Tag: Trump has to lie to be re-elected

Rallies Are the Core of Trump’s Campaign, and a Font of Lies and Misinformation

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A recent rally in Wisconsin was typical. In 90 minutes, President Trump made 131 false or inaccurate statements.

Two minutes and 28 seconds into a campaign rally on a recent Saturday night in Janesville, Wis., President Trump delivered his first lie.

“When you look at our numbers compared to what’s going on in Europe and other places,” Mr. Trump said about the coronavirus raging across the United States, “we’re doing well.”

Red highlighted words are Trump lies or misstatement.

The truth? America has more cases and deaths per capita than any major country in Europe but Spain and Belgium. The United States has just 4 percent of the world’s population but accounts for almost a quarter of the global deaths from Covid-19. On Oct. 17, the day of Mr. Trump’s rally in Janesville, cases were rising to record levels across much of the country. Continue reading.

Protest arrests show regular Americans, not urban antifa

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump portrays the hundreds of people arrested nationwide in protests against racial injustice as violent urban left-wing radicals. But an Associated Press review of thousands of pages of court documents tells a different story.

Very few of those charged appear to be affiliated with highly organized extremist groups, and many are young suburban adults from the very neighborhoods Trump vows to protect from the violence in his reelection push to win support from the suburbs.

Attorney General William Barr has urged his prosecutors to bring federal charges on protesters who cause violence and has suggested that rarely used sedition charges could apply. And the Department of Justice has pushed for detention even as prisons across the U.S. were releasing high-risk inmates because of COVID-19 and prosecutors had been told to consider the risks of incarceration during a pandemic when seeking detention. Continue reading.

Trump’s falsehoods about Biden’s plan for prisons

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Democrats “want to get rid of the prison system. They want to — free federal housing for former inmates, so you get all of this free housing. They want to create housing for inmates; they want to do more for inmates than they do for you.” 

— President Trump, in remarks to a tele-rally in Nevada, Aug. 31

Joe Biden “wants prisons closed, and [to] provide free federal housing for former inmates.” 

— Trump, in remarks to a tele-rally in North Carolina, Aug. 11

This claim has been popping up in the president’s stump speech recently, but, once again, Trump is mischaracterizing Biden’s positions with wild exaggerations.

Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee and former vice president, says he would end the federal government’s use of private prisons and increase funding for halfway houses and transitional programs for former prisoners.

What Trump is describing — an emptying of prisons and free housing for all former inmates — is a flat-out false rendition of Biden’s plan, going far beyond the usual license politicians take on the campaign trail. Continue reading.

White House social media director tweets manipulated video of Biden

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White House social media director Dan Scavino is no stranger to sharing manipulated video online. In March 2020, Twitter applied its “manipulated media” label for the first time to a deceptively edited video of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden that was posted by Scavino and retweeted by President Trump. The video was cut short to make it sound as though Biden inadvertently endorsed Trump for reelection.

On Sunday, Scavino shared another altered video targeting Biden. Let’s dig in.

The Facts

Scavino tweeted a manipulated video from his personal account that makes it look like Biden fell asleep during a TV interview. The video spliced together two different clips — one from a 2011 KBAK interview with actor Harry Belafonte and the other of Biden at a virtual town hall event with Hillary Clinton in April 2020.

The video has a photoshopped chyron that reads “On air: Joe Biden | The importance of this election.” A soundtrack of snoring has been added. Continue reading.

Trump Spread Multiple Conspiracy Theories on Monday. Here Are Their Roots.

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In a wide-ranging interview with the Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday night, President Trump spread multiple conspiracy theories about the protests that have erupted across the nation. Many of his unfounded claims can be traced back to narratives that have been swirling online for months.

Here are three of the baseless conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump spread and where they came from.

A plane ‘loaded with thugs’ headed to the Republican convention.

During the interview with Ms. Ingraham, Mr. Trump claimed that “we had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend, and in the plane it was almost completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that.” Continue reading.

AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s distortion on Dems and the pledge

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is accusing the Democrats of taking God out of the Pledge of Allegiance at their national convention. He’s distorting what happened. 

TRUMP: “The Democrats took the word GOD out of the Pledge of Allegiance at the Democrat National Convention. At first I thought they made a mistake, but it wasn’t. It was done on purpose. Remember Evangelical Christians, and ALL, this is where they are coming from-it’s done. Vote Nov 3!” — tweet Saturday.

THE FACTS: That’s a misleading accusation. The central programming of the convention featured the entire pledge, complete with “under God.” Continue reading.

Trump Ads Attack Biden Through Deceptive Editing and Hyperbole

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We reviewed all of the Trump campaign’s television ads since June. Two-thirds contained clearly misleading claims or videos.

President Trump’s re-election campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars on television ads attacking his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr. While their content varies greatly, be it the coronavirus, police funding, taxes or charter schools, the tactics used remain constant: selectively edited remarks and exaggerations.

The New York Times reviewed 22 ads from the Trump campaign that have aired since June and that have been tracked by Advertising Analytics. We found that 14 of those ads contained clearly misleading claims or videos. Here’s a review.

Throughout much of June and July, the ads have focused on activists’ calls to defund the police with hyperbolic warnings about the ramifications. Continue reading.

Trump’s gaslighting $400 bait-and-switch scheme does nothing for unemployed Americans

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Trump and his administration have institutionalized bullshit by disconnecting actions and rhetoric from fact and truth. Their willingness to say anything so long as the results trick the gullible and advance their interests is shocking. Now, congressional inaction on further pandemic economic relief has compounded the Trump con game and opened the door to a cynical political ploy that could bury millions.

Trump signed an executive order last weekend that he and his underlings portray as a lifesaver tossed to people drowning in violent economic seas. The White House pretentiously titled it Memorandum on Authorizing the Other Needs Assistance Program for Major Disaster Declarations Related to Coronavirus Disease 2019.

The pandemic has become an excuse for empty posturing.

The reality is an attempt by the administration and GOP to absolve themselves of blame that could sink Trump’s re-election campaign. In presidential elections, voters keep a keen eye on what their finances tell them. The news for 10s of millions is bad. Continue reading.

Trump downplays COVID-19’s mortality rate in US

The Hill logoPresident Trump has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. has one of the lowest COVID-19 mortality rates anywhere in the world, even though the nation has recorded more deaths from the coronavirus than any other country.

The U.S. also has a mortality rate per 100,000 about twice that of Canada. While the U.S. rate is lower than Spain, the United Kingdom and Italy per 100,000 people, it is higher than such nations as Germany, France and the Netherlands.

But Trump is not focused on those numbers. Continue reading.

With bad coronavirus news at home, Trump points misleadingly to rising cases abroad

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Washington Post logoThe Debrief: An occasional series offering a reporter’s insights

With coronavirus cases nearing 5 million in the United States and average daily deaths topping 1,000, the United States is the hottest hot spot in the ongoing global pandemic — a ranking that wasn’t exactly what President Trump had in mind with his “America First” doctrine.

You wouldn’t know it, however, to hear the president describe the U.S. performance in handling the virus; he called it “an amazing job, a great job” on Monday, and recited a list of other countries experiencing a rebound in infections.

In recent days, Trump has increasingly pointed to the experiences of other countries in an attempt to dilute the bad news at home and justify the largely hands-off federal response, which has included no national mandates or lockdowns. Continue reading.