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Donald J. Trump Is The World’s Number One Liar Page 2
Study is first comprehensive examination of Covid misinformation in traditional and online media
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Noah Weiland

Of the flood of misinformation, conspiracy theories and falsehoods seeding the internet on the coronavirus, one common thread stands out: Donald Trump. That is the conclusion of researchers at Cornell University who analysed 38 million articles about the pandemic in English-language media around the world. Mentions of Mr Trump made up nearly 38 per cent of the overall “misinformation conversation”, making the president the largest driver of the “infodemic” — falsehoods involving the pandemic.

The study, to be released Thursday, is the first comprehensive examination of coronavirus misinformation in traditional and online media. “The biggest surprise was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid,” said Sarah Evanega, the director of the Cornell Alliance for Science and the study’s lead author. “That’s concerning in that there are real-world dire health implications.”

The study identified 11 topics of misinformation, including various conspiracy theories, like one that emerged in January suggesting the pandemic was manufactured by Democrats to coincide with Mr Trump’s impeachment trial, and another that purported to trace the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China, to people who ate bat soup. But by far the most prevalent topic of misinformation topic was “miracle cures”, including Mr Trump’s promotion of anti-malarial drugs and disinfectants as potential treatments for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. That accounted for more misinformation than the other 10 topics combined, the researchers reported. more...
The satellite election office voting sites are not considered polling places.
By Quinn Scanlan

President Donald Trump falsely claimed Tuesday night that "poll watchers" were blocked from entering voting locations in Philadelphia, bringing back to the forefront the legal battle his campaign and the Republican National Committee have been waging in Pennsylvania since late June. While the president's claim, based on current law, was wrong, his statement at the first presidential debate got at what his campaign and the national Republican Party have alleged is illegal in the key battleground state -- that "poll watchers" aren't allowed to observe voting where absentee and mail ballots are being cast because those locations don't constitute polling places.

Having non-election officials observe polling places is "one of the mechanisms of transparency of our electoral system," one election expert told ABC News. But it's also a practice that raises concerns among voting rights advocates, because it has a history of being used to intimidate certain voters, especially voters of color. "I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that is what has to happen. I am urging them to do it. As you know, today there was a big problem. In Philadelphia, they went in to watch, they were -- they are called poll watchers. A very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren't allowed to watch. You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia. Bad things," Trump said during the final minutes of the debate, hours after he tweeted a similar claim, alleging "corruption" was the reason.

But city officials asserted that no law was broken. "We're working on a plan now to make sure the polls are safe and secure," Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, told ABC News on Wednesday, noting the plans are "certainly more intense" this election. "The president of the United States has requested supporters to go to polling places. I mean, that's never happened before." More...
Fact Check By: Craig Jones, Newswise

Claim:
We won Michigan — first time in decades. And you know what we’ve done? Many, many car plants are now opening up ... I said, ‘Shinzo, please do me a favor, we need more car companies. ... We want them built here, not in Japan, please.’ He said, ‘But we can - Claim Publisher and Date: President Donald Trump in North Carolina on 2020-09-19

At a rally in North Carolina on September 19, 2020, Pres. Trump said that he persuaded former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to get car companies to bring manufacturing to Michigan. This claim is false. No Japanese-affilated auto-assembly plants have opened in Michigan and their doesn't seem to be any plans for the near future. In fact, the number of automobile and automotive-parts manufacturing jobs in Michigan has fallen since Trump was made President of the U.S. This includes the time leading up to the pandemic crisis that began in February.

As reported by AP Fact Check...

No Japanese automaker assembly plants have been announced or built in Michigan, let alone in one day, and there are no plans to add any. More...
Steve Schmidt says “there’s nothing that frankly comes even close.”
By Ed Mazza

Longtime Republican strategist Steve Schmidt says President Donald Trump’s admission that he knowingly downplayed the coronavirus threat early in the pandemic has no other parallel in the nation’s history. “Bob Woodward induced a confession of the greatest lie in American history, bar none,” Schmidt said on MSNBC Wednesday. “There’s nothing that frankly comes even close.”

Later in the interview, he added: “It is a catastrophic leadership failure. But more than that, there’s no equivalent in the country’s history to it. It is the greatest malfeasance in the history of the United States.”  Schmidt, who quit the GOP in 2018 over its support for Trump, is one of the cofounders of The Lincoln Project, a group of “never Trump” conservatives working against the president’s reelection. More...
MSNBC

Tonight, Chuck is obsessed with how Trump’s projections are his favorite defense mechanism.
CNN

President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and "more deadly than even your strenuous flus," and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward in his new book "Rage." #CNN #News Video...
Source: Reuters/AP

Donald Trump repeats claims he earlier made online, boasting of winning the 'Bay of Pigs Award' – an honour that doesn't exist. Trump twice visited a Bay of Pigs museum in Miami in 2016, where he received 'a hand-painted Brigade 2506 shield', which his campaign insisted was the award in question. Trump made the claims while courting Latino voters in Nevada, a state where he trails rival Joe Biden in polls, and one where the president failed to overcome Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Trump boasts about getting 'Bay of Pigs Award' – which doesn't exist Video...
By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly

It took President Trump 827 days to top 10,000 false and misleading claims in The Fact Checker’s database, an average of 12 claims a day. But on July 9, just 440 days later, the president crossed the 20,000 mark — an average of 23 claims a day over a 14-month period, which included the events leading up to Trump’s impeachment trial, the worldwide pandemic that crashed the economy and the eruption of protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody.

The coronavirus pandemic has spawned a whole new genre of Trump’s falsehoods. The category in just a few months has reached nearly 1,000 claims, more than his tax claims combined. Trump’s false or misleading claims about the impeachment investigation — and the events surrounding it — contributed almost 1,200 entries to the database.

The notion that Trump would exceed 20,000 claims before he finished his term appeared ludicrous when The Fact Checker started this project during the president’s first 100 days in office. In that time, Trump averaged fewer than five claims a day, which would have added up to about 7,000 claims in a four-year presidential term. But the tsunami of untruths just keeps looming larger and larger. more...
By Daniel Dale, CNN

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump got a rare grilling at an ABC News town hall in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
He responded to a series of tough questions from Pennsylvania voters, and some more from moderator George Stephanopoulos, much like he responds to easy questions from his favorite conservative television hosts -- with a barrage of dishonesty.
Trump made at least 22 false or misleading claims over the hour-and-a-half event, according to our preliminary count.

The coronavirus pandemic
Downplaying the virus
Trump was asked why he downplayed the coronavirus. He responded, "Well, I didn't downplay it. I actually -- in many ways I up-played it in terms of action."
Facts First: This is ridiculous spin. Trump admitted to journalist Bob Woodward in a recorded March 19 interview that "I always wanted to play it down" (he claimed he did so to keep the public calm). And we didn't need Woodward's tape to know Trump had downplayed it; this was obvious even back in February and March, when Trump kept wrongly claiming that the situation was under control and that the virus was akin to the flu.

Trump's praise of China
Pressed about how he had initially said China was doing a good job handling the virus, Trump suggested he had not issued such praise: "No, I didn't say one way or the other. I'm not saying one way or the other."
Facts First: Trump repeatedly and effusively praised China and leader Xi Jinping for their handling of the virus situation earlier this year. You can read a list of examples here.

Seniors
Trump said: "So I didn't say anything bad about President Xi initially, because nobody knew much about the disease. Nobody knew the seniors are susceptible."
Facts First: It's just not true nobody knew seniors were susceptible to the virus at the time of Trump's praise. Chinese officials emphasized in January that elderly people with chronic diseases were at the highest risk of serious illness. January media reports around the world talked about the risk to seniors; a January 23 report in the New York Times was headlined "Coronavirus Deaths Are So Far Mostly Older Men, Many With Previous Health Issues." Beginning in February, a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, had one of the first known outbreaks of the virus in the US. More...
By Salvador Rizzo

“Mail-In Ballots will lead to massive electoral fraud and a rigged 2020 Election.” — President Trump, in a tweet, July 2, 2020

More than 100 times this year, President Trump has peddled false claims or imaginary threats about voting by mail. The president may believe this disinformation campaign helps his chances of being reelected. But he is sowing confusion as states prepare for the Nov. 3 general election and is falsely accusing state officials of trying to rig the outcome. Trump also has encouraged people to vote twice, which is illegal. A mountain of evidence shows that mail voting has been almost entirely free of fraud through the decades, but Trump insists that it’s a recipe for disaster.

These warnings about vote-by-mail are almost identical to the disinformation Russia is spreading to undermine confidence in the U.S. presidential election. “Since March 2020, Russian state media and proxy websites have denigrated vote-by-mail processes, alleging they lack transparency and procedural oversight, creating vast opportunities for voter fraud,” according to a Department of Homeland Security intelligence bulletin. Election experts say that mail voting is slightly more vulnerable to fraud than voting in person but that both methods are trustworthy because of the safety measures state officials use to verify ballots.

“The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there’s no proof of widespread fraud,” Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a leading Republican elections lawyer who retired last month, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed Sept. 8. “At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged.” Some GOP strategists reportedly are worried Trump’s claims could boomerang on Republicans by depressing their voters’ participation. But it’s not just Trump. Attorney General William P. Barr and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel have repeated these falsehoods. More...
Alana Wise

President Trump acknowledged the deadliness of the coronavirus in early February and admitted in March to playing down its severity, according to interviews with the president that are included in a new book by legendary reporter Bob Woodward. "This is deadly stuff," the president told Woodward in a Feb. 7 conversation, according to the book, which is called Rage. "You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flu." But at the time, Trump was publicly saying that the virus was less of a concern. On Feb. 10, he told supporters in New Hampshire: "Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away." Later that month, Trump tweeted that the virus was "very much under control in the USA."

And in March, he compared the novel coronavirus to the seasonal flu, saying in a Fox News interview, "We've never closed down the country for the flu."  Trump's claims came despite scientists' relatively early findings that the coronavirus presented significantly more challenges than the seasonal flu because of its novelty, high hospitalization rate and other difficulties. The coronavirus has now been blamed for nearly 190,000 deaths in America. About a month after the February conversation, Trump admitted to Woodward that he had been playing down the virus' severity. "I wanted to always play it down," Trump told Woodward on March 19. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." One study has estimated that if the United States had implemented social distancing measures just a week earlier in March, some 36,000 lives could have been saved. More...
By Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb and Elizabeth Stuart, CNN

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and "more deadly than even your strenuous flus," and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward in his new book "Rage." "This is deadly stuff," Trump told Woodward on February 7. In a series of interviews with Woodward, Trump revealed that he had a surprising level of detail about the threat of the virus earlier than previously known. "Pretty amazing," Trump told Woodward, adding that the coronavirus was maybe five times "more deadly" than the flu. Trump's admissions are in stark contrast to his frequent public comments at the time insisting that the virus was "going to disappear" and "all work out fine."

The book, using Trump's own words, depicts a President who has betrayed the public trust and the most fundamental responsibilities of his office. In "Rage," Trump says the job of a president is "to keep our country safe." But in early February, Trump told Woodward he knew how deadly the virus was, and in March, admitted he kept that knowledge hidden from the public. "I wanted to always play it down," Trump told Woodward on March 19, even as he had declared a national emergency over the virus days earlier. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." If instead of playing down what he knew, Trump had acted decisively in early February with a strict shutdown and a consistent message to wear masks, social distance and wash hands, experts believe that thousands of American lives could have been saved. *** Trump does not give a shit about Americans he only cares about winning the election and will put more lives at risk to do so. *** more...
By Holmes Lybrand and Tara Subramaniam, CNN

Washington, DC (CNN)During a campaign speech in North Carolina on Tuesday, President Donald Trump spent much of his time attacking his opponent, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, with accusations that were often false or misleading. He inaccurately went after Biden on topics ranging from gun control, the border, his tax plan and pandemic response. CNN counted at least 10 false or misleading claims Trump made against his opponent. Here's a look at the President's claims and the facts behind them. Trump said that Biden wants to "confiscate your guns."

Facts First: Biden's gun control plan does not include confiscating legally owned weapons but would mandate that people who own assault weapons either properly register them with the authorities or sell them to the federal government, along with other measures.

Borders
Trump argued that Biden wants to "eliminate America's borders."
Facts First: This is flatly false. Biden does not support an open borders policy.

Suburbs
Trump suggested Biden and Democrats want to destroy suburbs. "They want to destroy your suburbs. You know that," Trump said.
Facts First: This fear mongering is entirely false. The Obama-era housing rule Trump is hinting at was meant to address racial segregation and does not abolish suburbs in any way.

This is a repeat of Trump's racially coded nonsense from July, when he worked to overturn the change the Obama administration made in 2015 to Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, a decades-old federal requirement aimed at eliminating discrimination and combating segregation in housing. You can read more about the regulations and Trump's false claims here. More...
By Holmes Lybrand and Tara Subramaniam, CNN

Washington, DC (CNN) President Donald Trump used a Labor Day press briefing at the White House to give a campaign-style address, attacking his political opponents, touting the alleged success the US has had against the coronavirus and repeating many false and misleading claims along the way. In all, CNN counted at least 11 outright falsehoods and a few more that were misleading or lacked context. Here's a look at the President's claims and the facts behind them. When asked about the Black Lives Matter protests happening across the US, Trump talked about the federal crackdown on protesters who have destroyed monuments, claiming, "We have now over 1,000 people, federal, in jail. We're prosecuting many people."

Facts First: This is not accurate based on data from Trump's own Department of Justice. While it is not clear where the 1,000 number came from, the department reported that as of September 2, a total of 227 people have been federally charged in cities, including Minneapolis, Portland, Salt Lake City and Seattle. The charges vary from arson to assaulting a federal officer.

Cancel culture
After a reporter asked about the President's calls to investigate the use of the New York Times' 1619 project to teach students about the country's history with racism, Trump said he wants "everyone to know everything they can in history," adding that he is "not a believer in cancel culture."

Facts First: It's false for Trump to suggest he doesn't like "cancel culture," considering how he has himself explicitly advocated cancellations, boycotts and firings on numerous occasions for what he considers objectionable words and acts. CNN's Daniel Dale compiled a list of such instances, countering the President's assertion. More..
An unfinished compendium of Trump’s overwhelming dishonesty during a national emergency
Christian Paz

President Donald Trump has repeatedly lied about the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s preparation for this once-in-a-generation crisis. Here, a collection of the biggest lies he’s told as the nation endures a public-health and economic calamity. This post will be updated as needed.

When: Friday, February 7, and Wednesday, February 19
The claim: The coronavirus would weaken “when we get into April, in the warmer weather—that has a very negative effect on that, and that type of a virus.”
The truth: It’s too early to tell if the virus’s spread will be dampened by warmer conditions. Respiratory viruses can be seasonal, but the World Health Organization says that the new coronavirus “can be transmitted in ALL AREAS, including areas with hot and humid weather.”

When: Thursday, February 27
The claim: The outbreak would be temporary: “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”
The truth: Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned days later that he was concerned that “as the next week or two or three go by, we’re going to see a lot more community-related cases.”

When: Multiple times
The claim: If the economic shutdown continues, deaths by suicide “definitely would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about” for COVID-19 deaths.
The truth: The White House now estimates that anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could die from COVID-19. Other estimates have placed the number at 1.1 million to 1.2 million. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. But the number of people who died by suicide in 2017, for example, was roughly 47,000, nowhere near the COVID-19 estimates. Estimates of the mental-health toll of the Great Recession are mixed. A 2014 study tied more than 10,000 suicides in Europe and North America to the financial crisis. But a larger analysis in 2017 found that while the rate of suicide was increasing in the United States, the increase could not be directly tied to the recession and was attributable to broader socioeconomic conditions predating the downturn. more...
By Daniel Dale

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump cited the Veterans Choice health care program on Thursday as evidence that he has done more for veterans than the late Sen. John McCain. There are two big problems here.

One: Choice was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2014.

Two: It was McCain's bill.

McCain, a Navy veteran who was held as a prisoner of war for more than five years during the Vietnam War, was a lead author of the bipartisan legislation -- putting it together with Sen. Bernie Sanders, another frequent target of Trump criticism. Trump has lied more than 150 times that he is responsible for getting the Choice program created. It's an especially egregious bit of deception, though, when he takes credit for McCain's own initiative to argue he has been superior to McCain. When he did the same thing in 2019, we called it one of his 12 most notable lies of the year. Trump made his latest comments about McCain while denying a report in The Atlantic magazine that alleged he had made various disparaging remarks about US soldiers who were killed, wounded or captured. The report said he had called McCain a "loser" after McCain died in 2018 and had expressed opposition to lowering flags to half-staff in McCain's honor.
CNN

President Donald Trump is a serial liar and he serially lied during his speech accepting the Republican nomination. CNN's Daniel Dale says he counted at least 20 false, exaggerated or misleading claims from Trump on Thursday night. That's in addition to a number of falsehoods from other speakers. Trump's dishonesty touched on a range of topics, from the economy to his administration's performance during the coronavirus pandemic. Some of Trump's most egregious false claims were directed at Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
By - AFP

US President Donald Trump misrepresented his record in office as well as the policies that his Democratic opponent Joe Biden has pledged to pursue if elected, capping a Republican National Convention that has been riddled with inaccurate claims. Dominated by law and order and also covering the economy and his administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic, Trump's speech on August 27, 2020 came 66 days before the November 3 election. AFP Fact Check breaks down Trump's claims below.

No safety in Biden's America
"Make no mistake, if you give power to Joe Biden, the radical left will defund police departments all across America," Trump said. "They will make every city look like Democrat-run Portland, Oregon. No one will be safe in Biden's America," he said. But unrest in Portland took place with Trump in office, and Biden neither encouraged nor oversaw it. The Democratic candidate has said on multiple occasions that he does not want to "defund the police," a phrase that became a rallying cry after the killing of unarmed black man George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody at the end of May.

Coronavirus response
"When I took bold action to issue a travel ban on China, very early indeed, Joe Biden called it hysterical and xenophobic. And then I introduced a ban on Europe, very early again," Trump said. But rather than a ban on travel from China, the president imposed restrictions, effective February 2, accompanied by multiple exemptions. Only foreign nationals who had been in China within the past 14 days were banned. US citizens present in Hubei province within the same time period were subject to a mandatory quarantine upon returning home. Almost 40,000 Americans and other authorized travelers came into the US from China in the two months that followed Trump's restrictions, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Trump suspended travel from Europe starting on March 13, but it too was not a complete ban, including various exemptions and not applying to the United Kingdom at all. Trump also said that "to save as many lives as possible, we are focusing on the science, the facts and the data." But especially in the early stages of the crisis, Trump repeatedly made comments downplaying the danger of the virus, such as comparing it to the common flu or saying the risk it posed to the American people was "very low" and that the number of cases "is going to be down to close to zero" within days.

'Strongest economy'
"Within three short years, we built the strongest economy in the history of the world," Trump said. This is false. The US Department of Labor in January 2020 issued revised numbers, which showed significantly slowed job growth during the first three years of the Trump administration. Some 6.5 million jobs were added between 2017-2019 -- 2.109m, 2.314m (Trump's best year) and 2.096m. This compared to more than eight million jobs -- 3.004m, 2.72m and 2.345m -- in the three years before, under president Barack Obama. Despite these numbers, Trump misrepresented Biden's record as Obama's vice president. "Joe Biden is not the savior of America's soul -- he is the destroyer of America's jobs, and if given the chance, he will be the destroyer of American greatness," said Trump.

Pre-existing conditions
"We will always, and very strongly, protect patients with pre-existing conditions, and that is a pledge from the entire Republican Party," Trump said. But Trump's Justice Department argued in a brief to the US Supreme Court that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) -- which requires insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions -- should be struck down. The Trump administration has not provided an alternative to the ACA -- a signature piece of legislation known as Obamacare that was signed into law by the president's predecessor -- meaning that if it is invalidated, protection for pre-existing conditions would end. In a July 19 interview with Fox News, Trump said: "We're signing a health care plan within two weeks." More than a month later, such a plan has yet to materialize.
By Daniel Dale

Washington (CNN) Hours before former Vice President Joe Biden was scheduled to give his prime-time speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, President Donald Trump attacked him at length in a speech near Biden's birthplace. Speaking in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, just outside Biden's home town of Scranton, Trump delivered a wild monologue that involved unscripted musings about sharks, boxing, dishwashers and the maintenance of forests. It also involved a blizzard of false claims. We're still going through the transcript, but here are the ones we can tell you about so far:

The fairness of the election
Trump said of Democrats: "The only way they're gonna win is by a rigged election. I really believe that. I saw the crowd outside."

Facts First: This is nonsense. Trump is trailing in every major national poll and in many polls of swing states. The existence of Trump supporters does not mean he cannot lose fairly.

Biden's availability to the media
Trump said he had seen a news report that said Biden hasn't taken questions from journalists since July 17.

Facts First: We have no idea what Trump might have seen, but the July 17 date is incorrect. Biden took questions during a formal media availability on July 28. He also took questions from a group of four Black and Latino Hispanic journalists on August 4. And he has taken assorted other questions, including in a People magazine joint interview with Sen. Kamala Harris, his vice presidential selection, on August 14.

Obama and 'spying'
Trump repeated his familiar claim that former President Barack Obama got caught spying on his campaign.

Facts First: Investigators engaged in lawful surveillance of Trump campaign advisers in 2016. But there is no evidence Obama had any role in this surveillance. Trump has used the word "spying" to describe lawful FBI surveillance of people affiliated with his campaign as part of its investigation into the Trump campaign's relationship with Russia; the surveillance included court-approved wiretaps and the use of a secret FBI source who reached out to Trump advisers to try to arrange conversations and meetings. (FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump, has said he would not use the word "spying" to describe what he called "surveillance activity.")
Miles Parks

President Trump cast a vote-by-mail ballot in Florida this week after months of questioning the security of the method of voting, and in doing so he returned it to election officials using a technique many Republicans say should be illegal. The way Trump voted shows how he's had to walk a fine line, and often tweak his language around voting, to adjust for political realities and his own behavior. Trump submitted the Florida primary ballot by giving it to a third party to return, a spokesperson for the Palm Beach elections supervisor confirmed to NPR on Wednesday. Republicans often derisively refer to sending in a ballot this way as "ballot harvesting," and it's something Trump has criticized.

"GET RID OF BALLOT HARVESTING, IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD," he tweeted in April. House Republicans recently introduced a bill to force states (which are generally allowed to establish their own rules around voting) to make the practice of turning in a nonfamily member's ballot illegal. Democrats, who often refer to the practice as "community ballot collection," mostly see it as helpful for vulnerable populations — one person turning in all the ballots for a nursing home or housing complex, for instance. They are suing to allow it in a number of states as part of a legal battle to make voting rules more flexible across the country in response to the pandemic.
SV Dáte takes the president to task for repeated untruths but is quickly cut off
Helen Sullivan

SV Dáte had waited five long years to ask Donald Trump one question: “Mr President, after three and a half years [of Trump’s presidency], do you regret at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?” Confronted with Dáte’s question at Thursday’s White House briefing, Trump responded with a question of his own. “All the what?” he said. Dáte: “All the lying, all the dishonesties.” Trump: “That who has done?” “You have done,” said Dáte, who is the Huffington Post’s White House correspondent. “Tens of thousan–”, he began to say, before Trump cut him off and called on another journalist, who asked a question about payroll tax.

In July, the Washington Post reported that Trump had told more than 20,000 “false or misleading claims” over the course of his presidency. Speaking to the Guardian, Dáte said that he asked the question because it was the first time that he had had the chance. “I don’t know why he called on me, because I’ve tried to ask him before [in March] and he’s cut me off mid-question. Maybe he didn’t recognise me this time,” he said. “You know, he has this group of folks that he normally asks questions of.” It was Dáte’s turn on White House in press pool, and so he had a prominent seat. “I had always thought that if he ever did call on me, this is the one thing that is really central to his presidency,” he said.
By Daniel Dale, Holmes Lybrand and Tara Subramaniam, CNN

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump spent years pushing lies about the birthplace and presidential eligibility of President Barack Obama, the first Black president. On Thursday, he started floating a new birther lie about Sen. Kamala Harris, who, if elected, would be the first Black and Asian American vice president. Trump's incendiary nonsense about Harris was part of a Thursday self-described "news conference" he largely used to campaign against his Democratic election opponents. Trump also made a series of false claims about former Vice President Joe Biden, Democrats more broadly, and, again, about mail-in voting.

Kamala Harris's eligibility
Trump was told about claims on "social media" that Harris might be ineligible to serve as president and vice president. He was then asked if he can definitively say that she meets the requirements. Trump said, "I heard today that she doesn't meet the requirements." He referred to a lawyer who raised the issue in a Newsweek article, Chapman University professor John Eastman, as "very highly qualified." Trump then said he has "no idea" whether it's true Harris doesn't meet the requirements. He then asked the reporter if she was saying Harris doesn't qualify because Harris "wasn't born in this country."

Facts First: Harris was born in Oakland, California. Therefore, as a natural born citizen, she meets the Constitution's requirements to serve as vice president or president. There is no serious question about this. The fact that Harris's parents were immigrants -- her father came from Jamaica, her mother from India -- does not change the fact that she is indisputably eligible.
By Leonard PItts Jr. For The Baltimore Sun

“Nobody likes me.” — Donald Trump. “Truth or Consequences” is the name of a town in New Mexico, and of a game show from the 1940s. But it’s also one of the primal laws of existence. Where an important truth is denied, consequences follow.  So none of us can be surprised at the state of the union after seven months of President Donald Trump’s lies, alibis and magical thinking in the face of one of the worst public health crises in history. More than 150,000 of us are dead, the U.S. economy just endured its worst quarter on record and there is no sign the disaster is going to abate any time soon. To the contrary, the federal government is adding to the list of “red zone” states — i.e., states where the COVID-19 infection rate continues to climb. Twenty-one states — nearly half the country — now make the list, including Florida, Tennessee, Texas and Mississippi.

And it should be lost on none of us that the “red zone” states are also mostly red states. Nineteen of the 21 — California and Nevada are the outliers — went for Mr. Trump in 2016. Red states, not to put too fine a point on it, are those we’d expect to be most susceptible to his lies, alibis and magical thinking — and most resistant to masks and social distancing.   Again, this is no surprise. As has been noted repeatedly in this space, truth doesn’t care about your feelings. Unfortunately, Mr. Trump doesn’t care about truth, so on behalf of 330 million of us, he chose consequences instead. And this country will be years in recovering, if it ever does.

All of which lends to a sense of astonishment at the morose monologue quoted above. It came during a news conference last week, called ostensibly to provide an update on the nation’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic. But the briefing also offered a squirm-inducing glimpse into Mr. Trump’s fragile psyche as he ruminated over the fact that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the face of his coronavirus task force, is more popular than he is.
Lauren Aratani

Donald Trump has made 20,000 false or misleading claims while in office, according to the Washington Post, which identified a “tsunami of untruths” emanating from the Oval Office. The paper’s Fact Checker column said Trump hit the milestone on 9 July, a day on which he delivered 62 such claims. About half of them came in an interview with the Fox News host Sean Hannity, among them a claim to have “tremendous support” in the African American community and the charge that Barack Obama and Joe Biden spied on Trump’s campaign in 2016. The Post created its database during Trump’s first 100 days in office. Staff have since gone through every statement the president has made at press conferences and rallies, in TV appearances and on social media. In those first 100 days, the Post’s factcheckers counted 492 false or misleading claims, at a rate of about five a day. Since then, the factcheckers note: “The tsunami of untruths just keeps looming larger and larger.” “The notion that Trump would exceed 20,000 claims before he finished his term appeared ludicrous when the Fact Checker started this project,” wrote Glenn Kessler, editor and chief writer, and factcheckers Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly.
By Salvador Rizzo

“Now that the very expensive, unpopular and unfair Individual Mandate provision has been terminated by us, many States & the U.S. are asking the Supreme Court that Obamacare itself be terminated so that it can be replaced with a FAR BETTER AND MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE ALTERNATIVE..... Obamacare is a joke! Deductible is far too high and the overall cost is ridiculous. My Administration has gone out of its way to manage OC much better than previous, but it is still no good. I will ALWAYS PROTECT PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS,ALWAYS!!!” — President Trump, in a pair of tweets, June 27, 2020

Just as the number of weekly coronavirus cases reached a new high in the United States, the Trump administration filed a legal brief asking the Supreme Court to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act. About 20 million people covered through the act could lose their health insurance if Trump succeeds, among many other consequences bearing directly on the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. Key provisions of the health-care law prohibit insurers from denying coverage to people who are already sick, or who have “preexisting conditions.” Trump has claimed nearly 100 times since he took office that he will “always protect people with preexisting conditions,” but the legal brief filed by the Justice Department last week belies the president’s claim. It says point blank that the entire Affordable Care Act — including its coverage guarantee for people with preexisting conditions — “must fall.”

The Facts
Republicans for a decade have tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act signed by President Barack Obama in 2010. The Supreme Court has upheld the law twice in the face of legal challenges from conservative groups. A new challenge brought by a group of Republican state attorneys general is now pending before the court. The Justice Department filed a brief June 25 in support of the GOP argument that “the entire ACA ... must fall.” Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies could consider a person’s health status when determining premiums, sometimes making coverage unaffordable or even unavailable if a person was already sick with a problem that required expensive treatment.
By Glenn Kessler

“We had a ventilator problem that was caused by the fact that we weren’t left ventilators by a previous administration. The cupboards were bare, as I say often.”

— President Trump, remarks at the White House, April 30, 2020

“You know, if you remember where we started, we had no ventilators.”

— Trump, remarks at the White House, May 15

“He took a ventilator job where the country basically had no ventilators.”

— Trump, remarks at the White House, May 18

“We had none, essentially. We had very few, and they were obsolete. They were broken.”

The Facts
Our colleagues at FactCheck.org published on June 22 details from two statements it received from the Department of Health and Human Services — that there were 16,660 ventilators in the SNS available for distribution at the start of the pandemic and that the federal government had distributed 10,640 of them as of June 17. (Another 2,425 ventilators were in maintenance as of March, HHS says, though the New York Times reported in April that 2,109 were unavailable because the government had let a maintenance contract lapse.)
By D'Angelo Gore

Contrary to President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he inherited a Strategic National Stockpile with “empty” or “bare” cupboards, the federal government had more ventilators in stock than it ended up distributing amid the COVID-19 pandemic, FactCheck.org has learned. The SNS had 16,660 ventilators “immediately available for use” when the federal government began deploying the breathing machines to states to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients in March, according to a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson. None of those ventilators was bought by the Trump administration, the spokesperson told us. In a separate email to us on June 17, another HHS spokesperson said the federal government has distributed 10,640 ventilators during the pandemic. Both HHS representatives said we could attribute their responses to an “HHS spokesperson.” That affirms what we previously wrote in early May: that there were “likely thousands” of ventilators in the federal stockpile of emergency medicines and equipment that Trump inherited from his predecessor. We could not provide the exact numbers – until now. In defending his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has frequently made the false claim that, when he took office, the SNS was “bare,” or “empty,” and lacked ventilators, which help individuals breathe when they can’t do so on their own. He has also taken credit for preventing deaths by refilling the stockpile. On April 30, Trump falsely claimed, “We had a ventilator problem that was caused by the fact that we weren’t left ventilators by a previous administration.”
By Daniel Dale

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump has responded to former national security adviser John Bolton's sharply critical book about Trump -- which Bolton describes as "a book about how not to be president" -- with his own criticism of Bolton's character and career. Bolton departed the Trump administration in September 2019; Trump says he was fired, Bolton says he resigned. On Thursday, Trump tweeted, "President Bush fired him also. Bolton is incompetent!"

Facts First: President George W. Bush did not fire Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton left the Bush administration in 2006 at the expiry of his recess appointment, knowing that he could not get confirmed by the Senate in 2007. After Bolton announced his pending departure, Bush said he was "not happy" Bolton was leaving and that Bolton "deserved to be confirmed" because "he did a fabulous job for the country." Bush told Bolton in front of reporters: "We're going to miss you in this administration. You've been a stalwart defender of freedom and peace. You've been strong in your advocacy for human rights and human dignity. You've done everything that can be expected for an ambassador."
By Daniel Dale and Tara Subramaniam, CNN

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump continued his bombardment of pandemic-related false claims in May and the first week of June -- and, as usual, made dozens of false claims about a wide variety of other subjects. Trump made 192 false claims over the five weeks from May 4 through June 7. Sixty-one of them were about the coronavirus or the pandemic crisis, by far the most of any subject. Trump's average during the five-week period, about 5.5 false claims per day, was below his overall average of about 7.7 false claims per day since July 8, 2019, when we started our tracking at CNN. It was also down from his seven-per-day average during the previous 14-week period we wrote about here. But still: 192 false claims, 5.5 per day. That's a whole lot of dishonesty from the President of the United States.

Where Trump made his false claims
Trump made 42 of the 192 false claims on Twitter. He added 14 in a May interview with Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo, 10 in a rare network news interview in May with "ABC World News Tonight" anchor David Muir, nine in a rambling June speech about a surprisingly good jobs report, and eight apiece in two interviews and one exchange with reporters.

A timeline of Trump's 192 false claims in May and early June
Trump averaged about 5.5 false claims per day between May 4 and June 7. His highest daily totals were on days when he conducted interviews or spoke to reporters.
By Daniel Dale, CNN

Washington (CNN) More than two weeks after his controversial photo-op outside a Washington, DC, church, President Donald Trump offered a new explanation last week for why he didn't enter St. John's Episcopal Church. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday Trump said there were "a lot of insurance reasons" for why he couldn't go in. That isn't true.

Facts First: "There were no insurance reasons" why Trump could not have entered St. John's Church, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington told CNN on Friday. She said only a small room in the basement of the church, a nursery, had been damaged in a fire the day prior, and "the main sanctuary was not harmed at all." Trump has faced criticism not only because police used force to clear peaceful protesters out of the way before the photo-op but because he merely brandished the Bible without opening it, offering a prayer, or going into the building.
By Daniel Dale

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump made a speech and did at least four television interviews on Wednesday -- and, as usual, littered his comments with false claims about his Democratic opponents, the coronavirus pandemic and a variety of other subjects. Some of his false claims on Wednesday were new, though a number were things he has repeated continuously over the past few months. Here's a look at what he said and the facts behind them:

Biden's campaigning
Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has been in the basement of his home (in Wilmington, Delaware) "for a long time." Trump added, "They are leaving him there, and at some point he is going to have to come out for air." Facts First: Since late May, Biden has repeatedly left his home to campaign -- and, in fact, made a campaign trip to Pennsylvania earlier this same day. At the very moment in the interview when Trump claimed Biden's campaign was leaving him in the basement, Hannity's show was running footage of Biden delivering an afternoon economic speech in Darby, Pennsylvania. Biden, like Trump, has been forced by the pandemic to reduce his campaign travel. But the former vice president has made multiple trips out of his home since he emerged to lay a Memorial Day wreath on May 25 after more than two months without public events. For example, Biden attended a June 1 community meeting at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Delaware, delivered a June 2 speech in Philadelphia about racism and leadership and a June 5 economic address in Delaware, met with the family of George Floyd on June 8 in Houston, and held a June 11 economic roundtable in Philadelphia.
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