BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
I am disgusted, hurt, angry, horrified, embarrassed, and ashamed over the election of donald drumpf / trump for president, jd vance for vice-president and what seems will be a gop / greed over people -republican party controlled congress. With God's help I will not let these negative feelings and emotions determine how I treat and interact with people who voted for them and those who didn't. I do not want to encourage people who supported and voted for the Harris-Walz campaign and democratic candidates at the local, state and national level to resort to the same dishonesty, apostacy, deception, fearmongering, hate, class warfare, sexism and racism the opposition used to win. Instead I will try to hold fast to my faith and to practice the the teachings of my Christian upbringing while dealing with the results of this election. This prayer from Sojourners is a beginning....
Rev. Kaeley McEvoy is the the fellowship program director and staff chaplain at Sojourners.
NOV 7, 2024
After a turbulent election season, we know the results. And while elections have real consequences, we know that regardless of which party controls the government, the earthly empire never has the final say.
As I’ve thought about what will sustain me in the days ahead, I’ve been heartened to remember that we are not the first people who have struggled to be faithful under the thumb of oppressive leadership. I’ve especially been thinking of the stories in Exodus: Shiphrah and Puah, the courageous midwives who rejected Pharaoh’s demand to murder male children (Exodus 1:15-22), God’s promise to Moses (Exodus 3:12), and Miriam who led her people in song after escaping the confines of slavery in Egypt (Exodus 15:20-21). The God of Exodus and our God of today are one and the same. Our God is one who remains steady in times of great upheaval and tyrannical leadership.
Therefore, with a great cloud of witnesses, we pray:
Ageless God, we seek the wisdom of Shiphrah and Puah, midwives who defied Pharaoh’s orders and instead protected life.
Like the Hebrew women living under empire, teach us how to create systems of mutual aid, community care, and resistance.
Help us center the vulnerable, so that all may experience abundant life, resisting the pain of empire.
We know, O God, that white supremacy, xenophobia, and homophobia must be defeated, no matter who holds dominion.
Give us strength to resist whenever a child of God is dehumanized.
God who is greater than all kings, may we remember the wisdom of our ancestors — their songs, prayers, and guidance.
May we remember your words to Moses when he feared Pharaoh’s wrath: “I will be with you.”
In times of trial, faith has always found a way.
Along with the midwives, we hold on to the witness of Miriam, who in fleeing Egypt had the forethought to grab her tambourine, knowing that one day joy would be necessary.
God of liberation, we know that one day the captives shall be free. We know that one day your peace shall have the final word. Until that day, may we hold each other tightly, work for your beloved community to reign supreme, and live together in pursuit of peace for all of God’s children.
THIS is disgusting but not surprising, drumpf / trump-vance do not have a reputation of honesty or compassion, these Bastarde no doubt get pleasure in lying to people and scaring them unnecessarily. Hoping and praying we get the last laugh when Harris-Walz win the election on Tuesday, 5 November 2024.
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In Arizona, older people recently received a mailer declaring Medicare had been cancelled. It had a big red stamp that proclaimed, “Medicare Cancellation Notice.” Also emblazoned on its front was this: “Warning: Rates are going up & plans are being cancelled. Details enclosed.” Its return address was the “Department of Medicare Cancellation, Kamala Harris Administration.”
That return address should have been a tip-off that this was not an official notification—along with a scrawled add-on in cursive: “I hope you can afford to lose your insurance! — Kamala Harris XOXO.”
It’s hard to know whether any recipient saw this and received a shock, fearing their Medicare was being cut off. But the group that sent out this official-looking piece of campaign literature, Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, was spreading false and misleading information about Medicare and about Harris.
The mailer sent out by Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC. It is designed as a “Medicare cancellation notice,” but it’s a misleading piece of campaign literature.
The backside of the notice claimed that Harris is “destroying Medicare.” It said that due to Harris, Medicare premiums were skyrocketing and that she “has a new plan that would completely liquidate Medicare funds,” adding, “All the money you’ve paid into Medicare will be gone.” It dramatically asserted, “Your care [will be] cancelled.”
None of this is true. Medicare premiums are not skyrocketing. For instance, the standard monthly Part B premium went from $164.90 in 2023 to $174.70 this year. Harris has no “new” plan to “completely liquidate Medicare funds.” She recently proposed expanding Medicare to cover long-term, in-home health care and said the program would be paid for by negotiating lower drug prices. She also called for widening Medicare to include hearing and vision benefits.
The backside of the mailer sent out by Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC.
The MAGA, Inc. mailer contained footnotes seemingly to back up its outlandish accusation. But they were vague and misleading. They appeared to point to references from years ago when Harris was a supporter of Medicare for All, which is no longer part of her policy agenda.
MAGA, Inc. is the top pro-Trump super PAC. It has raised over $300 million during the 2024 campaign, most of it from Republican billionaires, including Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald; Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager; Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner and real estate magnate who went to jail for tax evasion and for retaliating against a federal witness (and whom Trump pardoned); and Timothy Mellon, the reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, who has pumped in over $150 million. (Mellon also gave $25 million to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s failed presidential campaign.) MAGA, Inc., according to a memo it released this summer, aims to spend at least $100 million in ads to portray Harris as “the most radical liberal ever to run for President.”
MAGA, Inc., since its founding in 2022, has been a critical player in Trumpworld. Its first executive director was Taylor Budowich, a former Trump White House aide, who refused to cooperate with the House January 6 committee and who testified to the grand jury that investigated Trump’s alleged swiping of classified documents. He joined the Trump campaign in August. Other staffers have included Steve Cheung, now the Trump campaign’s combative spokesperson, and Chris LaCivita, co-manager of Trump’s current presidential bid.
Medicare is frequently a hot issue during a presidential campaign, in particular because seniors tend to vote at high rates. Harris’ campaign cites her accomplishments regarding Medicare, pointing out that the Biden-Harris administration capped out-of-pocket spending for Medicare beneficiaries and limited the cost of insulin for recipients at $35 a month. It also provided Medicare the authority to negotiate lower prescription drug costs. And Medicare solvency improved during the Biden years.
Repeatedly during the 2024 campaign, Trump has vowed not to cut Social Security or Medicare, though in March he did say in an interview, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.” (When he was president, Trump did propose Medicare cuts.) Tax experts have noted that Trump’s proposal to exempt taxes on Social Security would lead to Social Security and Medicare receiving $1.6 trillion less in revenue in the next ten years and push each into insolvency sooner. (Project 2025—which Trump has tried to distance himself from—calls for changes in Medicare that would move more recipients into Medicare Advantage plans that are run by private insurance companies, and, according to Fortune, this could increase the financial pressure on Medicare.)
Mother Jones contacted MAGA, Inc. and asked if the super PAC intended for the mailer to look like an official notice and if it was concerned a recipient might at first be scared, believing his or her Medicare had been cancelled. It did not respond.
Mailers often convey the most scurrilous political attacks. Yet they tend to receive little media attention and routinely escape fact-checking and rebuttal. (As I reported recently, in Michigan, Jewish Republicans mailed out campaign literature accusing Harris, whose husband is Jewish, of being bad for Jews.) So it’s unlikely that the seniors who saw this faux notice exclaiming Medicare has been shut down will subsequently receive a counter explaining that Medicare was not cancelled and is not being destroyed by Harris.
Political campaigns can be sleazy affairs. But there is something particularly odious about billionaires attempting to frighten Medicare recipients with phony messaging in order to persuade them to vote for a guy who has proposed Medicare cuts and who will shower the wealthy with large tax breaks. But to them, this must seem a solid investment.
AND it isn't just NOT MY pres drumpf/trump, NOT MY vice pres pence is well aware of and a willing participant in the propaganda campaign by the White House and their administration. They are the greatest threat to the American Republic today and will succeed if they are able to divide we the people more than we are already are to the point that they will claim in order to save the nation they have to destroy our democracy. They spread lies, their alternative facts, and fear. They keep repeating the same lies, manipulating the populace, turning groups of Americans against each other because each group being manipulated sees the others as a threat to their socio-economic survival. Our nation's politics, at every level, is broken almost beyond repair and many of those in office are actually afraid of working with any other party or different factions in their own party because they will be accused by the drumpf/trump-pence administration of betrayal and of being another threat. This is not crying 'The sky is falling', this is an attempt to make people aware of what is actually going on in our country. If you doubt class warfare is being waged by the drumpf/trump-pence administration with a propaganda campaign directed from the White House just check out the below from +Mother Jones & The Washington Post and then go to HAMILTON68-A DASHBOARD TRACKING RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA ON TWITTER to see how they run their propaganda campaign that is still working to manipulate and deceive the American people (in support of the drumpf/trump-pence administration) and that allows putin to maintain control of the theocratic oligarchy they have imposed on the Russian people.
That was the headline on a piece last week from the Washington Post, whose reporters continued the herculean task of debunking wave after wave of President Donald Trump’s lies. (It turned out there was a 30th Trump falsehood in that time frame, regarding the head of the Boy Scouts.) The New York Timeskeeps a running tally of the president’s lies since Inauguration Day, and PolitiFact has scrutinized and rated 69 percent of Trump’s statements as mostly false, false, or “pants on fire.”
Trump’s chronic duplicity may be pathological, as some experts have suggested. But what else might be going on here? In fact, the 45th president’s stream of lies echoes a contemporary form of Russian propaganda known as the “Firehose of Falsehood.”
In 2016, the nonpartisan research organization RAND released a study of messaging techniques seen in Kremlin-controlled media. The researchers described two key features: “high numbers of channels and messages” and “a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions.”
The result of those tactics? “New Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”
Indeed, Trump’s style as a mendacious media phenomenon resonates strongly with RAND’s findings from the study, which also explains the efficacy of the Russian propaganda tactics. Here are the key examples:
RAND: “Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels.”
Trump is known for his high-volume use of Twitter, tweeting about 500 times in his first 100 days in office, using both his personal account and the official @POTUS account. His tweets often become the subject of news stories and sometimes provoke entire news cycles’ worth of coverage across the mainstream media, such as when he accused former President Barack Obama of “wiretapping” his campaign and suggested he might have secret recordings of ex-FBI Director James Comey. Both CNN and the Los Angeles Times keep running tweet trackers on the president. Trump has also appeared on White House-friendly cable news shows like Fox & Friends—a show he also tweets about effusively on a regular basis.
Trump is also a prolific liar on stage: Of the 29 false statements the Washington Posttracked last week, five came in a speech to Boy Scouts, two came from a news conference, and a whopping 15 came from a rally in Youngstown, Ohio. (Seven others came from, where else, his personal Twitter feed.)
The deluge matters, notes RAND: “The experimental psychology literature suggests that, all other things being equal, messages received in greater volume and from more sources will be more persuasive.”
RAND: “Russian propaganda is rapid, continuous, and repetitive”
Trump often repeats misleading statements in rapid, successive tweets. As the Postcaptured, in three tweets within 13 minutes on the evening of July 24, he railed against the “Amazon Washington Post,” and in three tweets between 3:03 a.m. and 3:21 a.m. on July 25, he railed against his old foe Hillary Clinton, calling Attorney General Jeff Sessions “VERY weak” for not investigating her, and wrongly saying that acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s wife received money from Clinton.
Why the technique works: RAND explains that “repetition leads to familiarity, and familiarity leads to acceptance.”
RAND: “Russian propaganda makes no commitment to objective reality”
Phony news stories are a staple of Vladimir Putin’s Russia—and as Mother Jones has detailed, Trump and his team have been caught repeating several that originated in Russian news outlets.
Trump also has a habit of repeating false statements that can be very easily checked—such as lies about the number of bills he has signed. On July 17: “We’ve signed more bills—and I’m talking about through the Legislature—than any president, ever.” And then on July 21: “I heard that Harry Truman was first, and then we beat him. These are approved by Congress. These are not just executive orders.” The historical record shows that many presidents—including Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton—all signed more bills within their first six months of office.
RAND notes that this propaganda strategy flies in the face of conventional wisdom that “the truth always wins.” However, the researchers found, “Even when people are aware that some sources (such as political campaign rhetoric) have the potential to contain misinformation, they still show a poor ability to discriminate between information that is false and information that is correct.” Confirmation bias and emotion also factor in: “Stories or accounts that create emotional arousal in the recipient (e.g., disgust, fear, happiness) are much more likely to be passed on, whether they are true or not.”
RAND: “Russian propaganda is not committed to consistency”
Trump’s story often changes, even among his own false statements. The New York Times tracked five times this spring that the president changed his story about when China had stopped manipulating its currency—from “the time I took office” to “since I started running” to “since I’ve been talking about currency manipulation.” The reality is, China stopped manipulating its currency years ago.
According to RAND, this approach exploits relatively low expectations of truth among the public regarding statements from politicians. In Russia, “Putin’s fabrications, though more egregious than the routine, might be perceived as just more of what is expected from politicians in general and might not constrain his future influence potential.” In the United States, Trump may be taking advantage of historically low public trust in both the media and politicians.
RAND: “Don’t expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth.”
The Washington Post has called Trump “the most fact-checked politician.” Yet, the RAND research found that pointing out specific falsehoods was an ineffective tool against the propaganda techniques they studied in Russia because “people will have trouble recalling which information they have received is the disinformation and which is the truth.” The researchers acknowledged the challenges that other governments and organizations like NATO have in countering Russian propaganda, and advised against taking on the propaganda messages directly.
Some responses proposed by the researchers may also hold clues for media struggling to contend with Trump’s unprecedented behavior in the Oval Office. The researchers suggest making the first impression on an issue by priming audiences with accurate information, to get in front of a potentially misleading message. And they advise exposing the method: “Highlight the ways propagandists attempt to manipulate audiences,” they say, “rather than fighting the specific manipulations.”
For the American media, it may well be a matter of doing both, and often.
In a period of less than 26 hours — from 6:31 p.m. on July 24 to 8:09 p.m. on July 25 — President Trump made two fired-up speeches, held a news conference and tweeted with abandon, leaving a trail of misinformation in his wake. Here’s a roundup of his suspect claims.
National Scout Jamboree at Glen Jean, W.Va., 6:31 p.m. EST, July 24, 2017
“19th Boy Scout Jamboree, wow, and to address such a tremendous group. Boy, you have a lot of people here. The press will say it’s about 200 people. It looks like about 45,000 people. You set a record today. You set a record. That’s a great honor, believe me.”
The figure of 45,000 is not official but if so, that would not be a record. The most-attended single-site jamboree was held in 1964, in Valley Forge, Pa., with 50,960 attendees. In 1973, the jamboree was held in two sites, in Idaho and Pennsylvania, for a total of 73,610 attendees. (Those are raw numbers. In terms of percentage of Boy Scouts attending, 2010 holds the record.) At last count, 26,000 Scouts were expected at the 2017 event, suggesting it would fall well short of the record.
“Our stock market has picked up — since the election November 8th. Do we remember that date? Was that a beautiful date? What a date.”
Trump equates the rise of the stock market since the election as a demonstration of a good economy. But the stock market had already been rising for years before he was elected — and he called it “a big, fat, ugly bubble.”
“And you know we have a tremendous disadvantage in the electoral college — popular vote is much easier.”
According to a tally by John Pitney of Claremont McKenna College, every Republican president since Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 won a larger share of the electoral college votes than Trump, with the exception of George W. Bush (twice) and Nixon in 1968.
“We had the best jobs report in 16 years. The stock market on a daily basis is hitting an all-time high.”
Trump appears to referring to the fact that the unemployment rate was 4.4 percent in June, which is a 16-year low. (This was a slight increase from 4.3 percent in May.) The unemployment rate was 4.8 percent in January, when Trump took office — and when he campaigned for president he routinely said the unemployment numbers were phony and were actually as high as 42 percent. (The actual jobs report was nothing special, with fewer jobs created than in June 2016.) As we noted, during the campaign Trump often said the stock market was in “a big, fat, ugly bubble.” Now he celebrates its continued rise.
“And very soon, Rick, we will be an energy exporter. Isn’t that nice — an energy exporter? In other words, we’ll be selling our energy instead of buying it from everybody all over the globe.”
The United States is already exporting energy, and has exported more than it has imported since 2015. Led by the hydraulic fracturing techniques, the United States and the rest of the world have been in the midst of an energy revolution that began nearly 15 years ago. Saudi Arabia leads the world with one-fifth of the world’s oil reserves.
The Washington Post is owned by Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Amazon does not own The Post, but in any case the president’s claims about “no-tax” Amazon are out of date. Amazon used to lobby to keep Internet sales free from state taxes, but no more. As of March, Amazon is collecting sales tax on purchases in every state that has one.
Trump is referring to efforts by a Ukrainian American operative to expose former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s ties to the Russian government. But the comparison to the Russian probe is overblown and facile, making a similar criminal probe problematic.
One fundamental difference is that Ukraine is considered a U.S. ally, and Russia is considered an adversary. Moreover, U.S. intelligence officials found a top-down effort, initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, to illegally hack and release information in a deliberate attempt to meddle in the U.S. election and undermine the democratic system. There is no such evidence of a top-down effort in the Ukrainian case.
Instead, a Ukrainian American Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa began looking into Manafort’s ties to Viktor Yanukovych, a former pro-Russian president of Ukraine, as a part of her volunteer work in 2014. She apparently received some guidance from the Ukrainian Embassy in order to locate public documents. That’s entirely different from state-sponsored illegal hacking. There’s also no evidence that the DNC used information gathered by Chalupa or that the Ukrainians coordinated opposition research with the DNC.
Trump conflates a number of issues here in his continuing effort to force his attorney general from office because of his anger that Sessions followed Justice Department guidance and recused himself from the Russia probe.
The Clinton email issue was exhaustively investigated by the FBI, with the conclusion a year ago that she was “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information but did not intend to violate any laws. “In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts,” FBI Director James B. Comey said in July 2016.
There is no evidence that Clinton was involved in the question of whether the Democratic National Committee’s servers should be turned over to the FBI as part of the investigation into Russian-linked hacking after the DNC was hacked. The FBI and the Democratic National Committee disagree on whether the FBI requested access to the DNC’s servers. Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the bureau made “multiple requests at different levels” to access the DNC’s servers, but the DNC said the FBI never requested access.
The DNC allowed a private company, CrowdStrike, to review its database and share findings with the FBI. “We got the forensics from the pros that they hired which — again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this my folks tell me was an appropriate substitute,” Comey said.
It’s worth noting here that the DNC was the victim in this instance, and yet Trump without evidence seems to be accusing it of a crime. Moreover, it was Trump himself who said after the election that it would be not be appropriate to investigate Clinton any further, so Sessions presumably was following his guidance.
Andrew McCabe, who is now the acting FBI director, became part of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails long after his wife, Jill McCabe, unsuccessfully ran for a Virginia Senate seat. The political action committee of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) gave $452,500 to McCabe, and the state Democratic Party gave her campaign an additional $207,788. That was about one-third of the $1.8 million budget for her campaign.
McAuliffe is close to Clinton, but there is no evidence she knew of the contributions. Moreover, it stretches the imagination that McAuliffe would know that the husband of someone he was supporting in a Virginia legislative race was going to be promoted months later to a position of authority in the email case.
Why is McCabe acting FBI director? Because Trump fired Comey.
Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, gave a lengthy statement explaining his side of the story and denying any collusion. That is not Kushner “proving he did not collude with the Russians”; the special counsel’s investigation is still under way.
As a part of his statement, Kushner said: “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form, above and beyond what is required.”
Trump news conference, 3:30 p.m., July 25, 2017
“Lebanon is on the front lines in the fight against ISIS, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.”
Trump made this comment at a joint news conference with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. But Hariri is only in power because of a deal he struck with Michel Aoun, Hezbollah’s main Christian ally, to make Aoun president. Hezbollah, the militant group, dominates the Lebanese cabinet and is more powerful than the official Lebanese army, recently launching an operation against a militant group in the eastern town of Arsal. So it’s a bit odd for Trump to suggest the Lebanese government is fighting Hezbollah.
“Obamacare is a disaster. It’s failing on every front. It’s too expensive. It gives horrible coverage.”
Trump continues with his overheated rhetoric on the Affordable Care Act, with as usual few specifics. Credible estimates suggest the health-care law boosted the number of people with health insurance by 20 million. The Congressional Budget Office, in its reports on the GOP replacement bills, said that the individual market would be stable in most markets at least for the next 10 years under the Affordable Care Act.
As for Obamacare being too expensive, most people who participate in the exchanges receive tax subsidies that shield them from premium increases. The health-care costs have slowed since the passage of the ACA, though the jury is out that the law is mostly responsible. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that cumulative premium increases were 63 percent for 2001-2006, 31 percent for 2006-2011 and 20 percent for 2011-2016.
Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio, 7:14 p.m., July 25, 2017
“Don’t even think about it, we will build that wall.”
Congress refused to provide funding for the wall in the 2017 budget and prospects for funds being approved in the 2018 budget are dim because of continued congressional opposition. Trump has all but dropped mention of the notion of Mexico paying for the cost of the wall, a key campaign promise.
“After years and years of sending our jobs and our wealth to other countries, we are finally standing up for our workers and our companies”
Even during Trump’s “Made in America” week, when he urged manufacturers and consumers to “buy American, hire American,” his family’s company continued to rely on foreign workers. Another of Trump’s golf courses recently filed a request to hire 10 foreign workers to be waiters. Further, the fashion line of Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and adviser to the president, is out of step with the principles championed by her father.
“Unemployment last month hit a 16-year low.”
Trump once again is referring to the fact that the unemployment rate was 4.4 percent in June, which is a 16-year low. (This was a slight increase from 4.3 percent in May.) The unemployment rate was 4.8 percent in January, when Trump took office — and when he campaigned for president he routinely saidthe unemployment numbers were phony and were actually as high as 42 percent.
“Since my election, we’ve added much more than 1 million jobs. Think of that.”
It’s unclear why Trump would give himself credit for jobs created in the last three months of President Barack Obama’s term. In the five months since Trump took office, 863,000 jobs have been created — fewer than the last five months of Obama’s second term. Indeed, Trump is falling behind on his promise to create 10 million jobs in his first term.
“We’ve achieved an historic increase in defense spending.”
Trump’s proposed defense increase is relatively modest — and not yet been approved by Congress.
“Boy, have we put those coal miners and coal back on the map.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 800 jobs have been created in the coal industry since Trump became president — an increase of less than 2 percent. Administration officials often misleadingly refer to “mining” jobs, which mostly consist of jobs in the oil sector, which has rebounded from a price slump that has little to do with administration policies.
“We can’t believe you gave [Iran] between $100 and $150 billion when they were ready to fail.”
In knocking the international agreement with Iran to freeze its nuclear ambitions, Trump makes it sound like the Obama administration provided the Islamic republic with U.S. taxpayer money. Because of international sanctions over its nuclear program, Iran had billions of dollars in assets that were frozen in foreign banks around the globe. With sanctions lifted, in theory those funds would be unlocked.
Trump uses too high an estimate of the funds made available to Iran. The Treasury Department has estimated that once Iran fulfills other obligations, it would have about $55 billion left. (Much of the other money was obligated to illiquid projects in China.) For its part, the Central Bank of Iran said the number was actually $32 billion, not $55 billion.
“[Harley Davidson says] when we sell a motorcycle in certain countries we have as much as 100 percent tax to pay.”
Trump probably is referring to the tariff that Harley-Davidson faces in India, which imposes a 100 percent import tariff on motorcycles. But the company has been able to get around the tariff by assembling its bikes in India. In March 2017, when Trump introduced this talking point, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported: “In India, where big touring motorcycles and cars are saddled with a 100% import tariff, Harley’s sales have grown by a brisk 30% in the past two years. That’s largely because the company has been able to get around the tariff by assembling bikes In India, something it’s done in that country since 2011.”
“We have cut illegal immigration on our southern border by record numbers — 78 percent.”
Trump’s anti-illegal-immigration rhetoric has contributed to lower border crossings along the Southwestern border, experts say. Despite seasonal trends, apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border declined steadily since October 2016. In April 2017, apprehensions reached their lowest point since at least 2002. But since then, apprehensions are climbing again, more in line with seasonal trends.
The figure Trump uses is exaggerated; he is comparing data from November or December 2016 (before he was inaugurated) compared to the lowest point in April 2017. There was just an 8.1 percent decline from February 2017 (the first full month of data from his presidency) through June 2017 (the latest data available).
“We are throwing MS-13 the hell out of here so fast.… We are actually liberating towns and cities.”
This is yet another exaggeration. Earlier this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted the largest gang surge to date. While about 1,000 gang members or affiliates were arrested, they were not yet deported out of the country as of June 2017. Moreover, just 104 were associated with MS-13.
Still, there has been an increase in the rate of gang deportations in general to El Salvador (where MS-13 gang’s roots are) and Salvadoran officials are preparing for more.
“This month in Chicago there have been more than two homicide victims per day.”
The statistic is accurate, according to a database of Chicago-area homicides by the Chicago Tribune. But Trump always uses the outlier city of Chicago in order to paint a picture of widespread increase in violent crimes across the country. Homicides in Chicago are a concern, but it must be noted that overall, violent crime is on a decades-long decline, since the height of the crack cocaine epidemic in the early 1990s. An uptick in crime over a two- or three-year period does not necessarily indicate a new crime wave.
“In West Virginia, recent premiums have gone up 169 percent since Obamacare went into effect. In Alaska, over 200 percent.”
This is one of Trump’s favorite talking points on Obamacare, yet it’s still misleading. For 2017, the average increase in premiums before subsidies was 25 percent, so he is cherry-picking the highest end of premium increases.
Moreover, Trump using data from the Department of Health and Human Services that do not take into account the effect of subsidies, which shield 84 percent of people in the exchanges from such extreme premium hikes. On average, eight out of 10 marketplace enrollees receive government premium subsidies, and they are protected from a premium increase (and may even see a decrease) if they stay with a low-cost plan.
“We want millions of Americans lifted from welfare to work and from dependence to independence.”
“Welfare” is a broad term and can apply to people who are working but receiving government assistance. If someone is receiving means-tested assistance, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are not working. In fact, eligibility for benefits often is contingent on searching for a job — in other words, working toward the “independence” that Trump mentions.
“Actually if I get what I want, it will be the single biggest tax cut in American history.”
The Trump administration has released no plan beyond a single sheet of paper. Even if it became a reality (there are reports that the tax plan is being scaled back), it still would be smaller than tax cuts passed by Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan.
“We have the highest taxes in the world.”
Trump almost never gets this correct. The Pew Research Center, using 2014 data, found that the tax bill for Americans, under various scenarios, is below average for developed countries.
In 2014, according to comparative tables of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), revenue as a percentage of the gross domestic product — the broadest measure of the economy — was 26 percent for the United States.
Out of 34 countries, that put the United States in the bottom third — and well below the OECD average of 34.4 percent.
“19th Boy Scout Jamboree, wow, and to address such a tremendous group. Boy, you have a lot of people here. The press will say it’s about 200 people. It looks like about 45,000 people. You set a record today. You set a record. That’s a great honor, believe me.”
speech at National Scout Jamboree – Monday, July 24, 2017
“And very soon, Rick, we will be an energy exporter. Isn’t that nice — an energy exporter? In other words we’ll be selling our energy instead of buying it from everybody all over the globe.”
speech at National Scout Jamboree – Monday, July 24, 2017
A look at President Trump’s first six months in office
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Scenes from the Republican’s beginning months in the White House.
Glenn Kessler has reported on domestic and foreign policy for more than three decades. He would like your help in keeping an eye on public figures. Send him statements to fact check by emailing him, tweeting at him, or sending him a message on Facebook.
