Trump lies

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And if you think this stuff only happens in Germany, think again:

On Wednesday night, at a bar in Olathe, Kansas, a man named Adam Purinton allegedly told two men he thought were Middle Eastern to “get out of my country” before shooting both of them, one fatally. He also allegedly shot and injured a white bystander who intervened in the situation.

Purinton was arrested five hours later in Missouri after he told a bartender “that he needed a place to hide out because he had just killed two Middle Eastern men,” the Kansas City Star reports. (The men are actually of Indian descent and worked on an engineering team for Garmin.)

The racially motivated violence in Kansas comes amid an explosion of hate incidents since the election. But instead of commenting on the Kansas shooting in any way or denouncing hate, Trump on Thursday tweeted this:


Trump has established a pattern of trying to capitalize on incidents that reinforce his Islamophobia and fear-mongering about “inner cities,” while ignoring violence perpetrated by white supremacists.

Trump’s response to racist shooting in Kansas: silence

And you might also want to realize this:

Though terrorism perpetrated by Muslims receives a disproportionate amount of attention from politicians and reporters, the reality is that right-wing extremists pose a much greater threat to people in the United States than terrorists connected to ISIS or similar organizations. As UNC Professor Charles Kurzman and Duke Professor David Schanzer explained last June in the New York Times, Islam-inspired terror attacks “accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.” Meanwhile, “right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities.” Kurzman and Schanzer’s methodology, moreover, may underestimate the degree to which domestic terrorists in the United States are motivated by right-wing views.

You Are More Than 7 Times As Likely To Be Killed By A Right-Wing Extremist Than By Muslim Terrorists

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And, of course there was that Swedish "event"..

These claims have even made it into more mainstream outlets like National Review and Fox News. Friday night, Fox’s Tucker Carlson interviewed Ami Horowitz, a journalist who said that “from the onset of the refugee crisis, there was a surge in [Swedish] gun violence and rape.” Slate’s Daniel Politi theorizes Trump watched the segment, and hence decided to say something about Sweden in his subsequent speech.

That’s hard to say for sure. But the odds are, given the consistency of the narrative about Sweden in the right-wing mediasphere, that Trump heard one of these claims about a Swedish refugee rape epidemic somewhere — and appropriated them to justify his travel ban.

The problem, though, is that this “rape epidemic” is as fake as the Bowling Green Massacre. Canadian reporter Doug Saunders rigorously investigated the narrative, and concluded that it “falls apart as soon as you speak to anyone knowledgeable in Sweden.”

Official Swedish statistics do indeed show a high rate of rape, but that’s because Swedish law has an extremely expansive definition of what qualifies as rape under the law. Sweden has a higher official rape rate, in short, because its police are better able to investigate and prosecute sexual violence.

Trump’s invention of a Swedish terrorist attack was funny. But it likely comes from a dark place. - Vox

And Trump has since admitted that it was this interview he was referring to (rather than some non existing terrorist attack in Sweden), and is sticking by the story. Another one which is baseless..

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The difference between words and deeds..

““The President,” according to White House talking points on his speech to Congress tomorrow night, “will reach out to Americans living in the poorest and most vulnerable communities, and let them know that help is on the way.” Really?

While the White House was trumpeting President Trump’s outreach “to the poorest and most vulnerable communities,” the New York Times was reporting that under his forthcoming budget, “Social safety net programs, aside from the big entitlement programs for retirees [i.e., Social Security and Medicare], will be hit hard.”

Meanwhile, White House officials told reporters that the President will propose a hefty $54 billion increase in defense for fiscal year 2018 and pay for it by cutting non-defense discretionary programs, which have already faced several rounds of substantial cuts since 2010. Nearly one-fourth of non-defense discretionary spending funds programs for people with low or modest incomes — that is, the very people to which the White House talking points allude — including Head Start, child care, aid for poor school districts, job training, Pell Grants to help low-income students afford college, low-income rental assistance, and programs to combat homelessness, among others.

Moreover, White House officials have expressed support for converting Medicaid to a block grant — a structure under which states would get fixed amounts of money for Medicaid. With that structure, the program couldn’t automatically respond to rising need such as during a recession as it does today, and, if the history of other block grants is any guide, policymakers almost certainly would shrink Medicaid’s funding substantially over time..

New Trump Budget Proposals Belie Talking Points on “Poorest and Most Vulnerable Communities” | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

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Apart from taking credit where no credit is due, the job numbers are suddenly not doctored anymore..

Earlier Friday, Trump had retweeted a tweet from the Drudge Report that read: "GREAT AGAIN: +235,000."

Trump, during the campaign and in its aftermath, slammed the monthly numbers put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, particularly the unemployment rate. During an Iowa rally in early December, he said the calculation is "totally fiction." "If you look for a job for six months and then you give up, they consider you give up," he said. "You just give up. You go home. You say, 'Darling, I can't get a job.' They consider you statistically employed. It's not the way. But don't worry about it because it's going to take care of itself pretty quickly." Trump, at one point, went as far as saying the real unemployment rate was in the area of 42%.

Trump: Jobs report isn't 'phony' anymore - Business Insider

But even his own say he shouldn't take credit:

The February jobs report that the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday was strong: 235,000 jobs were added — higher than the 200,000 expected by economists. It was the first official report of President Donald Trump's tenure, since the survey week for January's report was before Inauguration Day. According to Gary Cohn, the head of Trump's National Economic Council, there's no reason to credit Trump for the strong report. During an interview with CNBC, Cohn said the report was "right exactly where it needed to be," but he also said that Trump's team wasn't the reason for the beat.

Gary Cohn, economic adviser, doesn't credit Trump with jobs report - Business Insider

Then we have the 180 degree on the debt limit..

During the 2016 campaign, Trump hewed to this view, saying that the debt limit must be used as a weapon to force spending cuts. Trump said he would be “very very strong on the debt limit” and insist on “a very big pound of flesh” before agreeing to any increase.

Now that Trump is president, his approach is the complete opposite. Via Mnuchin, Trump is asking Congress to raise the debt limit without demanding any spending cuts in return. Instead he is seeking to enact a new health care plan (with no funding mechanism), a massive military spending increase and, in the near future, a massive tax cut for corporations and the wealthy.

One letter exposes Trump’s breathtaking hypocrisy on the debt limit

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Hahaha, you guys didn't really think he was going to do as he argued during the campaign, now did you?

Apart from the fact that it isn't funny. Millions will lose health care coverage (and a host of other problems). Thousands, probably tens of thousands will die unnecessarily or prematurely as a result. 

Trump’s embrace of more centrist positions on health care and retirement security was a crucial aspect of his campaign, and there was enough campaign-season tension between Trump and the GOP leadership that a voter could be forgiven for assuming Trump meant what he was saying.

He did not. Trump ran and won promising to cover everyone, avoid Medicaid cuts, and boost funding for opioid abuse treatment. He is now lobbying Congress to pass a bill that does none of those things. Instead, millions will lose insurance and Medicaid spending will be sacrificed on the altar of tax cuts for the rich. It’s not a surprising result, but in many ways it is a shocking one.

The Republican health plan is a huge betrayal of Trump’s campaign promises - Vox

The article discusses some of these promises, and how they are being broken.

[Admin]

And of course the latest nonsense..

A classified report from the US Justice Department reportedly does not confirm President Donald Trump's accusations that President Barack Obama ordered a spying operation against him during the 2016 election, CNN reported, citing two government officials familiar with the DOJ document. Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California and House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes, a Republican, both indicated to CNN on Friday that they do not believe the DOJ's report backs up Trump's wiretapping allegations.

The US Justice Department threw cold water on Trump's wiretapping claims - Business Insider

Fox News host Shepard Smith said on Friday afternoon that the network's news division was unable to confirm a report from an analyst who said earlier this week President Barack Obama sought help from British intelligence to spy on then-candidate Donald Trump. "Fox News cannot confirm Judge [Andrew] Napolitano's commentary," Smith said. "Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now-president of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way. Full stop."

Shepard Smith rejects Napolitano 'commentary,' Trump wiretapping claims - Business Insider

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The White House tweeted Monday that the directors of the FBI and the National Security Agency told Congress Russia did not influence the 2016 presidential election. But to borrow a phrase from the administration’s own parlance, that’s actually fake news.

Contrary to Trump’s tweet, Comey and Rogers are not denying that Russia interfered with the election. They’re instead saying they don’t have any evidence that hackers actually changed the vote counts by manipulating the machines doing the tallying or somehow casting fraudulent ballots. The Trump tweet is not only making a false claim about the matter being discussed in the clip; it’s also at odds with an already established fact: There’s a consensus in the intelligence community that Russia interfered with the election to help Trump win the White House.

The president’s official Twitter account is spreading falsehoods about the Comey hearing - Vox

Amazing stuff. This is from the official White House tweeting account..

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This stuff is breathtaking..

"In the first two job reports since I took the oath of office, we've already added nearly half a million new jobs. And believe me, it's just beginning," Trump said in a speech in Nashville last week. True, the U.S. economy did add a total of 473,000 jobs in January and February, according to Labor Department data. But Trump arrived at the White House on January 20. The Labor Department had already conducted its monthly surveys for the January jobs report. "The results of the January survey should rightly be placed under the Obama administration," says Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, an auditing firm. 

Trump also said in Nashville last week that "we are creating jobs that are starting to pour back into our country like we haven't seen in many, many decades." That's not true. In 2014, the economy added 3 million new jobs, the best year of gains since 1999. The last two years have followed with similarly strong gains of 2.7 million new jobs in 2015 and 2.2 million in 2016. Remember, at the depths of the Great Recession in 2009, America lost 5 million jobs. Moreover, in the first two months of 2015, the economy added 472,000 jobs -- almost the exact same amount as in the first two months of this year.

Trump Reality Check: Did he create nearly half a million jobs? - Mar. 21, 2017

Soo, claiming ownership for figures that:

• Were previously considered doctored, or fake news
  
• Half of which were produced before he came to power
  
• All of it were produced before any of his policies have taken effect.
  

[Admin]

His lies, and how he justifies them. From Vox:

9 bonkers things Donald Trump said in his new exclusive interview with Time

“I can’t be doing so badly, because I’m president, and you’re not.”
Updated by Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com  Mar 23, 2017, 12:36pm EDT

In an exclusive interview with Time’s Michael Scherer, published Thursday, President Donald Trump basically gives three types of explanations for why it’s okay for him to say things that aren’t true.

Trump thinks it’s okay to repeat a false claim as long as he is accurately stating the fact that someone else made the false claim. He thinks it’s okay to say something false as long as it later turns out that something vaguely similar is true. And he appears to think it’s okay to just straight-up lie and then keep lying for no reason.

Here are three quotes on category one misstatements, where Trump says he was accurately saying other people said something false, so there’s no reason for him to apologize for spreading misinformation:

• “I’m just quoting the newspaper [about Ted Cruz’s father being involved in the JFK assassination], just like I quoted the judge the other day, Judge Napolitano, I quoted Judge Napolitano, just like I quoted Bret Baier, I mean Bret Baier mentioned the word wiretap.”
  
• “Well, I’m not, well, I think, I’m not saying, I’m quoting, Michael, I’m quoting highly respected people and sources from major television networks.”
  
• “Well if you look at the reporter, he wrote the story [about Muslims celebrating 9/11 on rooftops in New Jersey] in the Washington Post.”
  

Here are two quotes on category two misstatements where Trump says it’s okay to say something false, because something different would later happen that was kind of similar to the thing he falsely said earlier:

• “Sweden. I make the statement, everyone goes crazy. The next day they have a massive riot, and death, and problems.”
  
• “Because a wiretapping is, you know today it is different than wire tapping. It is just a good description. But wiretapping was in quotes. What I’m talking about is surveillance. And today, [House Intelligence Committee Chair] Devin Nunes just had a news conference.”
  

And here are four quotes on category three misstatements, where Trump simply insists that false claims he’s made in the past are, in fact, true.

• “Huma [Abedin] and Anthony [Weiner], you know, what I tweeted about that whole deal, and then it turned out he had it, all of Hillary’s email on his thing.”
  
• “NATO, obsolete, because it doesn’t cover terrorism. They fixed that, and I said that the allies must pay.”
  
• “I inherited a mess with jobs, despite the statistics, you know, my statistics are even better, but they are not the real statistics because you have millions of people that can’t get a job, ok.”
  

At the end, Trump closes with one last excuse, the ultimate Trump rationale for anything he does — he won the election: “I can’t be doing so badly, because I’m president, and you’re not. You know.”

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Here is Trump

President Donald Trump’s health care proposal to replace Obamacare struggled to gain support Thursday ― and opponents couldn’t be happier. Trump’s proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act could result in 24 million people losing health coverage over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

There was a time when that would have been unacceptable to Trump. His 2000 book, The America We Deserve, serves as a reminder that Trump has seemingly ignored his stated mission to insure all Americans, as a former aide to Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton pointed out on Twitter Thursday.

Ronald Klain, who also served as a senior adviser to Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during her 2016 campaign, called the now-viral excerpt he posted “comic relief.”
View image on Twitter

 

Here's A Reminder Of How Far Donald Trump Has Flip-Flopped On Health Care | The Huffington Post