Trump Saying Wrong Proved Again and Again Wrong
President Donald Trump spent his outset days in office pushing faux claims virtually the size of his inauguration crowd.
He has spent the final weeks of his term blitzing the American people with falsehoods and far-fetched conspiracies as role of a failed endeavor to overturn the election he lost — cementing his legacy as what fact checkers and presidential historians say is the nigh mendacious White House occupant always.
"I have never seen a president in American history who has lied and so continuously and and then outrageously as Donald Trump, period," presidential historian Michael Beschloss said in an interview. "Dwight Eisenhower used to say one of the most of import tools a president of the United States has is that people believe what he says."
Simply that conventionalities in the president's words has become increasingly dependent on the political party to which a person belongs. Trump decries reports that are unflattering and facts that don't fit with his globe view as "simulated news," fueling a growing partisan information divide on everything from the contagiousness of the coronavirus to the reliability of the media.
Trump's run for the presidency was fueled by political prominence gained by promoting the racist "birther" lie well-nigh President Barack Obama, and his 2016 victory was secured past a campaign rooted in simulated claims about immigrants and inner-city crime.
Once in the White Firm, the president routinely made simulated claims near everything from toilet flushes to revenue enhancement reform. Some of Trump's fake claims drove policy, while conspiracy theories were elevated in tweets and in public and private conversations with foreign leaders.
In the last year of his term, Trump's endless false claims about the coronavirus muddied the U.S. response to the pandemic, which has killed 339,062 people as of Dec. 29, co-ordinate to an NBC News count. The president's utterly baseless merits that the election was stolen from him delayed President-elect Joe Biden's transition for weeks — hampering the incoming administration'due south efforts to ready for wide-scale vaccine distribution and endangering national security, according to experts.
"Afterward two centuries, it is impressive that Americans notwithstanding are inclined to believe what a president tells them, particularly at a moment of crisis," Beschloss said. "When a president breaks that bond of trust with the American people, it makes it harder for future presidents to accept the kind of moral authority that enables them to protect u.s.."
NBC News has fact-checked Trump for more than iv years. Based on thousands of hours of reporting and hundreds of reported fact checks, four issues stand above the rest as the falsehoods that ascertain the Trump presidency.
Covid-19
"Merely stay calm. It will get away." - President Donald Trump, March 10, 2020
Dozens of times since the start of the outbreak that has killed one.7 million people around the world, Trump publicly downplayed the severity of the novel coronavirus, suggesting it would become away on its own, while comparing Covid-xix, the disease information technology acquired, to the seasonal flu.
"It'due south going to disappear. 1 day — information technology's similar a phenomenon — information technology will disappear. And from our shores, nosotros — you know, it could get worse earlier it gets better. It could maybe go away. Nosotros'll see what happens. Nobody really knows," Trump said Feb. 28, with dozens of cases but no known fatalities in the U.South.
"We're doing a great task with information technology. And it will go away. Just stay at-home. It will get away," Trump said March ten, when there were simply over a yard known infections and xxx deaths.
His view was disputed by public health experts, including the government's ain tiptop scientists, who predicted that fifty-fifty with a strong, coordinated response, the virus wasn't just going to "go away." Later, the announcer Bob Woodward revealed that Trump had told him at the same time the president was publicly downplaying the virus'southward severity, he knew it was more dangerous than the flu and "deadly."
Later states enforced tough lockdown measures to slow the spread of the virus — wreaking havoc on the economy and putting millions out of work to try and salve lives with hospitals and emergency services overwhelmed — Trump pressured governors to reopen quickly, while experts cautioned against it. To back up his button, he falsely claimed cases were going down throughout the spring even equally experts warned the virus was uncontrolled; in a news briefing April 22, he lambasted coverage of experts who warned of a unsafe potential second wave in the autumn and the winter as "fake news."
A month later, Trump over again said things were improving: "At some point, it'll go away. It may flare upward, and information technology may non flare up. Nosotros'll have to see what happens," he said May 15. By that signal, at to the lowest degree 1.5 million Americans had been infected; 88,101 had died. The numbers decreased slightly in the summer every bit cities that were dwelling house to early surges drove down their caseloads, but by the fall, the virus had taken root in most every U.Due south. community; regional surges have led to one steady nationwide increase.
Trump connected to compare the virus to the flu fifty-fifty after he recovered from Covid-19 himself in early October.
In mid-October, as the nation readied for an expected winter surge, he tweeted: "Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are nosotros going to shut down our Land? No, we accept learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in virtually populations far less lethal!!!"
His tweet inaccurately inflated flu deaths while downplaying the coronavirus's danger. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation'south top communicable diseases expert, has said Covid-nineteen is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.
Trump also routinely spread misinformation near testing, the efficacy of masks, and potential and unproven treatments for the virus, once claiming that injections of antibacterial cleaning agents like bleach might clean the lungs of the virus.
X months in, more than xix.iv one thousand thousand people in the U.S. take been infected, merely public polls show a partisan divide on the agreement of the basic facts most the virus, which a big number of Republicans even so believe is no worse than the influenza. Numerous cases have been tied to big White House events.
Onetime New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, who appeared maskless at the White Firm before contracting Covid-nineteen, has said multiple times since his recovery that he was incorrect — and lamented the politics driving anti-mask sentiment in a public service ad.
Voter fraud
"VOTER FRAUD IS Not A CONSPIRACY THEORY, Information technology IS A FACT!!!" — President Donald Trump, Dec. 24, 2020.
When Trump won the Electoral College — and thus the presidency — in 2016, he told lawmakers he but lost the popular vote considering of millions of illegal votes. There was no evidence of that, something his own lawyers noted in an election court filing opposing the Green Party'due south recount efforts after the election, but the new president was undeterred.
At the get-go of his administration in January 2017, Trump urged states to undertake more voter roll maintenance in the name of rooting out fraud, stirring alarm over aggressive purges that voting rights advocates feared would disenfranchise eligible people. He then launched a commission to seek definitive proof of his claims of widespread fraud; the grouping disbanded without finding whatsoever proof of it.
Numerous academic studies and criminal investigations, too, have searched for widespread voter fraud over the years and come upward empty-handed. But there is aplenty show that restrictive voting laws aimed at preventing this declared fraud disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color.
Merely over three years afterward, as Biden was endmost in on the Democratic nomination and the rapid spread of Covid-19 was making clear the public health risks of people congregating at the polls, Trump began pushing a number of falsehoods specifically well-nigh voting by postal service.
Throughout 2020, Trump baselessly claimed that changes brought on by the pandemic — namely the big-scale expansion of postal service-in voting in nearly states, led by governors of both parties — were fraudulent, or that they created opportunities for fraud or foreign meddling. There are numerous safeguards that continue U.South. elections secure.
When Trump lost the general election, he blamed voter fraud and sent his lawyers to court to try and reverse the results. In a costless-wheeling news conference that lacked even a shred of evidence, his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, alleged everything from a "centralized" fraud scheme to ballot interference by foreign communists. Only a scattering of fraud cases accept been uncovered in key states: in Pennsylvania, three Republicans have been charged with illegally voting.
The president's false claims of a rigged or stolen election have not achieved the immediate goal of overturning the results. But many fear that Trump's refusal to accept his loss isdamaging to the overall health of America's democracy —some 68 percent of Republicans believe the election was "rigged," co-ordinate to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from mid-November.
Voting rights experts are sounding the alarm over another issue: a new alluvion of restrictive voting laws put forth by Republicans invoking widespread fraud no one can find. This scenario is already playing out in Texas, according to a report by the Texas Tribune. In Georgia, the GOP has promised a number of restrictions, including rolling back the absentee voting system Republicans in that location implemented a decade ago. These laws have the potential to significantly suppress legitimate votes, multiple experts take warned, and will peculiarly impairment Black people and voters of color more generally.
Trump "amplified the public conversation around voter fraud, he made that more of a household conversation, and he has increased the salience of voting restrictions for his supporters," Wendy Weiser, a national voting rights expert who directs the Republic Program at the Brennan Middle for Justice at the NYU School of Police, said in an interview this month. "In that way, he made information technology a lot worse."
Russia'south interference in the 2016 election
"This Russian federation thing with Trump and Russia is a fabricated-up story," Trump said May xi, 2018.
From Twenty-four hour period I, Trump has disputed what the U.S. intelligence community has concluded as a fact: Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election with the goal of boosting his bid while working to tear downward his Democratic opponent, quondam Secretary of Country Hillary Clinton.
He repeatedly called the and then-special counsel Robert Mueller's two-year probe into the matter a "witch chase" against him and the inference itself a "hoax," despite clear and sizable evidence that the Russian government worked to influence the issue of the election "in sweeping and systematic mode," equally Mueller'south report ended. Multiple people were indicted equally a issue of the investigation, including a former Trump campaign aide, while other close Trump associates were charged with unrelated crimes uncovered in the class of Mueller's probe.
The study gathered show that the president worked to stymie the investigation, but determined that the Section of Justice could not charge a sitting president and therefore would not determine whether he had broken the law. Trump, meanwhile, falsely claimed that Mueller's report "totally exonerated" him from any wrongdoing, including allegations of his campaign's "collusion" with Russia.
When asked straight if the special counsel did "actually totally exonerate the president," Mueller said "no."
In the second one-half of his presidential term, Trump began to raise a conspiracy theory that Ukraine and the Democrats framed Russia for ballot interference in an effort to ignominy his win. At the same time, Trump too began to advance a theory that Biden, then a likely 2020 front-runner, had acted corruptly while serving as vice president to benefit his son Hunter'south foreign business interests. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden.
Comments about these conspiracy theories — made in public, every bit well as in an infamous private telephone telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in July 2019, when Trump asked for an investigation into the Bidens — would eventually trigger Trump's impeachment, after Democrats in the House concluded that he had abused the power of the presidency by seeking foreign assistance with his upcoming election.
The conspiracy theory that Russia was being framed for election interference, a version of which was commencement publicly posted on a far-right message board, 4chan, in March 2017, fit into Trump's yearslong endeavour to ignominy Mueller'southward investigation and undercut the idea that a foreign government helped get him elected. But according to the Trump administration'due south own experts, he played into a narrative avant-garde by Russian federation.
Trump's one-time Russia expert, Fiona Hill, called the idea that Ukraine meddled in 2016 a "fictional narrative" promoted by Russian intelligence and rebuked Firm Republicans for using it to defend the president against impeachment. Trump, and members of the GOP, take contended that the actions his administration took toward Ukraine were motivated not by political or personal interest, but by legitimate concern well-nigh corruption in that country, including declared Ukrainian election interference.
"In the course of this investigation, I would enquire that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so conspicuously accelerate Russian interests," Hill said in her opening argument to Congress. "I refuse to be part of an endeavor to legitimize an alternating narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016."
The Trump agenda
"Republicans will always protect people with pre-existing conditions," Trump said Oct. 20, 2018.
Throughout his term, Trump fabricated sweeping and fake claims to bolster his ain policy agenda and exaggerate the extent of his achievement. He overstated his achievements on everything from tax reform to manufacturing investments.
After instituting tariffs on Chinese appurtenances, Trump boasted of raking in millions from China; in fact, Americans pay the bulk of tariffs on strange goods. He argued that Obama's policies had greatly hurt Maine's lobster merchandise and declared he'd saved the industry with a trade deal. In fact, it is Trump'southward merchandise war that pinched the industry.
Trump often took credit for the nation's economic recovery and inaccurately claimed the economy was struggling when he took office. In fact, the recovery began during Obama's administration and continued under Trump. After the economy took an enormous hit when the pandemic hit and prompted mass layoffs, Trump boasted of summer returns as new growth.
As a candidate, Trump vowed to build a southern edge wall and make Mexico pay for information technology. As president, he's built 423 miles of border wall, much of information technology in identify of older existing edge structures. Mexico has non paid a cent, despite the president'due south imitation claims to the contrary.
And in what is perhaps ane of his most bold-faced falsehoods, Trump argued for years Republicans were defenders of people with pre-existing conditions, all the while his administration and several red states sued to overturn the Affordable Intendance Act, the Obama-era wellness care law that guaranteed those protections, without proposing a program with comparable protections.
Repeatedly, Trump has inaccurately summed up the successes of his assistants. During a major speech at the United Nations, he said his administration had achieved more than any other. The assembled earth leaders laughed.
"Didn't expect that reaction," Trump said at the time. "But that'south OK."
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-versus-truth-most-outrageous-falsehoods-his-presidency-n1252580
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