Tag: Trump lies

‘A lying draft dodger’: Republican military veterans slam Trump and declare their support for Biden in a scathing attack ad

AlterNet logoThe Lincoln Project is not the only right-wing group that has been running ads slamming President Donald Trump; the group Republicans Voters Against Trump has been running anti-Trump ads as well. And a new RVAT ad, Ed Mazza reports in HuffPost, features Republican military veterans who do not want to see Trump reelected and are supporting former Vice President Joe Biden.

The ad, Mazza notes, will air on Fox News later this month during the 2020 Republican National Convention. And it will air in key battleground states that include Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona — all of which Trump won in 2016. Recent polls have shown Biden to be quite competitive in those states as well as in Michigan, where Trump’s campaign has suspended its advertising following an abundance of polls showing Biden with a double-digit lead.

In the ad, one of the veterans says of Trump, “We’re looking at a lying draft dodger who berates those who serve our country honorably, rewards those who do not.” Continue reading.

Trump Says Schools Must Reopen To Serve Free Lunch — Which He Tried To Cut

Donald Trump and his administration have been demanding that schools reopen in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic as it ravages large swaths of the country — often using the argument that millions of children rely on schools to provide them with the nutrition they otherwise do not get at home.

“Thirty million American students rely on schools for free and reduced meals,” Trump said at a July 23 news conference, listing off one of the reasons he wants kids to go back to school even as schools struggle with finding the space and the resources to safely reopen for full-time in-person learning.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also listed nutritional needs as a reason for full school reopening in a document Trump demanded from the government health agency. Continue reading.

Here’s the truth about the supposed return of manufacturing under Trump

AlterNet logoThe headline from the Commerce Department’s new report on the economy is that new shipments and new orders of durable goods by U.S .manufacturers increased at healthy rates in June – by 15 percent and 7 percent respectively. Larry Kudlow almost certainly will herald the numbers as proof that American manufacturing is back, and good times are just around the corner.

Don’t believe it.  Only one industry, motor vehicles and parts, was responsible for almost all of the gains. June shipments of motor vehicles and parts jumped 80 percent from their abysmal levels in May, and new orders increased 87 percent.  Set aside that industry, however, and U.S. durable goods manufacturers treaded water or worse in June. Their shipments were up less than 4 percent, and their new orders fell more than 6 percent.

The story is the same for the capital goods that businesses order and buy to maintain or expand operations: In June, shipments by capital goods manufacturers increased 3.5 percent and their new orders fell 16.5 percent. Continue reading.

Trump Discards Promises On Minimum Wage Increase

On July 1, Donald Trump said he would share good news about the minimum wage within two weeks.

Since then, 21 days have passed without a word from the White House on the subject.

“I’m going to have a statement on minimum wage,” Trump told Fox Business during a White House interview. “I feel differently than a lot of people on minimum wage, some people in my own party. But I will have a statement over the next two weeks on minimum wage.”

Trump claimed it would be “a very positive statement.” But the promised announcement never surfaced. Continue reading.

Chris Wallace fact checks Trump to his face as he melts down over COVID death rate: ‘That’s not true’

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump lashed out at Fox News host Chris Wallace after he was challenged on the false premise that the United States has the “lowest” COVID-19 mortality rate in the world.

“I think we have one of the lowest mortality rates,” Trump argued in an interview that aired on Sunday.

“That’s not true,” Wallace pointed out. “We have 900 deaths on a single day this week. You can check it out.” Continue reading.

‘Sheer lunacy’: Robert Reich explains how Trump’s plan to deal with COVID is only making things worse

AlterNet logoDonald Trump said that June’s jobs report, which showed an uptick, proves the economy is “roaring back.”

Rubbish. The Labor Department gathered the data during the week of June 12, when America was reporting 25,000 new cases of Covid-19 per day. By the time the report was issued, that figure was 55,000.

The economy isn’t roaring back. Just over half of working-age Americans have jobs now, the lowest ratio in over 70 years. What’s roaring back is Covid-19. Continue reading.

Donald Trump’s Lies, Misogyny And Loyalty Problems On Full Display In New Attack Ads

The conservative Lincoln Project, progressive MeidasTouch and author Don Winslow targeted the president with their new viral videos.

The anti-Donald Trump attack ads are coming thick and fast on social media from organizations on both sides of the aisle.

Conservative group The Lincoln Project, progressive PAC MeidasTouch and bestselling writer Don Winslow each targeted the president with new supercuts.

The videos, all posted in the 24 hours prior to Tuesday morning, quickly racked up millions of views on social media. Continue reading.

Inside the president’s long list of broken promises to the military

AlterNet logoTrump has a script he uses when he wants to tweet an endorsement for a Republican congressional candidate. He always says: “Candidate X fights for your Second Amendment, defends our Borders, strengthens our Military and loves our Vets!” For those of us who have gone in search of an agenda the president promotes, that pretty much sums up what he’d like us to believe are his priorities.

At his campaign rallies, Trump brags about how he’s rebuilt our military and passed the Veteran’s Choice Act, both of which have been rated lies by the Washington Post fact-checkers. So in the midst of the news that Russia offered bounties to extremists in Afghanistan for killing U.S. soldiers, perhaps it’s time to review what the president has actually done to our military.

  • He said John McCain wasn’t a “war hero” because he was a POW (“I like people who weren’t captured”)
  • He belittled the Gold Star parents of a Muslim soldier who died in Iraq.
  • He told troops in Iraq that they were getting a 10 percent pay raise, which was a lie (it was 2.6 percent).
  • He diverted $3.6 billion from military projects to pay for his border wall.
  • He pardoned three war criminals, despite objections from the Pentagon.
  • He promised to veto a defense appropriations bill if it removes confederate names from military bases. Continue reading.

Trump keeps saying Obama left him ‘no ventilators.’ The number is 16,660.

Washington Post logoThe president certainly has been offering a relatively consistent message — when the coronavirus pandemic struck, there were “no ventilators,” “none” or “very few,” and those few were “obsolete.”

Those phrases suggest the number of ventilators left behind by the Obama administration in the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) was zero.

So we were a bit surprised when Vice President Pence wrote in the Wall Street Journal on June 16: “The Strategic National Stockpile hadn’t been refilled since the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, and it had only 10,000 ventilators on hand.” Continue reading.