I (sort of) said I wasn't going to fact check Donald Trump's speech on Thursday night, and I'm not. I promise!
Oh, who am I kidding? The thing is, Trump's speech wasn't just his usual string of garden variety lies and exaggerations. He said some genuinely weird stuff that I assumed were lies, like everything else he says, but I wasn't sure. I finally got curious enough to check them out, but once I started they turned out to be endless. As a result the following list is long, but even at that it's not complete. After a while I just gave up on some of his weirdness because I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. I wonder if any of his fans realize that his standard stump speech is simply an invented fantasy from beginning to end?
Anyway, here it is:
They also gave up Bagram [in Afghanistan], one of the biggest bases anywhere in the world.... And you know who has it now? China has it now.
There were rumors back in 2021 about the Taliban giving China access to Bagram, but it never happened.
Russian warships and nuclear submarines are operating 60 miles off the coast in Cuba. Do you know that? The press refuses to write about it.
Last month a Russian sub visited Havana for a few days. It was nuclear powered, but carried no nuclear weapons. It was widely reported.
Israel has an Iron Dome. They have a missile defense system. Three hundred forty-two missiles were shot into Israel, and only one got through a little bit.... We’re going to build an iron dome over our country, and we’re going to be sure that nothing can come and harm our people.
Iron Dome, which protects Israel from short-range missiles, was largely funded by the US and some of it was co-produced by the US. In short, we already have it and it's deployed in the Red Sea (among other places), which is why all 342 of those Iranian missiles and drones were shot down. As for a bigger version, a la Ronald Reagan's SDI, that's for ICBMs, not short-range missiles. We've continued working on that since the '80s, but the technology remains problematic.
We’re going to get to the bottom of it. You remember [Biden] said we’re going to find a cure to cancer; nothing happened. We’re going to get to the cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s and so many other things. We’re so close to doing something great. But we need a leader that will let it be done.
We are nowhere near cures for cancer or Alzheimer's. This has nothing to do with political leadership and there is nothing to get to the bottom of.
We have to produce massive amounts of energy.... A.I. needs tremendous — literally, twice the electricity that’s available now in our country, can you imagine?
No. There are various forecasts, but none of them are anywhere near this. Goldman Sachs, for example, projects that AI will consume about 1% of US power by 2030.
We also left behind $85 billion dollars’ worth of military equipment [in Afghanistan], along with many American citizens were left behind. Many, many American citizens.
We didn't "leave behind" anything. The Afghan military was armed by the US over the course of 20 years, and after our withdrawal the Taliban took ownership of those weapons. Their value amounted to about $7 billion. As for the evacuation, we rescued 6,000 US citizens, about 90% of the total in country. The remainder mostly declined to leave, but we have nonetheless brought home several hundred in the two years since. No one knows how many remain—or whether they even want to leave—but it almost certainly amounts to less than 100-200 people.
We defeated 100 percent of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, something that was said to take “five years, sir, it’ll take five years, sir.” We did it in a matter of a couple months.
By the time Trump took office ISIS was about two-thirds defeated. It took two more years to finish the job.
The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country.... They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums.
There is no evidence this is happening.
Our crime rate is going up, while crime statistics all over the world are going down.
No. Crime in the US has dropped during every year of the Biden administration.
The other countries weren’t accepting [MS-13 gang members] back. And I called up and I said tell them that we’re not giving them economic aid any more.... And the next day I was called by everybody, I couldn’t take all the calls.
“Sir, sir, what’s the problem?”
I said, “You won’t take your killers back that you sent in caravans into America. You won’t take them back.”
“Well sir, if you’d like us to, we would give very serious consideration to doing that.”
In 24 hours, they were being taken back. For years and years when I first came in, they said President Obama tried to get them to go back and they wouldn’t accept them.
I can't even fact check this. Deporting gang members has been a bipartisan priority for decades. It's true that in 2019 Trump cut off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and later restored it, but that was related to his "safe third country" policy, not deportation of gang members.
Probably the best trade deal was the deal I made with China where they buy $50 billion of our product. They were buying nothing. They buy $50 billion worth.
The agreement was for $200 billion and China never made good on it.
Right now as we speak, large factories, just started, are being built across the border in Mexico. So, with all the other things happening at our border, and they’re being built by China to make cars and to sell them into our country, no tax, no anything.
To the extent this is happening, it will be done under the terms of the USMCA treaty, which Trump calls "the best trade deal ever made."
They want to raise your taxes four times. Think of it.... This is the only administration that said we’re going to raise your taxes by four times what you’re paying now. And people are supposed to vote for them?
This bears no relation to reality. Nobody has any plans to quadruple taxes on anyone, or anything even close to that.
Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force and their jobs are taken. By the way, you know who’s taking the jobs, the jobs that are created? One hundred and seven percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.
When Joe Biden took office the employment level of native born workers was 123 million. Today it's 131 million. That's an increase in the employment rate from 56.5% to 59.4%.
We’ve suffered the worst inflation we’ve ever had.
It's the fifth worst in the postwar era and it lasted only two years. The CPI has been barely above 3% for the past year.
Inflation has wiped out the life savings of our citizens, and forced the middle class into a state of depression and despair.
No it hasn't.
I told China and other countries, “If you buy from Iran, we will not let you do any business in this country, and we will put tariffs on every product you do send in of 100 percent or more.” And they said to me, Well, I think that’s about it. They weren’t going to buy any oil.... And [Biden] took off all the sanctions, and they did everything possible for Iran and now Iran is very close to having a nuclear weapon, which would have never happened.
Chinese oil purchases from Iran increased under both Trump and Biden. Iran is close to having a nuclear bomb because Trump unilaterally pulled out of Obama's nuclear treaty, which had limited Iran's ability to enrich uranium.
We’ve got Right to Try.... They’ve been trying to get that approved for 52 years, wasn’t that easy.... So I got everybody into an office.... We got them to sign an agreement. They agreed to it, where they’re not going to sue anybody.... We’re saving thousands and thousands of lives. It’s incredible.
Trump is talking about a bill that allows terminally ill patients to try new drugs that are still in testing. It's true that Congress passed a right-to-try bill under Trump, but (a) most states already had right-to-try laws, (b) the FDA already approved 99% of all requests from terminally ill patients anyway, and (c) best estimates suggest that only a tiny number of people have ever used the law.
Kevin, putting this compendium of Trump lies together was real work, a lot of effort went into this....and this was needed...So a BIG thank you! Best Wishes to you for Forever, you are an essential human being in our world, Traveller
i think kevin only did this because, as much as the likes of jasper in beijing & rural front national supporter are on his side in the biden must resign the presidency in nixonian disgrace sentiment, the bulk of his readership have been hostile to his overthetop embrace of dementiagate.
he's trying to win back regulars like crissa, solar, art eclectic, et. al., by trying to prove he won't be joining this tuesday afternoon lunching crew in voting for trump (regardless the democrat nominee).
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Lactate: It's never too late to benefit from therapy.
I just noticed your name. I assume it refers to the idiotic thing Maureen Dowd wrote about Gore’s concern for the environment, minorities, etc. She clearly thought he had been emasculated by these soft, silly concerns:
“ Dowd wrote in one column that "Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating."
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/10/gore200710
Trump talks like he is running for president for the first time. He was president for a full four years, longer than Biden has been, but Trump didn’t accomplish any of the things he now criticizes Biden for not accomplishing and he did not help grow the economy significantly like Biden has done — he just grew the debt by a couple of trillion. Maybe Trump has forgotten his first term and all these things he didn’t bother trying to accomplish.
You're greater than the sum of your parts, unless you're among conservatives where you're only as good as your bank account, and often not even that.
The problem with "fact-checking" is that it doesn't distinguish between lies and bullshit. This may seem like a distinction without a difference, but I believe it's really important. A liar may tell a lie like "I never cheated on my wife" when he actually did. But a bullshitter just makes things up from whole cloth, sometimes because he just likes the way it sounds. A bullshitter doesn't lie to cover something up. He lies as a way to win people over, or to gauge how gullible they are. It's part of the confidence game, to manipulate people into believing in his awesomeness.
Trump does a lot of this. When he says he presided over the greatest economy in history, he is bullshitting. But the media fact-checkers will be silent because this is not something that can be "fact-checked." Similarly, a lot of his bullshit statements can't be fact-checked because they are so garbled; so the "fact-checkers" look for some word or phrase that IS true so they can report that the overall statement is "partially true" or "true but misleading."
I'd been thinking a lot about this as well, but I think you expressed it best. What we need is not truth/lie factchecking, but bullshit meters on everything Trump says. They would still be bursting at 100% capacity most of the time, but we could at least dispense with this nonsense that something he says is merely "misleading" or "partly true". It's all bullshit
h/t Harry G. Frankfurt
TRUMP: Inflation has wiped out the life savings of our citizens, and forced the middle class into a state of depression and despair.
KEVIN: No it hasn't.
"life savings" includes bank savings accounts, which have declined in value by 20% - 25% due to the inflation of recent years. Maybe not "wiped out" but definitely a hard blow to someone who may have had $100 K in the bank.
And before someone chimes in to say, well, they should have put it in an IRA or stock market fund, think of what you are saying. You are saying that people cannot be confident that cash holds its value for very long. Are you at ease living in that economic environment? Because that's how it is in third world countries, where people are quick to exchange for a more stable currency (dollar, yen, Swiss franc), there is a constant need to find assets that keep pace with inflation, and where the wealthy with real assets are insulated from those concerns.
It is still a demonstrably false assertion.
This made-up and very rare person who both doesnt own a house and whose only assets are $100k in a checking account would likely be reliant on either work during retirement years or Social Security. Both of which received significant boosts along with years low unemployment and expanded health insurance subsidies.
In more normal inflation times, this made-up person would have still lost 10+% of their wealth, still a sizeable chunk!
Even in your example where you ignored their main source of retirement age wealth, this person is neither wiped out nor going through a depression. In reality, they still seem better off than late in 2019.
And obviously you are glossing over Trump's statement that this is the state of the entire middle class.
denied....
thank you.
MEOOOOOW. thats all I can say. What can you say bout Mr. Whore monger...Kitties know.
I know you’re one of Kevin’s resident trolls. But what the fuck planet are you living on when you wrote “You are saying that people cannot be confident that cash holds its value for very long.” Um duh? I distinctly remember movie tickets, regular size popcorn and a drink costing my aunt (who took me to a movie once or twice a month throughout the entire 1980s) like $10 total. And now the same combo for my nieces costs me like $25. It’s no secret that prices rise over the course of almost everyone’s lifetime: this is how we had my grandmother back in the 1980s telling us “oh my gosh when I was a little girl you could go to the movies for a nickel and popcorn and drinks were another nickel.”
Only really small children don’t understand (1) inflation is a thing, (2) inflation is unavoidable if you live long enough and thus (3) this is why America should have more safety nets like Social Security which automatically adjust for inflation. Nobody can help that some people socked $100k into a bank account and now find it only buys what $75k would’ve bought a decade ago, because the gradual erosion of what money can buy has been happening throughout all of human history. Those people were fucking stupid and so are you Dana Fucktard.
inflation is absolutely a necessity.
& for trump to say bidenflation is the worst in history proves he doesn't understand that. the amount of control the government here proved over inflation, never having it higher than in any other developed economy & now back in target range, shows he knows less than nothing.
also, it's not even the worst in his lifetime, unless he thinks nixon, ford, carter, & reagan got a bum rap.
You are saying that people cannot be confident that cash holds its value for very long.
Correct. That's always been the case. Even in 2007-2015, we had some inflation.
The ISIS campaign was finished by Kurdish ground troops, taking many many casualties. In repayment for their loyalty then and through the Iraq war, Tweeto sold them out to the Turks, resulting in all the ISIS prisoners being freed. A tragedy and betrayal but hey, we got a Trump hotel in Istanbul. Great trade Donald.
It's not so much a difference between truth and lies than it is the shared vibe that defines the gestalt of the MAGA's persecution and suffering for being MAGA.
Put another way, it's not about the truth, it's about being insufferable assholes playing victims (cosplay) in their own comic tragedy.
I don't think it's even about wanting to be assholes. It's about Haves wanting to be Have Mores, and Have Nots being able to feel good again about looking down on Mexicans, Muslims, Gays and of course immigrants.