in like you haven’t seen in a long time.”
In fact: There is no evidence of jobs returning to the U.S. at levels unseen in a “long time.” Even if we give Trump credit for the good January jobs report — calculated while Barack Obama was still in office — there is no sign of a boom that is without recent precedent. The U.S. economy added 227,000 jobs in January. It did better than that during 11 months out of the last two years. For example, it added 233,000 in February 2016, 275,000 in July 2016 and 271,000 in December 2015.
81.Feb. 18, 2017 — Campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla.
The repeated claim about the F-35 fighter plane: “I also got Boeing in. I said do me a favour, give me a competing offer. And now they’re competing and fighting and we’ve gotten hundreds of millions of dollars off the price of a plane that was going to be ordered … So they’re going to make plenty of money, but it’s going to be a lot less than they would have made without Trump.”
In fact: Trump did not personally secure these savings: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
80. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan.”
In fact: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all earned bigger margins in the electoral college than Trump did.
79. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim about former campaign manager Paul Manafort: “He said that he has absolutely nothing to do and never has with Russia. He said that very forcefully. I saw his statement. He said it forcefully. Most of the papers do not print it because it’s not good for their stories.”
The 5 other front page stories the Star could run after Trump’s wild presser
In fact: The New York Times story Trump was criticizing included Manafort’s denial, in which he said he never “knowingly” had contact with Russian intelligence officers. Other major outlets that followed up on the story also printed a denial from Manafort.
78. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “I will say that I never get phone calls from the media. How do they write a story like that in the Wall Street Journal without asking me or how do they write a story in the New York Times put it on the front page.”
In fact: Media outlets almost always call his administration for comment on major stories. The Journal, in its story about U.S. intelligence declining to share some information with Trump, prominently quoted a denial from an anonymous administration official. The Times also sought comment for its story, but the administration declined to provide one.
77. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “Remember, I used to give you a news conference every time I made a speech, which was like every day. OK?”
In fact: This is not even close to true. Trump indeed gave near-daily speeches during the campaign, but he did not do a single news conference over the last three months of the campaign.
76. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban.”
In fact: We don’t usually fact-check claims like “smooth” — it’s vague, and it’s a matter of opinion — but the rollout of the travel ban was so obviously not smooth that we’re making an exception here. The implementation of the ban resulted in mass confusion among U.S. allies like Canada, caused travel problems for thousands of visa-holders and permanent residents, necessitated a series of clarifications and reversals by U.S. officials, and appeared so hasty that a federal appeals court has found that the administration may have violated residents’ constitutional right to due process.
75. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “That’s the other thing that was wrong with the travel ban. You had Delta with a massive problem with their computer system at the airports.”
Trump vows to defeat terrorism in U.S. Central Command visit
Speaking to a military crowd at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, President Donald Trump said America is determined to defeat terrorists and he said our country needs to make sure that people who want to destroy us aren't allowed in.(THE ASSOCIATED PRESS )
In fact: The Delta outage had nothing to do with the chaos created by the travel ban. The travel ban caused mass confusion on a Saturday; the Delta outage occurred more than a day and a half later, on a Sunday night.
74. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim about labour secretary nominee Alex Acosta: “He’s a member and has been a member of the National Labor Relations Board.”
In fact: Acosta is not currently a member of the board. He served on it from 2002 to 2003.
73. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim about the news media: “I mean, you have a lower approval rate than Congress. I think that’s right.”
In fact: The media is unpopular with Americans, but Congress has consistently been even less popular. Last year, Gallup found that just 9 per cent had confidence in Congress; 20 per cent had confidence in newspapers, 21 per cent in television news. While the new Congress is now up to a 28 per cent approval rating, Gallup found in September that 32 per cent said they had trust in the media.
72. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “Now, when WikiLeaks, which I had nothing to do with, comes out and happens to give, they’re not giving classified information.”
In fact: Trump may have been attempting to refer specifically to WikiLeaks release of emails related to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which were not classified. But he ended up wrongly suggesting that WikiLeaks does not provide classified information at all. The organization made its name releasing hundreds of thousands of pages of classified U.S. material.
71. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “The failing New York Times wrote a big, long front-page story yesterday. And it was very much discredited, as you know.”
In fact: The article, headlined “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence,” has not been discredited.
70. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “And the people mentioned in the story, I notice they were on television today saying they never even spoke to Russia.”
In fact: One of the people mentioned in the New York Times story, Trump associate Roger Stone, went on television to deny having any contact with any Russians. But the other people mentioned in the story did not issue such categorical denials in any medium. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, told the New York Times that he never “knowingly” had contact with Russian intelligence officers, adding that such people do not “wear badges.” Former Trump adviser Carter Page he had only “said hello to a few Russian officials over the course of the last year or so”; he also gave a speech in Moscow.
69. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim about the 9th Circuit appeals court: “In fact, we had to go quicker than we thought because of the bad decision we received from a circuit that has been overturned at a record number. I have heard 80 per cent — I find that hard to believe; that’s just a number I heard — that they’re overturned 80 per cent of the time.”
In fact: This statement is false in one way, possibly misleading in another. It is false that the 9th Circuit is overturned by the Supreme Court at a “record number.” Even in the study conservatives usually cite in criticizing the 9th Circuit, the court had the second-highest reversal rate between 1999 and 2008. Between 2010 and 2015, it was third-highest. In the most recent court term for which complete data is readily available, the 9th Circuit was again in second place.
It may be misleading to discuss reversal rates this way at all. The Supreme Court overturns a majority of cases it agrees to hear — but those cases represent a tiny fraction of total cases decided by a circuit court. So even if 80 per cent of 9th Circuit cases that reach the Supreme Court are overturned, that still means more than 99 per cent of the circuit’s total decisions are not overturned.
68. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim about the 9th Circuit appeals court: “I think that circuit is — that circuit is in chaos and that circuit is frankly in turmoil.”
In fact: The court is functioning as normal. There is no sign of chaos or turmoil.
67. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20 per cent of the uranium in our country.” Added: “Hillary Clinton gave them 20 per cent of our uranium.”
In fact: Clinton didn’t personally give Russia uranium. The State Department, which Clinton led as secretary of state, was one of nine government entities that reviewed the Russian purchase of the Toronto-based firm Uranium One, which controlled the rights to about 20 per cent of U.S. uranium capacity. There is no evidence Clinton was personally involved in the process in any way. Further, only the president could have made the decision to block the deal; Clinton did not have final authority either way.
66. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “This administration is running like a fine- tuned machine, despite the fact that I can’t get my cabinet approved. And they’re outstanding people like Senator Dan Coats who’s there, one of the most respected men of the Senate. He can’t get approved. How do you not approve him?”
In fact: We’ll ignore the dubious “fine-tuned machine” claim — there is no sign that Coats, Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, “can’t get approved” or is even facing obstruction. The Republican who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, Sen. Richard Burr, told The Hill they are waiting for the FBI and others to finish background checks, and that they will hold a hearing when the Senate returns from its one-week break.
65. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “Walmart announced it will create 10,000 jobs in the United States just this year because of our various plans and initiatives.”
In fact: The Walmart expansion plan that is creating the jobs was announced in October, before Trump was elected. The company did not reveal the precise 10,000 figure until after Trump took office, but it is directly connected to the previous announcement.
64. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House press conference
The claim: “General Motors likewise committed to invest billions of dollars in its American manufacturing operation, keeping many jobs here that were going to leave. And if I didn’t get elected, believe me, they would have left. And these jobs and these things that I’m announcing would never have come here.”
In fact: GM made a new $1 billion commitment to U.S. factories, not “billions”; it committed $2.9 billion last year, before Trump was elected. GM did not offer any indication that it made the decision because of Trump, and independent automotive analysts said it was unlikely the company had done so. “Mostly theatre to play in the news cycle created by President-elect Trump’s tweets,” Autotrader analyst Michelle Krebs said. “These investments and hiring plans have long been in the works and are a continuation of what the company has been doing in recent years.”
63. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House“listening session” with members of Congress
The claim: “Well, I always said about President Obama, it’s great to play golf, but play golf with heads of countries. And, by the way, people like yourself (congressmen), when you’re looking for votes, don’t play with your friends who you play with every week.”
In fact: Trump did not “always” say this about Obama, if he said it at all. He criticized Obama’s golfing at least 11 times on Twitter without ever declaring that it would be great for Obama to play with foreign leaders. He also said, “I don’t want to touch a golf club.”
62. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House “listening session” with members of Congress
The claim: “The fake-news media doesn’t like talking about the economy; I never see anything about the stock market sets new records every day. I never see it.”
In fact: We cannot fact-check what Trump does or doesn’t personally see, but his suggestion that the media ignores market records is inaccurate. The Dow Jones industrial average has received extensive coverage, even more than the usual daily stream of business stories, as it has reached new heights over the last month.
61. Feb. 16, 2017 — White House “listening session” with members of Congress
The claim: “Will anybody show up to that press conference? Historically, they didn’t care about these things. For me, they show up.”
In fact: Obviously, journalists have always cared about presidential press conferences.
60. Feb. 12, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Just leaving Florida. Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road that the FAKE NEWS media refuses to mention. Very dishonest!”
In fact: There were some supporters along the road, but they were far outnumbered by protesters, according to reporters on scene.
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59. Feb. 12, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “While on FAKE NEWS @CNN, Bernie Sanders was cut off for using the term fake news to describe the network. They said technical difficulties!”
In fact: Sanders was not cut off by CNN, and he was mocking Trump’s use of “fake news” to describe the network, not doing so himself. What actually happened: Sanders jokingly called CNN “fake news,” then added, “It was a joke.” CNN host Erin Burnett said, “I know it was a joke.” Sanders then lost his audio feed of Burnett’s questions. Burnett announced they would go to commercial to get it sorted out. After the break, she continued the interview.
58. Feb. 10, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “The failing @nytimes does major FAKE NEWS China story saying “Mr. Xi has not spoken to Mr. Trump since Nov. 14.” We spoke at length yesterday!”
In fact: Trump was wrong to suggest the Times made an error: this article was written before Trump’s phone call with Xi. As soon as the call became known, the Times updated the article, online and in its late print edition, to include the details of the conversation. Trump may have been reacting to an earlier print edition, but this was not “fake news,” simply the news as it stood as of the newspaper’s deadline.
57. Feb. 9, 2017 — Private meeting with senators about Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch
The claim: “The president claimed that he and (Republican former senator Kelly) Ayotte both would have been victorious in the Granite State if not for the ‘thousands’ of people who were ‘brought in on buses’ from neighbouring Massachusetts to ‘illegally’ vote in New Hampshire.”
In fact: Such fraud did not happen.
56. Feb. 9, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave “service” in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!”
In fact: Cuomo, a CNN host, began the interview by asking Blumenthal about this very subject. His first question: “What is your response to the president of the United States saying you should not be believed because you misrepresented your military record in the past?” While Cuomo may not have pressed Blumenthal as hard as Trump would have liked, he certainly did not ignore the matter.
55. Feb. 9, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” (Trump added out loud: “His comments were misrepresented.”)
In fact: Blumenthal accurately relayed the remarks of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Blumenthal told reporters that Gorsuch had described as “demoralizing and disheartening” Trump’s attack on a judge who ruled against his travel ban. A spokesman for Gorsuch confirmed that Gorsuch used those precise words. The Gorsuch team later added a little bit of wiggle room, insisting he was “not referring to any specific case,” but reiterated the basic point: “He said that he finds any criticism of a judge’s integrity and independence disheartening and demoralizing.”
54. Feb. 8, 2017 — Speech to the Major Cities Chiefs Association
The claim: “I want you to turn in the bad ones. Call Secretary Kelly’s representatives and we’ll get them out of our country and bring them back where they came from, and we’ll do it fast. You have to call up the federal government, Homeland Security, because so much of the problems — you look at Chicago and you look at other places. So many of the problems are caused by gang members, many of whom are not even legally in our country.”
In fact: Trump has not presented any evidence whatsoever that illegal immigrants are responsible for much of Chicago’s crime problem, and academic experts and local officials say Trump is wrong. “I don’t know anyone in Chicago who believes that,” said Toni Preckwinkle, president of the Cook County board, according to CBS Chicago. “Whether we are talking about African-American or Latino neighbourhoods, we are not talking about illegal immigrants. We are talking about our native-born sons and daughters.”
53. Feb. 7, 2017 — Meeting with the National Sheriffs’ Association
The claim: “The murder rate in our country’s the highest it’s been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? 47 years? I’d say that in a speech and everybody’s surprised. Because the press doesn’t tell it like it is. It wasn’t to their advantage to say that.”
In fact: The homicide rate is not even close to a 47-year high. In fact, it remains near historic lows. There were 10 homicides per 100,000 residents in 1980, eight per 100,000 residents in 1995; in 2015, the latest year for which there is national data, it was five per 100,000 residents. Trump sometimes correctly notes that the increase in the homicide rate between 2014 and 2015 was the largest in more than 40 years. But that is far different than the actual rate being the highest.
52. Feb. 7, 2017 — Meeting with the National Sheriffs’ Association
The claim: “As you know, I approved two pipelines that were stuck in limbo forever. I don’t even think it was controversial. You know, I approved them. I haven’t even heard. I haven’t had had one call from anybody saying oh, that was a terrible thing you did. I haven’t had one call.”
In fact: Trump’s administration has indeed granted approval for the Dakota Access pipeline. But he has not approved the other pipeline, Keystone XL from Alberta. The executive order he signed in January merely invites TransCanada Corp. to reapply for approval, and directs his secretary of state to make a decision within 60 days of receiving this new application. So: it would have been accurate for Trump to say he advanced two pipelines, but not that he “approved them.”
51.Feb. 7, 2017 — Meeting with the National Sheriffs’ Association
The claim: “The EPA — you’re right, I call it — it’s clogged the bloodstream of our country. People can’t do anything. People are looking to get approvals for factories for 15 years, and then after the 15th year they get voted down after having spent a fortune.”
In fact: Environmental law experts say it would be extremely rare for a manufacturer to wait 15 years for an approval from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, if that even happens at all. “Without any facts to back it up,” said Maxine Lipeles, director of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic at the law school at Washington University in St. Louis, Trump’s statement is “really kind of hard to believe. It could be that he found one case ... It would be very much an outlier.” Lipeles also noted that most permit-approval is done at the state level.
50. Feb. 7, 2017 — Meeting with the National Sheriffs’ Association
The claim about the Dakota Access Pipeline: “Years of getting approvals, nobody showed up to fight it, this company spends tremendous — hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars — and then all of a sudden people show up to fight it.”
In fact: While protest against the pipeline greatly intensified in 2016, it is false that “nobody” was fighting it before it was granted approvals. “Bakken pipeline protesters flooded the Iowa Utilities Board headquarters in Des Moines on Thursday morning, delivering 1,000 written grievances about the consequences of building the pipeline in the state,” read a Des Moines Register article in Oct. 2015. Iowa’s WHOTV reported in Nov. 2015 about intense opposition from Iowa farmers.
49. Feb. 7, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “It is a disgrace that my full Cabinet is still not in place, the longest such delay in the history of our country.”
In fact: Trump does not even come close to the record for the longest delay before having a full cabinet in place. We only have to go back one presidency for proof: Barack Obama didn’t have his final cabinet member confirmed until April 28, 2009, 99 days into his presidency. Trump wasn’t even a full 19 days into his presidency when he posted this tweet.
48. Feb. 6, 2017 — Extended portion of Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The repeated claim about Iran: “We’ve already given them billions and billions, probably $150 billion.”
In fact: The U.S. did not give Iran $150 billion in the deal restricting Iran’s nuclear program. Rather, a smaller amount of frozen Iranian assets were unfrozen. The Treasury Department told Congress in 2015 that total Iranian assets in question were estimated at $100 billion to $125 billion; it put the “usable liquid assets” at around $50 billion. John Kerry, then the secretary of state, said Iran would get about $55 billion.
47.Feb. 6, 2017 — Extended portion of Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The claim: “The previous administration allowed it to happen. Because we shouldn’t have been in Iraq but we shouldn’t have gotten out the way we got out. It created a vacuum, ISIS was formed.”
In fact: Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, was formed long before the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, which occurred in 2011. The group has roots as far back as 1999, and it was already using the name Islamic State by 2006, under George W. Bush. While it had been weakened by 2011, it was around. So Trump can make a reasonable argument that the U.S. withdrawal helped the group thrive, but it is simply inaccurate to say Daesh “was formed” in a post-withdrawal vacuum.
46.Feb. 6, 2017 — Twitter
The repeated claim: “The failing @nytimes was forced to apologize to its subscribers for the poor reporting it did on my election win.”
In fact: The New York Times not only wasn’t “forced” to apologize for its coverage, it did not apologize at all. Trump was referring to a post-election letter, a kind of sales pitch, in which Times leaders thanked readers and said they planned to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
45. Feb. 6, 2017 — Speech to U.S. Central Command
The repeated claim: “I have already saved more than $700 million when I got involved in the negotiation on the F-35. You know about that.”
In fact: Trump did not personally secure these savings: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
44.Feb. 6, 2017 — Speech to U.S. Central Command
The claim on terrorism by Islamic extremists: “You’ve seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that.”
In fact: Terror attacks in Europe are widely reported.
43. Feb. 6, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election.”
In fact: None of the polls are “fake news” — deliberate attempts to mislead. Even if “fake news” is simply defined as “wrong,” Trump is still incorrect: election polls were actually quite accurate. Both ABC’s final tracking poll with the Washington Post and NBC’s final poll with the Wall Street Journal gave Hillary Clinton a three-point national lead; she won the popular vote by 2.9 points. The final CNN poll, two weeks before voting day, had Clinton up five points.
42. Feb. 5, 2017 — Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The claim about his travel ban: “I think it was very smooth. We had 109 people out of hundreds of thousands of travellers and all we did was vet those people very, very carefully … General Kelly — who’s now Secretary Kelly — he said he totally knew, he was aware of it, and it was very smooth. It was 109 people.”
In fact: The implementation of the ban was anything but smooth — it produced confusion in foreign countries, in America and even within Trump’s own government — and it affected far more than 109 people. A lawyer for the Trump administration said in court that 100,000 people had their visas revoked; Homeland Security officials announced that 721 people had been denied boarding at airports; thousands more were left uncertain about their status or were forced to change plans. Trump’s press secretary has clarified that the 109 figure refers solely to “the initial group of people that were in transit at the time the executive order was signed” — which is not even close to the total number of people impacted.
41. Feb. 5, 2017 — Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The claim: “I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.”
Protests at airports across U.S.
Protests were held at airports in a number of U.S. cities, following President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning travel from seven majority Muslim nations.(THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
In fact: This was one of Trump’s most oft-repeated lies of the 2016 campaign, and it has been thoroughly debunked. Trump did not express opposition to the war until 17 months after it began. Asked on radio in 2002 if he supported the looming invasion, he said, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.” This was in line with a statement he made in his 2000 book: “If we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion.” A day after the invasion, he said, “It looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint.”
40. Feb. 5, 2017 — Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The claim: “California in many ways is out of control, as you know. Obviously the voters agree, otherwise they wouldn’t have voted for me.”
In fact: It is hard to fact-check nonsense, but this is nonsensical. California governance was not one of the subjects debated during the national campaign, and not even pro-Trump pundits argued that his victory was a reaction against California. Further, Trump was trounced in California voting: 62 per cent for Hillary Clinton to his own 32 per cent.
39. Feb. 5, 2017 — Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The claim about voter fraud: O’Reilly: “So you think you’re gonna be proven correct in that statement (that three million illegal immigrants voted)? Trump: “Well, I think I already have. A lot of people have come out and said that I am correct.”
In fact: Even if Trump is referring here to his broader claim of widespread voter fraud, not specifically the “three million illegal immigrants” claim, he’s still wrong: no credible expert has said Trump is correct. That includes Republican elections officials around the country. That Trump can find some conspiracy theorists to declare him correct does not amount to proof.
38. Feb. 4, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions, can come into U. S.?”
In fact: The U.S. does not allow “anyone” to come in. Even without Trump’s travel ban, there is strict vetting of refugees, and visas are required for people seeking to enter from the seven mostly-Muslim countries to which the ban would apply.
37. Feb. 4, 2017 — Twitter
The repeated claim: “After being forced to apologize for its bad and inaccurate coverage of me after winning the election, the FAKE NEWS @nytimes is still lost!”
In fact: The New York Times not only wasn’t “forced” to apologize for its coverage, it did not apologize at all. Trump was referring to a post-election letter, a kind of sales pitch, in which Times leaders thanked readers and said they planned to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
36. Feb. 3, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about.”
In fact: The media did not lie about their phone call, which was not civil. A senior Trump official acknowledged to the Washington Post that it had been “hostile and charged,” and prominent news outlets in both countries reported that Trump had berated Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull denied that Trump had “hung up” on him, but he did not deny that the call had ended abruptly after 25 minutes, as the Post reported. “Was it cut short?” an Australian radio host pressed Turnbull. “The call ended courteously. That’s all I want to say about that,” Turnbull responded.
35. Feb. 2, 2017 — Facebook and Twitter
The claim: “’Trump taps first woman to CIA second in command’.”
In fact: Trump’s appointee, Gina Haspel, is the second female CIA deputy director, not the first: Barack Obama appointed Avril Haines to that post. Trump was quoting an inaccurate headline in The Hill newspaper — it was soon changed — but the president does not get a pass when publicizing inaccurate claims about his own administration, even if he did not make them up himself.
34. Feb. 2, 2017 — Facebook
The claim: “Smart! ‘Kuwait issues its own Trump-esque visa ban for five Muslim-majority countries.’”
In fact: Kuwait imposed no such ban. The Kuwaiti government later told its state news agency that it “categorically denies these claims,” and representatives of countries supposedly affected, like Pakistan, also said the story was wrong. Trump was sharing a link to an entirely inaccurate headline from the Jordanian website Al Bawaba, not making it up himself, but the president does not get a pass for promoting false information.
33. Feb. 2, 2017 — White House meeting with Harley-Davidson
The repeated claim: “I love Australia as a country, but we had a problem where for whatever reason, President Obama said that they were going to take probably well over 1,000 illegal immigrants who were in prisons, and they were going to bring them and take them into this country. And I just said, ‘Why?’…1,250. It could be 2,000, it could be more than that.”
In fact: The people in question are refugees, not illegal immigrants, who are living in island detention centres off of Australia. As Australia’s prime minister repeatedly told Trump, and as Trump’s own press secretary concurred, the agreement covers 1,250 people, not 2,000.
32. Feb 2, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia.”
In fact: The people in question are refugees, not illegal immigrants; the agreement covers 1,250 people, not “thousands.”
31. Feb. 2, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a lifeline in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion.”
In fact: Iran was nowhere near collapse before it signed the 2015 nuclear deal with the U.S. and five other major countries. Iran did not get $150 billion in the deal. Rather, a smaller amount of Iranian assets were unfrozen. The Treasury Department told Congress in 2015 that total Iranian assets were estimated at $100 billion to $125 billion; it put the “usable liquid assets” at around $50 billion. John Kerry, then the secretary of state, said Iran would get about $55 billion.
30. Feb. 1, 2017 — Black History Month “listening session”
The claim: “I don’t watch CNN.”
In fact: All available evidence suggests that Trump is at least an occasional CNN viewer. Though he has repeatedly claimed since May 2016 that he was boycotting the network, he has frequently commented on its content within a week of doing so — sometimes live, during a show. Eight days after this latest claim to not be watching CNN, he tweeted immediate criticism of an interview by CNN morning host Chris Cuomo.
The claim: “While on FAKE NEWS @CNN, Bernie Sanders was cut off for using the term fake news to describe the network. They said technical difficulties!”
In fact: Sanders was not cut off by CNN, and he was mocking Trump’s use of “fake news” to describe the network, not doing so himself. What actually happened: Sanders jokingly called CNN “fake news,” then added, “It was a joke.” CNN host Erin Burnett said, “I know it was a joke.” Sanders then lost his audio feed of Burnett’s questions. Burnett announced they would go to commercial to get it sorted out. After the break, she continued the interview.
58. Feb. 10, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “The failing @nytimes does major FAKE NEWS China story saying “Mr. Xi has not spoken to Mr. Trump since Nov. 14.” We spoke at length yesterday!”
In fact: Trump was wrong to suggest the Times made an error: this article was written before Trump’s phone call with Xi. As soon as the call became known, the Times updated the article, online and in its late print edition, to include the details of the conversation. Trump may have been reacting to an earlier print edition, but this was not “fake news,” simply the news as it stood as of the newspaper’s deadline.
57. Feb. 9, 2017 — Private meeting with senators about Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch
The claim: “The president claimed that he and (Republican former senator Kelly) Ayotte both would have been victorious in the Granite State if not for the ‘thousands’ of people who were ‘brought in on buses’ from neighbouring Massachusetts to ‘illegally’ vote in New Hampshire.”
In fact: Such fraud did not happen.
56. Feb. 9, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave “service” in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!”
In fact: Cuomo, a CNN host, began the interview by asking Blumenthal about this very subject. His first question: “What is your response to the president of the United States saying you should not be believed because you misrepresented your military record in the past?” While Cuomo may not have pressed Blumenthal as hard as Trump would have liked, he certainly did not ignore the matter.
55. Feb. 9, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” (Trump added out loud: “His comments were misrepresented.”)
In fact: Blumenthal accurately relayed the remarks of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Blumenthal told reporters that Gorsuch had described as “demoralizing and disheartening” Trump’s attack on a judge who ruled against his travel ban. A spokesman for Gorsuch confirmed that Gorsuch used those precise words. The Gorsuch team later added a little bit of wiggle room, insisting he was “not referring to any specific case,” but reiterated the basic point: “He said that he finds any criticism of a judge’s integrity and independence disheartening and demoralizing.”
54. Feb. 8, 2017 — Speech to the Major Cities Chiefs Association
The claim: “I want you to turn in the bad ones. Call Secretary Kelly’s representatives and we’ll get them out of our country and bring them back where they came from, and we’ll do it fast. You have to call up the federal government, Homeland Security, because so much of the problems — you look at Chicago and you look at other places. So many of the problems are caused by gang members, many of whom are not even legally in our country.”
In fact: Trump has not presented any evidence whatsoever that illegal immigrants are responsible for much of Chicago’s crime problem, and academic experts and local officials say Trump is wrong. “I don’t know anyone in Chicago who believes that,” said Toni Preckwinkle, president of the Cook County board, according to CBS Chicago. “Whether we are talking about African-American or Latino neighbourhoods, we are not talking about illegal immigrants. We are talking about our native-born sons and daughters.”
53. Feb. 7, 2017 — Meeting with the National Sheriffs’ Association
The claim: “The murder rate in our country’s the highest it’s been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? 47 years? I’d say that in a speech and everybody’s surprised. Because the press doesn’t tell it like it is. It wasn’t to their advantage to say that.”
In fact: The homicide rate is not even close to a 47-year high. In fact, it remains near historic lows. There were 10 homicides per 100,000 residents in 1980, eight per 100,000 residents in 1995; in 2015, the latest year for which there is national data, it was five per 100,000 residents. Trump sometimes correctly notes that the increase in the homicide rate between 2014 and 2015 was the largest in more than 40 years. But that is far different than the actual rate being the highest.
52. Feb. 7, 2017 — Meeting with the National Sheriffs’ Association
The claim: “As you know, I approved two pipelines that were stuck in limbo forever. I don’t even think it was controversial. You know, I approved them. I haven’t even heard. I haven’t had had one call from anybody saying oh, that was a terrible thing you did. I haven’t had one call.”
In fact: Trump’s administration has indeed granted approval for the Dakota Access pipeline. But he has not approved the other pipeline, Keystone XL from Alberta. The executive order he signed in January merely invites TransCanada Corp. to reapply for approval, and directs his secretary of state to make a decision within 60 days of receiving this new application. So: it would have been accurate for Trump to say he advanced two pipelines, but not that he “approved them.”
51.Feb. 7, 2017 — Meeting with the National Sheriffs’ Association
The claim: “The EPA — you’re right, I call it — it’s clogged the bloodstream of our country. People can’t do anything. People are looking to get approvals for factories for 15 years, and then after the 15th year they get voted down after having spent a fortune.”
In fact: Environmental law experts say it would be extremely rare for a manufacturer to wait 15 years for an approval from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, if that even happens at all. “Without any facts to back it up,” said Maxine Lipeles, director of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic at the law school at Washington University in St. Louis, Trump’s statement is “really kind of hard to believe. It could be that he found one case ... It would be very much an outlier.” Lipeles also noted that most permit-approval is done at the state level.
50. Feb. 7, 2017 — Meeting with the National Sheriffs’ Association
The claim about the Dakota Access Pipeline: “Years of getting approvals, nobody showed up to fight it, this company spends tremendous — hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars — and then all of a sudden people show up to fight it.”
In fact: While protest against the pipeline greatly intensified in 2016, it is false that “nobody” was fighting it before it was granted approvals. “Bakken pipeline protesters flooded the Iowa Utilities Board headquarters in Des Moines on Thursday morning, delivering 1,000 written grievances about the consequences of building the pipeline in the state,” read a Des Moines Register article in Oct. 2015. Iowa’s WHOTV reported in Nov. 2015 about intense opposition from Iowa farmers.
49. Feb. 7, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “It is a disgrace that my full Cabinet is still not in place, the longest such delay in the history of our country.”
In fact: Trump does not even come close to the record for the longest delay before having a full cabinet in place. We only have to go back one presidency for proof: Barack Obama didn’t have his final cabinet member confirmed until April 28, 2009, 99 days into his presidency. Trump wasn’t even a full 19 days into his presidency when he posted this tweet.
48. Feb. 6, 2017 — Extended portion of Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The repeated claim about Iran: “We’ve already given them billions and billions, probably $150 billion.”
In fact: The U.S. did not give Iran $150 billion in the deal restricting Iran’s nuclear program. Rather, a smaller amount of frozen Iranian assets were unfrozen. The Treasury Department told Congress in 2015 that total Iranian assets in question were estimated at $100 billion to $125 billion; it put the “usable liquid assets” at around $50 billion. John Kerry, then the secretary of state, said Iran would get about $55 billion.
47.Feb. 6, 2017 — Extended portion of Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The claim: “The previous administration allowed it to happen. Because we shouldn’t have been in Iraq but we shouldn’t have gotten out the way we got out. It created a vacuum, ISIS was formed.”
In fact: Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, was formed long before the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, which occurred in 2011. The group has roots as far back as 1999, and it was already using the name Islamic State by 2006, under George W. Bush. While it had been weakened by 2011, it was around. So Trump can make a reasonable argument that the U.S. withdrawal helped the group thrive, but it is simply inaccurate to say Daesh “was formed” in a post-withdrawal vacuum.
46.Feb. 6, 2017 — Twitter
The repeated claim: “The failing @nytimes was forced to apologize to its subscribers for the poor reporting it did on my election win.”
In fact: The New York Times not only wasn’t “forced” to apologize for its coverage, it did not apologize at all. Trump was referring to a post-election letter, a kind of sales pitch, in which Times leaders thanked readers and said they planned to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
45. Feb. 6, 2017 — Speech to U.S. Central Command
The repeated claim: “I have already saved more than $700 million when I got involved in the negotiation on the F-35. You know about that.”
In fact: Trump did not personally secure these savings: Lockheed Martin had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
44.Feb. 6, 2017 — Speech to U.S. Central Command
The claim on terrorism by Islamic extremists: “You’ve seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that.”
In fact: Terror attacks in Europe are widely reported.
43. Feb. 6, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election.”
In fact: None of the polls are “fake news” — deliberate attempts to mislead. Even if “fake news” is simply defined as “wrong,” Trump is still incorrect: election polls were actually quite accurate. Both ABC’s final tracking poll with the Washington Post and NBC’s final poll with the Wall Street Journal gave Hillary Clinton a three-point national lead; she won the popular vote by 2.9 points. The final CNN poll, two weeks before voting day, had Clinton up five points.
42. Feb. 5, 2017 — Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The claim about his travel ban: “I think it was very smooth. We had 109 people out of hundreds of thousands of travellers and all we did was vet those people very, very carefully … General Kelly — who’s now Secretary Kelly — he said he totally knew, he was aware of it, and it was very smooth. It was 109 people.”
In fact: The implementation of the ban was anything but smooth — it produced confusion in foreign countries, in America and even within Trump’s own government — and it affected far more than 109 people. A lawyer for the Trump administration said in court that 100,000 people had their visas revoked; Homeland Security officials announced that 721 people had been denied boarding at airports; thousands more were left uncertain about their status or were forced to change plans. Trump’s press secretary has clarified that the 109 figure refers solely to “the initial group of people that were in transit at the time the executive order was signed” — which is not even close to the total number of people impacted.
41. Feb. 5, 2017 — Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The claim: “I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.”
Protests at airports across U.S.
Protests were held at airports in a number of U.S. cities, following President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning travel from seven majority Muslim nations.(THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
In fact: This was one of Trump’s most oft-repeated lies of the 2016 campaign, and it has been thoroughly debunked. Trump did not express opposition to the war until 17 months after it began. Asked on radio in 2002 if he supported the looming invasion, he said, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.” This was in line with a statement he made in his 2000 book: “If we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion.” A day after the invasion, he said, “It looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint.”
40. Feb. 5, 2017 — Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The claim: “California in many ways is out of control, as you know. Obviously the voters agree, otherwise they wouldn’t have voted for me.”
In fact: It is hard to fact-check nonsense, but this is nonsensical. California governance was not one of the subjects debated during the national campaign, and not even pro-Trump pundits argued that his victory was a reaction against California. Further, Trump was trounced in California voting: 62 per cent for Hillary Clinton to his own 32 per cent.
39. Feb. 5, 2017 — Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
The claim about voter fraud: O’Reilly: “So you think you’re gonna be proven correct in that statement (that three million illegal immigrants voted)? Trump: “Well, I think I already have. A lot of people have come out and said that I am correct.”
In fact: Even if Trump is referring here to his broader claim of widespread voter fraud, not specifically the “three million illegal immigrants” claim, he’s still wrong: no credible expert has said Trump is correct. That includes Republican elections officials around the country. That Trump can find some conspiracy theorists to declare him correct does not amount to proof.
38. Feb. 4, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions, can come into U. S.?”
In fact: The U.S. does not allow “anyone” to come in. Even without Trump’s travel ban, there is strict vetting of refugees, and visas are required for people seeking to enter from the seven mostly-Muslim countries to which the ban would apply.
37. Feb. 4, 2017 — Twitter
The repeated claim: “After being forced to apologize for its bad and inaccurate coverage of me after winning the election, the FAKE NEWS @nytimes is still lost!”
In fact: The New York Times not only wasn’t “forced” to apologize for its coverage, it did not apologize at all. Trump was referring to a post-election letter, a kind of sales pitch, in which Times leaders thanked readers and said they planned to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
36. Feb. 3, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about.”
In fact: The media did not lie about their phone call, which was not civil. A senior Trump official acknowledged to the Washington Post that it had been “hostile and charged,” and prominent news outlets in both countries reported that Trump had berated Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull denied that Trump had “hung up” on him, but he did not deny that the call had ended abruptly after 25 minutes, as the Post reported. “Was it cut short?” an Australian radio host pressed Turnbull. “The call ended courteously. That’s all I want to say about that,” Turnbull responded.
35. Feb. 2, 2017 — Facebook and Twitter
The claim: “’Trump taps first woman to CIA second in command’.”
In fact: Trump’s appointee, Gina Haspel, is the second female CIA deputy director, not the first: Barack Obama appointed Avril Haines to that post. Trump was quoting an inaccurate headline in The Hill newspaper — it was soon changed — but the president does not get a pass when publicizing inaccurate claims about his own administration, even if he did not make them up himself.
34. Feb. 2, 2017 — Facebook
The claim: “Smart! ‘Kuwait issues its own Trump-esque visa ban for five Muslim-majority countries.’”
In fact: Kuwait imposed no such ban. The Kuwaiti government later told its state news agency that it “categorically denies these claims,” and representatives of countries supposedly affected, like Pakistan, also said the story was wrong. Trump was sharing a link to an entirely inaccurate headline from the Jordanian website Al Bawaba, not making it up himself, but the president does not get a pass for promoting false information.
33. Feb. 2, 2017 — White House meeting with Harley-Davidson
The repeated claim: “I love Australia as a country, but we had a problem where for whatever reason, President Obama said that they were going to take probably well over 1,000 illegal immigrants who were in prisons, and they were going to bring them and take them into this country. And I just said, ‘Why?’…1,250. It could be 2,000, it could be more than that.”
In fact: The people in question are refugees, not illegal immigrants, who are living in island detention centres off of Australia. As Australia’s prime minister repeatedly told Trump, and as Trump’s own press secretary concurred, the agreement covers 1,250 people, not 2,000.
32. Feb 2, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia.”
In fact: The people in question are refugees, not illegal immigrants; the agreement covers 1,250 people, not “thousands.”
31. Feb. 2, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a lifeline in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion.”
In fact: Iran was nowhere near collapse before it signed the 2015 nuclear deal with the U.S. and five other major countries. Iran did not get $150 billion in the deal. Rather, a smaller amount of Iranian assets were unfrozen. The Treasury Department told Congress in 2015 that total Iranian assets were estimated at $100 billion to $125 billion; it put the “usable liquid assets” at around $50 billion. John Kerry, then the secretary of state, said Iran would get about $55 billion.
30. Feb. 1, 2017 — Black History Month “listening session”
The claim: “I don’t watch CNN.”
In fact: All available evidence suggests that Trump is at least an occasional CNN viewer. Though he has repeatedly claimed since May 2016 that he was boycotting the network, he has frequently commented on its content within a week of doing so — sometimes live, during a show. Eight days after this latest claim to not be watching CNN, he tweeted immediate criticism of an interview by CNN morning host Chris Cuomo.
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29. Jan. 30, 2017 —Remarks at the White House
The claim: “But we cut approximately $600 million off the F-35 fighter, and that only amounts to 90 planes out of close to 3,000 planes. And when you think about $600 million, it was announced by Marillyn (Hewson), who’s very talented, the head of Lockheed Martin. I got involved in that about a month ago. A lot was put out, and when they say a lot, a lot meant about 90 planes. They were having a lot of difficulty. There was no movement and I was able to get $600 million approximately off those planes.”
In fact: Whether or not Trump secured additional discounts from Lockheed, he is wrong that there had been “no movement” until he got involved: the company had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
28. Jan. 30, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage, protesters and the tears of Senator Schumer.”
In fact: This is false and misleading in multiple ways. The Delta computer outage happened a full day and a half after the chaos over Trump’s ban on all new refugees and on travel by nationals from seven mostly Muslim countries. The peaceful protesters at airports did not cause “big problems.” Nor, of course, did Schumer’s emotional speech.
In reality, the poorly explained order caused confusion around the word, resulting in hassles at airports and beyond for tens of thousands of people — far more than were detained upon entry. And while it is not clear if Trump was correct that “only” 109 people had been detained at the time, Homeland Security officials said a day later that 721 people had been denied boarding.
27. Jan. 29, 2017 — Facebook statement on travel ban affecting seven predominantly Muslim countries
The claim: “My policy is similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months.”
In fact: Trump is wrong that Obama “banned” Iraqi refugees. After two Iraqi refugees were arrested on terrorism charges, Obama increased scrutiny of new refugee applicants, slowing down the process significantly, but did not ban Iraqis entirely or ban all new refugees. Iraqi refugees were admitted to the U.S. in every month of 2011, government figures show, and 9,388 were admitted in total in 2011.
26. Jan. 28, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Thr (sic) coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost gas (sic) been so false and angry that the times actually apologized to its dwindling subscribers and readers.”
In fact: This claim is false in two ways. First, the Times’ subscriber base is growing, not dwindling: the company says it added more than 300,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2016. Second, the Times never apologized for its Trump coverage; Trump was referring to a post-election letter, a kind of sales pitch, in which Times leaders thanked readers and said they planned to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
25. Jan. 27, 2017 — Interview with Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody
The claim: “Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, very very, at least very very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible.”
In fact: There is no basis for the claim that U.S. authorities are treating Christian applicants from Syria worse than they treated Muslims. While a very small percentage of the Syrian refugees accepted by the U.S. in 2016 were Christian — 0.5 per cent, according to FactCheck.org — Christians make up a similarly tiny percentage of the Syrian refugees in nearby countries: 1.5 per cent in Lebanon, 0.2 per cent in Jordan.
24. Jan. 27, 2017 — Interview with Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody
The claim: “The Cuban-Americans — I got 84 per cent of that vote, and they voted in big numbers.”
In fact: Trump got nowhere near that percentage of the Cuban-American vote. Writes NBC: “According to exit polls, Trump won 54 per cent of the Cuban American vote in Florida, where two-thirds of people of Cuban descent live. Latino Decisions’ election eve poll showed he got about 48 per cent of the Cuban American vote nationally and 52 per cent in Florida.”
23. Jan. 27, 2017 — Press conference with United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May
The claim: “I happened to be in Scotland at Turnberry cutting a ribbon when Brexit happened and we had a vast amount of press there. And I said Brexit — this was the day before, you probably remember, I said Brexit is going to happen and I was scorned in the press for making that prediction. I was scorned.”
In fact: Trump was not in Scotland the day before the Brexit vote. He was there the day after. When he was asked about Brexit the day before the vote, he told Fox Business, “I don’t think anybody should listen to me because I haven’t really focused on it very much.” He did not venture a prediction that day.
22. Jan. 26, 2017 —Interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity
The claim (on companies creating jobs): “Here’s another thing with the media. ‘Oh, they would’ve done it anyway. They weren’t going to do it.’ You see, Jack Ma. He had no intention of doing it until I got elected. And he went down and he said, ‘I’m only going to do this because of Donald Trump.’ And nobody put that in the papers, which is OK.”
In fact: It is not exactly clear whether Ma made his proposal to “create one million” U.S. jobs as a direct result of Trump’s election, but Trump’s claim about media bias is false regardless: upon coming down the elevator at Trump Tower, Ma, the executive chairman of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, did not actually tell reporters that he had made the proposal “because of Donald Trump.” He said nothing of that sort at all.
21. Jan. 26, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity
The claim: “And a wall protects. All you have to do is ask Israel. They were having a total disaster coming across and they had a wall. It’s 99.9 per cent stoppage.”
In fact: Exact numbers do not exist, but Israel’s barrier with the West Bank stops far fewer than “99.9 per cent” of people who seek to cross. The New York Times reported at length last year on “a thriving smuggling industry that allows untold numbers of people to pass over, under, through or around what Israelis call the security barrier.” A police spokesman said “hundreds” of illegal crossers were detained every week.
20. Jan. 26, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity
The claim (on refugees): “We’ve taken in tens of thousands of people. We know nothing about them. They can say they vet them. They didn’t vet them. They have no papers. How can you vet somebody when you don’t know anything about them and you have no papers?”
In fact: Refugees to the U.S. are rigorously vetted. The process includes multiple kinds of background and security checks and at least two interviews with U.S. representatives. Regardless of their paperwork situation, and regardless of one’s opinion on how good the vetting is, the U.S. knows far more than “nothing” about the refugees it approves.
19. Jan. 26, 2017 —Speech to Republican legislators at retreat in Philadelphia
The claim: “Here in Philadelphia, the murder rate has been steady — I mean, just terribly increasing.”
In fact: The number of Philadelphia homicides in 2016, 277, was actually down from the 280 in 2015. While both years represented an increase from 2013 (246 homicides) and 2014 (248 homicides), the overall trend has been downward: Philadelphia had 391 homicides in 2007 and 331 in 2008. The number of homicides as of Jan. 31, 30, was higher than the 19 at the same time in 2016 but about the same as the 27 in 2015. Regardless, the murder rate is never calculated on a month of data.
18. Jan. 25 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim (about Chicago): “So, look, when President Obama was there two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech. Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can’t have that.”
In fact: There were not only no homicides during Obama’s speech but no shootings at all, the Chicago Tribune reported based on police data.
17. Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: “Look, Barack Obama — if you look back, eight years ago when he first ran — he was running for office in Chicago … and he was laughing at the system because he knew all of those votes were going to him … he was smiling and laughing about the vote in Chicago.”
In fact: This is a gross mischaracterization of Obama’s remarks and behaviour during the 2008 campaign. He did not laugh or smile about the voting system in Chicago, and he did not suggest in any way that he was going to be receiving fraudulent votes. He acknowledged that his party had sometimes “monkeyed” with Chicago elections “in the past.”
16. Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: Regarding voting fraud: “You look at Philadelphia, you look at what’s going on in Philadelphia.”
In fact: There is no evidence of a significant voter fraud problem in Philadelphia.
15.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: Regarding voting fraud: “Chicago, look what’s going on in Chicago. It’s only gotten worse.”
In fact: There is no evidence of a significant voter fraud problem in Chicago, and there is no evidence that its voting system has become increasingly plagued by fraud.
14.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: Regarding his false claim of “millions” of possible illegal voters: “Those were Hillary votes. And if you look at it they all voted for Hillary. They all voted for Hillary. They didn’t vote for me. I don’t believe I got one. OK, these are people that voted for Hillary Clinton.”
In fact: These large numbers of illegal voters did not “all” vote for Clinton because they do not exist. Even if they did, it would be impossible for Trump to know that not a single one voted for him, since the ballot is secret. This claim is simply absurd.
13.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: “Now you’re telling me Pew report has all of a sudden changed.”
In fact: Trump was trying to use a 2012 Pew report as supposed evidence of widespread voter fraud. Muir told him he was wrong — not because the report changed but because it never showed what Trump falsely claims it showed. “The Pew study I directed doesn’t address voter fraud at all,” report leader David Becker told the Washington Post this weekend. Rather, the study addresses non-fraud voter registration issues, such as people remaining on one state’s rolls after they move to another.
12.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: Muir: “I called the author of the Pew report last night. And he told me that they found no evidence of voter fraud.” Trump: “Really? Then why did he write the report?” Muir: “He said no evidence of voter fraud.” Trump: “Excuse me, then why did he write the report? According to Pew report, then he’s — then he’s grovelling again.”
In fact: Grovelling means “to draw back or crouch down in fearful submission.” Becker is doing the opposite: publicly explaining his work, and explaining why the president is wrong.
11. Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: Regarding Healthcare.gov: “Remember the $5 billion website?”
In fact: Healthcare.gov did not cost $5 billion. The Obama administration offered a figure of less than $1 billion, while an analysis by Bloomberg found that it cost just over $2 billion.
10.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: With regard to his speech to the Central Intelligence Agency earlier in the week: “They showed the people applauding and screaming and they were all CIA. There was — somebody was asking (press secretary) Sean (Spicer) – ‘Well, were they Trump people that were put’ — we don’t have Trump people. They were CIA people.”
In fact: Most of the audience was indeed made up of CIA personnel, but Trump is wrong that there were no “Trump people.” Spicer told the press that “maybe 10” people in attendance were part of Trump’s entourage; CBS News reported that an official familiar with the event said Spicer was inaccurate, as Trump and his allies brought about 40 people.
9.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: “I think you’re demeaning by talking the way you’re talking. I think you’re demeaning. And that’s why I think a lot of people turned on you and turned on a lot of other people. And that’s why you have a 17 per cent approval rating, which is pretty bad.”
In fact: Saying “you” here, Trump wrongly conveys the impression that Muir himself has 17 per cent approval. In fact, there is no polling on Muir. Trump appears to have actually been referring to a 2016 poll about Americans’ views on the media. In that poll, the media’s approval rating was 19 per cent.
8. Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: “No, no, you have to understand, I had a tremendous victory, one of the great victories ever. In terms of counties I think the most ever, or just about the most ever.”
Trump reviews 'dumb' refugee deal with Australia after 'worst' call
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull refuses to comment on a conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump who says he'll study "dumb" refugee deal. (REUTERS)
In fact: Trump’s victory was not close to one of the biggest of all time. He lost the popular vote, and his Electoral College margin ranks 46th out of 58 elections. Trump did far better in terms of counties, winning more than any candidate since Ronald Reagan, but he was well short of setting the record or even “just about” tying it: Richard Nixon won more than 2,950 counties in 1972, far exceeding Trump’s 2,623.
7.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: “In terms of a total audience including television and everything else that you have we had supposedly the biggest crowd in history. The audience watching the show. And I think you would even agree to that. They say I had the biggest crowd in the history of inaugural speeches.”
In fact: “They” can mean anyone, but no expert is declaring that Trump had the biggest inauguration crowd in history. Obama’s 2009 inauguration drew far more people in person and far more television viewers. Trump’s claim relies on the people who watched the inauguration on online streams. It is possible that these people gave him a record, but it is impossible to know for sure.
6. Jan. 23, 2017 — Private meeting with Congressional leaders
The claim: Trump told Congressional leaders that “he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in last November’s election because between three million and five million ‘illegals’ cast ballots, multiple sources told Fox News.”
In fact: This claim, also reported by numerous other major media outlets, simply has no basis in reality. Trump’s own lawyers said in a legal filing that “all available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud.” The National Association of Secretaries of State — the state officials who run elections — said they “are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump.”
5. Jan. 21, 2017 — Speech at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters
The claim: “So a reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover, like, 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time Magazine. Like, if Tom Brady is on the cover, it’s one time, because he won the Super Bowl or something, right? I’ve been on for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record, Mike, that can ever be broken. Do you agree with that?”
In fact: Trump’s numbers are well off. He has been on the cover 11 times, Time told Politico, which is not even close to a record: Richard Nixon was on 55 covers. Even if we generously give Trump a pass here — he said he was on covers “like” 14 or 15 times, and he wasn’t sure if he had a record — he his claim about this year is flat wrong. Trump was on eight covers in 2016 and another one on the 2017 week he was speaking here — so either eight or nine total, depending on how you count, not 15.
4. Jan. 21, 2017 — Speech at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters
The repeated claim: “It was almost raining, the rain should have scared em away, but God looked down and He said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech. In fact, when I first started, I said oh no. First line, I got hit by a couple of drops, and I said this is too bad … but the truth is that, it stopped immediately, it was amazing, and then it became really sunny.”
In fact: Neither of these claims is true. The rain did not stop immediately, and the sky then remained cloudy.
3. Jan. 21, 2017 — Speech at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters
The repeated claim: “Honestly, it looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was it was, but it went all the way back to the Washington Monument.” Later: “…all the way back to the Washington Monument, was packed.”
In fact: The crowd, which may not have even been half a million people strong, did not come close to reaching the Washington Monument.
2. Jan. 20, 2017 — Post-inauguration Salute To Our Armed Services Ball
The claim: “Even the media said the crowd was massive … that was all the way back down to the Washington Monument.”
In fact: The major media reported that the crowd was much smaller than Barack Obama’s two inauguration crowds, though in line with the inaugurations of other Republicans. The crowd did not come close to reaching the Washington Monument.
1. Jan. 20, 2017 — Post-inauguration Liberty Ball
The claim: “I looked at the rain, which just never came. We finished the speech, went inside, it poured … it’s like God was looking down on us.”
In fact: The rain began right at the beginning of Trump’s speech. During the inauguration itself, the Rev. Franklin Graham told Trump, “Mr. President, in the Bible, rain is a sign of God’s blessing. And it started to rain, Mr. President, when you came to the platform.”
The claim: “But we cut approximately $600 million off the F-35 fighter, and that only amounts to 90 planes out of close to 3,000 planes. And when you think about $600 million, it was announced by Marillyn (Hewson), who’s very talented, the head of Lockheed Martin. I got involved in that about a month ago. A lot was put out, and when they say a lot, a lot meant about 90 planes. They were having a lot of difficulty. There was no movement and I was able to get $600 million approximately off those planes.”
In fact: Whether or not Trump secured additional discounts from Lockheed, he is wrong that there had been “no movement” until he got involved: the company had been moving to cut the price well before Trump was elected, multiple aviation and defence experts say. Just a week after Trump’s election, the head of the F-35 program announced a reduction of 6 to 7 per cent — in the $600 million to $700 million range.
“Trump’s claimed $600 million cut is right in the ballpark of what the price reduction was going to be all along,” wrote Popular Mechanics. “Bottom line: Trump appears to be taking credit for years of work by the Pentagon and Lockheed,” Aviation Week reported, per the Washington Post.
28. Jan. 30, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage, protesters and the tears of Senator Schumer.”
In fact: This is false and misleading in multiple ways. The Delta computer outage happened a full day and a half after the chaos over Trump’s ban on all new refugees and on travel by nationals from seven mostly Muslim countries. The peaceful protesters at airports did not cause “big problems.” Nor, of course, did Schumer’s emotional speech.
In reality, the poorly explained order caused confusion around the word, resulting in hassles at airports and beyond for tens of thousands of people — far more than were detained upon entry. And while it is not clear if Trump was correct that “only” 109 people had been detained at the time, Homeland Security officials said a day later that 721 people had been denied boarding.
27. Jan. 29, 2017 — Facebook statement on travel ban affecting seven predominantly Muslim countries
The claim: “My policy is similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months.”
In fact: Trump is wrong that Obama “banned” Iraqi refugees. After two Iraqi refugees were arrested on terrorism charges, Obama increased scrutiny of new refugee applicants, slowing down the process significantly, but did not ban Iraqis entirely or ban all new refugees. Iraqi refugees were admitted to the U.S. in every month of 2011, government figures show, and 9,388 were admitted in total in 2011.
26. Jan. 28, 2017 — Twitter
The claim: “Thr (sic) coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost gas (sic) been so false and angry that the times actually apologized to its dwindling subscribers and readers.”
In fact: This claim is false in two ways. First, the Times’ subscriber base is growing, not dwindling: the company says it added more than 300,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2016. Second, the Times never apologized for its Trump coverage; Trump was referring to a post-election letter, a kind of sales pitch, in which Times leaders thanked readers and said they planned to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
25. Jan. 27, 2017 — Interview with Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody
The claim: “Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, very very, at least very very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible.”
In fact: There is no basis for the claim that U.S. authorities are treating Christian applicants from Syria worse than they treated Muslims. While a very small percentage of the Syrian refugees accepted by the U.S. in 2016 were Christian — 0.5 per cent, according to FactCheck.org — Christians make up a similarly tiny percentage of the Syrian refugees in nearby countries: 1.5 per cent in Lebanon, 0.2 per cent in Jordan.
24. Jan. 27, 2017 — Interview with Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody
The claim: “The Cuban-Americans — I got 84 per cent of that vote, and they voted in big numbers.”
In fact: Trump got nowhere near that percentage of the Cuban-American vote. Writes NBC: “According to exit polls, Trump won 54 per cent of the Cuban American vote in Florida, where two-thirds of people of Cuban descent live. Latino Decisions’ election eve poll showed he got about 48 per cent of the Cuban American vote nationally and 52 per cent in Florida.”
23. Jan. 27, 2017 — Press conference with United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May
The claim: “I happened to be in Scotland at Turnberry cutting a ribbon when Brexit happened and we had a vast amount of press there. And I said Brexit — this was the day before, you probably remember, I said Brexit is going to happen and I was scorned in the press for making that prediction. I was scorned.”
In fact: Trump was not in Scotland the day before the Brexit vote. He was there the day after. When he was asked about Brexit the day before the vote, he told Fox Business, “I don’t think anybody should listen to me because I haven’t really focused on it very much.” He did not venture a prediction that day.
22. Jan. 26, 2017 —Interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity
The claim (on companies creating jobs): “Here’s another thing with the media. ‘Oh, they would’ve done it anyway. They weren’t going to do it.’ You see, Jack Ma. He had no intention of doing it until I got elected. And he went down and he said, ‘I’m only going to do this because of Donald Trump.’ And nobody put that in the papers, which is OK.”
In fact: It is not exactly clear whether Ma made his proposal to “create one million” U.S. jobs as a direct result of Trump’s election, but Trump’s claim about media bias is false regardless: upon coming down the elevator at Trump Tower, Ma, the executive chairman of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, did not actually tell reporters that he had made the proposal “because of Donald Trump.” He said nothing of that sort at all.
21. Jan. 26, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity
The claim: “And a wall protects. All you have to do is ask Israel. They were having a total disaster coming across and they had a wall. It’s 99.9 per cent stoppage.”
In fact: Exact numbers do not exist, but Israel’s barrier with the West Bank stops far fewer than “99.9 per cent” of people who seek to cross. The New York Times reported at length last year on “a thriving smuggling industry that allows untold numbers of people to pass over, under, through or around what Israelis call the security barrier.” A police spokesman said “hundreds” of illegal crossers were detained every week.
20. Jan. 26, 2017 — Interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity
The claim (on refugees): “We’ve taken in tens of thousands of people. We know nothing about them. They can say they vet them. They didn’t vet them. They have no papers. How can you vet somebody when you don’t know anything about them and you have no papers?”
In fact: Refugees to the U.S. are rigorously vetted. The process includes multiple kinds of background and security checks and at least two interviews with U.S. representatives. Regardless of their paperwork situation, and regardless of one’s opinion on how good the vetting is, the U.S. knows far more than “nothing” about the refugees it approves.
19. Jan. 26, 2017 —Speech to Republican legislators at retreat in Philadelphia
The claim: “Here in Philadelphia, the murder rate has been steady — I mean, just terribly increasing.”
In fact: The number of Philadelphia homicides in 2016, 277, was actually down from the 280 in 2015. While both years represented an increase from 2013 (246 homicides) and 2014 (248 homicides), the overall trend has been downward: Philadelphia had 391 homicides in 2007 and 331 in 2008. The number of homicides as of Jan. 31, 30, was higher than the 19 at the same time in 2016 but about the same as the 27 in 2015. Regardless, the murder rate is never calculated on a month of data.
18. Jan. 25 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim (about Chicago): “So, look, when President Obama was there two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech. Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can’t have that.”
In fact: There were not only no homicides during Obama’s speech but no shootings at all, the Chicago Tribune reported based on police data.
17. Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: “Look, Barack Obama — if you look back, eight years ago when he first ran — he was running for office in Chicago … and he was laughing at the system because he knew all of those votes were going to him … he was smiling and laughing about the vote in Chicago.”
In fact: This is a gross mischaracterization of Obama’s remarks and behaviour during the 2008 campaign. He did not laugh or smile about the voting system in Chicago, and he did not suggest in any way that he was going to be receiving fraudulent votes. He acknowledged that his party had sometimes “monkeyed” with Chicago elections “in the past.”
16. Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: Regarding voting fraud: “You look at Philadelphia, you look at what’s going on in Philadelphia.”
In fact: There is no evidence of a significant voter fraud problem in Philadelphia.
15.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: Regarding voting fraud: “Chicago, look what’s going on in Chicago. It’s only gotten worse.”
In fact: There is no evidence of a significant voter fraud problem in Chicago, and there is no evidence that its voting system has become increasingly plagued by fraud.
14.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: Regarding his false claim of “millions” of possible illegal voters: “Those were Hillary votes. And if you look at it they all voted for Hillary. They all voted for Hillary. They didn’t vote for me. I don’t believe I got one. OK, these are people that voted for Hillary Clinton.”
In fact: These large numbers of illegal voters did not “all” vote for Clinton because they do not exist. Even if they did, it would be impossible for Trump to know that not a single one voted for him, since the ballot is secret. This claim is simply absurd.
13.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: “Now you’re telling me Pew report has all of a sudden changed.”
In fact: Trump was trying to use a 2012 Pew report as supposed evidence of widespread voter fraud. Muir told him he was wrong — not because the report changed but because it never showed what Trump falsely claims it showed. “The Pew study I directed doesn’t address voter fraud at all,” report leader David Becker told the Washington Post this weekend. Rather, the study addresses non-fraud voter registration issues, such as people remaining on one state’s rolls after they move to another.
12.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: Muir: “I called the author of the Pew report last night. And he told me that they found no evidence of voter fraud.” Trump: “Really? Then why did he write the report?” Muir: “He said no evidence of voter fraud.” Trump: “Excuse me, then why did he write the report? According to Pew report, then he’s — then he’s grovelling again.”
In fact: Grovelling means “to draw back or crouch down in fearful submission.” Becker is doing the opposite: publicly explaining his work, and explaining why the president is wrong.
11. Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: Regarding Healthcare.gov: “Remember the $5 billion website?”
In fact: Healthcare.gov did not cost $5 billion. The Obama administration offered a figure of less than $1 billion, while an analysis by Bloomberg found that it cost just over $2 billion.
10.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: With regard to his speech to the Central Intelligence Agency earlier in the week: “They showed the people applauding and screaming and they were all CIA. There was — somebody was asking (press secretary) Sean (Spicer) – ‘Well, were they Trump people that were put’ — we don’t have Trump people. They were CIA people.”
In fact: Most of the audience was indeed made up of CIA personnel, but Trump is wrong that there were no “Trump people.” Spicer told the press that “maybe 10” people in attendance were part of Trump’s entourage; CBS News reported that an official familiar with the event said Spicer was inaccurate, as Trump and his allies brought about 40 people.
9.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: “I think you’re demeaning by talking the way you’re talking. I think you’re demeaning. And that’s why I think a lot of people turned on you and turned on a lot of other people. And that’s why you have a 17 per cent approval rating, which is pretty bad.”
In fact: Saying “you” here, Trump wrongly conveys the impression that Muir himself has 17 per cent approval. In fact, there is no polling on Muir. Trump appears to have actually been referring to a 2016 poll about Americans’ views on the media. In that poll, the media’s approval rating was 19 per cent.
8. Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: “No, no, you have to understand, I had a tremendous victory, one of the great victories ever. In terms of counties I think the most ever, or just about the most ever.”
Trump reviews 'dumb' refugee deal with Australia after 'worst' call
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull refuses to comment on a conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump who says he'll study "dumb" refugee deal. (REUTERS)
In fact: Trump’s victory was not close to one of the biggest of all time. He lost the popular vote, and his Electoral College margin ranks 46th out of 58 elections. Trump did far better in terms of counties, winning more than any candidate since Ronald Reagan, but he was well short of setting the record or even “just about” tying it: Richard Nixon won more than 2,950 counties in 1972, far exceeding Trump’s 2,623.
7.Jan. 25, 2017 — Interview with ABC’s David Muir
The claim: “In terms of a total audience including television and everything else that you have we had supposedly the biggest crowd in history. The audience watching the show. And I think you would even agree to that. They say I had the biggest crowd in the history of inaugural speeches.”
In fact: “They” can mean anyone, but no expert is declaring that Trump had the biggest inauguration crowd in history. Obama’s 2009 inauguration drew far more people in person and far more television viewers. Trump’s claim relies on the people who watched the inauguration on online streams. It is possible that these people gave him a record, but it is impossible to know for sure.
6. Jan. 23, 2017 — Private meeting with Congressional leaders
The claim: Trump told Congressional leaders that “he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in last November’s election because between three million and five million ‘illegals’ cast ballots, multiple sources told Fox News.”
In fact: This claim, also reported by numerous other major media outlets, simply has no basis in reality. Trump’s own lawyers said in a legal filing that “all available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud.” The National Association of Secretaries of State — the state officials who run elections — said they “are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump.”
5. Jan. 21, 2017 — Speech at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters
The claim: “So a reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover, like, 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time Magazine. Like, if Tom Brady is on the cover, it’s one time, because he won the Super Bowl or something, right? I’ve been on for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record, Mike, that can ever be broken. Do you agree with that?”
In fact: Trump’s numbers are well off. He has been on the cover 11 times, Time told Politico, which is not even close to a record: Richard Nixon was on 55 covers. Even if we generously give Trump a pass here — he said he was on covers “like” 14 or 15 times, and he wasn’t sure if he had a record — he his claim about this year is flat wrong. Trump was on eight covers in 2016 and another one on the 2017 week he was speaking here — so either eight or nine total, depending on how you count, not 15.
4. Jan. 21, 2017 — Speech at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters
The repeated claim: “It was almost raining, the rain should have scared em away, but God looked down and He said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech. In fact, when I first started, I said oh no. First line, I got hit by a couple of drops, and I said this is too bad … but the truth is that, it stopped immediately, it was amazing, and then it became really sunny.”
In fact: Neither of these claims is true. The rain did not stop immediately, and the sky then remained cloudy.
3. Jan. 21, 2017 — Speech at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters
The repeated claim: “Honestly, it looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was it was, but it went all the way back to the Washington Monument.” Later: “…all the way back to the Washington Monument, was packed.”
In fact: The crowd, which may not have even been half a million people strong, did not come close to reaching the Washington Monument.
2. Jan. 20, 2017 — Post-inauguration Salute To Our Armed Services Ball
The claim: “Even the media said the crowd was massive … that was all the way back down to the Washington Monument.”
In fact: The major media reported that the crowd was much smaller than Barack Obama’s two inauguration crowds, though in line with the inaugurations of other Republicans. The crowd did not come close to reaching the Washington Monument.
1. Jan. 20, 2017 — Post-inauguration Liberty Ball
The claim: “I looked at the rain, which just never came. We finished the speech, went inside, it poured … it’s like God was looking down on us.”
In fact: The rain began right at the beginning of Trump’s speech. During the inauguration itself, the Rev. Franklin Graham told Trump, “Mr. President, in the Bible, rain is a sign of God’s blessing. And it started to rain, Mr. President, when you came to the platform.”
Why do people attribute the Intel "deal" to Trump, when Intel already had the expansion planned?
MomentsofSanity
Lifer
- Jan 25, 2011
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Well. This USED to be a fun thread. Ca we maybe take this stuff elsewhere?
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