Trump lies

[Admin]

We don't have to keep score, this is done by Politifact, the list is impressive, and these are only the 'pants on fire' lies, the biggest category lie.

We know, we know, it's supposedly Clinton with the big trust deficit..

Here is Krugman on the subject:

Not to put too fine a point on it, Hillary Clinton has been cagey about her email arrangements when she was secretary of state. But when you look at what the independent fact-checkers who have given her a “pants on fire” or “four Pinocchios” rating on this issue actually have to say, it’s remarkably weak: She stands accused of being overly legalistic or overstating the extent to which she has been cleared, but not of making major claims that are completely at odds with reality.

Oh, and it barely got covered in the media, but her claim that Colin Powell advised her to set up a private email account was … completely true, validated by an email that Mr. Powell sent three days after she took office, which contradicts some of his own claims.
And over all, her record on truthfulness, as compiled by PolitiFact, looks pretty good for a politician — much better than that of any of the contenders for the Republican nomination, and for that matter much better than that of Mitt Romney in the last presidential election..

And something similar may be going on even now, with few people in the media willing to accept the reality that the G.O.P. has nominated someone whose lies are so blatant and frequent that they amount to sociopathy. Even that observation, however, doesn’t explain the asymmetry, because some of the same media organizations that apparently find it impossible to point out Mr. Trump’s raw, consequential lies have no problem harassing Mrs. Clinton endlessly over minor misstatements and exaggerations, or sometimes over actions that were perfectly innocent. Is it sexism? I really don’t know, but it’s shocking to watch.

Donald Trump’s ‘Big Liar’ Technique - The New York Times

[Admin]

In and by itself this is bad enough:

Mark Cuban is quickly becoming one of Donald Trump’s most blunt and fervent critics. The Shark Tank host and entrepreneur took to Twitter on Monday to blast the Republican nominee’s knowledge of central banking policy, using it as proof that markets will fall if the businessman is elected in November. The Tweets were sent after Trump appeared on CNBC Monday, saying that Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen is keeping the interest rates down because of President Obama. “I have no doubt that’s the reason they are being kept down,” Trump added.

Shark Tank's Mark Cuban Slams Donald Trump's Fed Comments

So interest rates are low because the Fed wants to help the Democrats, not because the economy needs low interest rates..

Oops!

As it happens, Trump argues that the economy is terrible:

Donald Trump sure paints a dire picture of the U.S. economy. In accepting the Republican party's nomination for the presidency on Thursday, he described a country burdened by searing poverty, downward mobility and crushing national debt.

Is the U.S. economy as horrible as Donald Trump says it is? - CBS News

Of course, if you are Trump, you can have it both ways..

[Admin]

Not yet proven but the Washington Post did a months long investigation on the Trump foundation and after 2008, they couldn't find any charitable donations paid by Trump.

Farenthold: Trump Has “Engineered A Way To Look Like He's Being Charitable Without Actually Spending A Dollar Out Of His Own Pocket”

So, we looked at the Trump Foundation, where we expected to find evidence of that giving and haven't seen it since 2008. And I’ve looked at a lot of other places, too. Between 2008 and this May, when he gave that $1 million donation to the veterans under a lot of media pressure, in that period from 2008 to this May, I can find one gift from Donald Trump's own pocket. And that was for less than $10,000 in 2009. And earlier this year he also released a list of what he said were his charitable contribution over the last 10 years -- or last five years. None of that was a donation from his own pocket. Most of it was free rounds of golf given away by his golf courses.

Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold Exposes The Fraudulent Nature Of Trump’s Charitable Foundation

[Admin]

It's even worse than we thought..

Trump’s Yellen cycle began in October, when, in an interview with The Hill, he accused Yellen of keeping down the Fed’s key interest rate, known as the Fed funds rate, because President Obama “doesn’t want to have a recession-slash-depression during his administration.” (This raised the question, of course, Who expects a President to want a recession-slash-depression?)

By the spring of this year, Trump had revised his thinking about Yellen. “I have nothing against Janet Yellen whatsoever,” he told CNBC, on May 5th. “She’s a very capable person. People that I know have a very high regard for her.” Trump explained his newly rosy view by endorsing the very policy he had mocked a few months earlier. “She’s a low-interest-rate person; she’s always been a low-interest-rate person. And I must be honest, I’m a low-interest-rate person.” A couple of weeks later, Trump reiterated his happy view of the Fed chair. In an interview with Reuters, he said, “I’m not a person that thinks Janet Yellen is doing a bad job.”

This week, Trump was back on the attack. On Monday, he told CNBC that Yellen should be “ashamed” of the low-interest-rate policy that Trump himself endorsed so fully in May. “She is obviously political, and she’s doing what Obama wants her to do,” he said. Once again, Trump made the claim that there was a secret Obama-Yellen pact to keep rates low, rooted in their nefarious desire to prevent an economic crisis. They both knew, he said, that “as soon as [rates] go up, the stock market is going to go way down.” On Thursday, after giving a speech at the Economic Club of New York, Trump again took aim at the Fed. “The Fed has become very political,” he said. “Beyond anything I would have ever thought possible.”

Trump and the Truth: The Interest-Rate Flip-Flop - The New Yorker

Apart from the 180 degrees flip-flops, let that sink in for a moment:

there was a secret Obama-Yellen pact to keep rates low, rooted in their nefarious desire to prevent an economic crisis.

This really is breath-taking. a nefarious desire to prevent an economic crisis.."

[Admin]

Just for the record..

Trump has repeatedly claimed that Clinton began the whole issue in the first place. Trump said "Hillary is a birther" in February 2015 at CPAC, tweeted that "she was all in" in September 2015, and said "she brought it up years before it was brought up by me" on CNN in May 2016. The morning of his press conference, Trump brought it up again on Fox Business.
PolitiFact and our friends at FactCheck.org and the Washington Post Fact-Checker have
debunked this zombie claim multiple times.

There is no evidence that Clinton or her 2008 campaign ever floated the theory. While Clinton supporters circulated the allegations the last time she ran for president, they had no ties to either the candidate or her staff.

A damning memo?

The Sept. 15 Trump campaign statement linked to a 2007 strategy memo published in the Atlantic from former Clinton aide Mark Penn that advises pointing out Obama’s "lack of American roots."  



While Penn suggests Clinton "own ‘American’ in our programs," that’s not the same thing as suggesting Clinton question Obama’s citizenship or birthplace. The memo never advises that. It also explicitly states, "We are never going to say anything about his background." Furthermore, as the Atlantic and Politico reported in 2008, neither Clinton nor her campaign acted on Penn’s advice.


A not-damning chain email

The other piece of "evidence" linking Clinton to birtherism are emails circulated by supporters of Clinton during the last days of the 2008 Democratic primary after Clinton suspended her campaign. According to a Telegraph article, Clinton supporters circulated the "birther" theory in an email as early as April 2008.


"Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy," the email said, according to the Telegraph. "She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth."

The allegations gained momentum that month. Clinton conceded the race on June 7, and three days later a website called Pumaparty.com (an acroynom for Party Unity My A--) encouraged Clinton backers to support Republican nominee Sen. John McCain.


The website promoted the theory with an email that read, "Obama May Be Illegal to Be Elected President," as Daily Beast editor John Avlon has documented.


According to Avlon, Linda Starr, a Clinton volunteer in Texas, was key to spreading the rumor. She connected with with Philip Berger, an attorney and Clinton supporter, who sued to block Obama’s nomination. The suit was thrown out.


But this is not the same thing as Clinton or her campaign promoting the theory. There is no evidence that they ever have done so. Clinton has dismissed the allegation when Trump made his accusation last September in an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon.


"That is — no. That is so ludicrous, Don. You know, honestly, I just believe that, first of all, it’s totally untrue, and secondly, you know, the president and I have never had any kind of confrontation like that," Clinton said. "You know, I have been blamed for nearly everything, that was a new one to me."


(Another thing to note: Clinton volunteers forwarded emails promoting the myth that Obama is a Muslim. As we have previously reported, both resigned from the campaign after they were found to have spread the rumor. The Clinton campaign condemned their actions and said it was unauthorized.)


Our ruling

Trump said, "Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy."

There is no evidence to support this. Clinton supporters circulated the rumor in the last days of the 2008 Democratic primary and after Clinton had conceded to Obama. But the record does not show Clinton or her campaign ever promoting the birther theory, let alone starting it.
We rate Trump’s claim False..

Fact-checking Donald Trump's claim Hillary Clinton started Obama birther movement | PolitiFact

[Admin]

Bloomberg Politics' Mark Halperin repeatedly asked Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway to answer why the Republican presidential nominee attempted to undercut the NBC anchor's credibility by claiming he was partisan. "He said Lester Holt is a Democrat. Lester Holt is a Republican. How could he say such a thing that just black and white, was factually incorrect?" Halperin said.

Conway said that she believed Holt was "a great choice" and acknowledged that Trump was not aware of the NBC anchor's political affiliation when he labeled Holt as a Democrat. "I don't know that he knew what Lester Holt's voter registration was," Conway said. When Halperin continued to press, Conway brushed off Trump's misstatement as "a terrible and irrelevant example," instead arguing that some media outlets were parroting Hillary Clinton's campaign talking points and pressuring moderators to do increased fact-checking during debates. In past interviews, Conway said debate moderators do not have a responsibility to be fact-checkers. "What bothers us, Mark, is the very public, very coordinated attempt to game the refs," Conway said.

Kellyanne Conway grilled on debate claim - Business Insider

[Admin]

And, of course, the second debate contained the usual amount of Trump lies, from Media Matters:

Trump Claims Clinton's Campaign Started The Birther Movement
Trump On San Bernardino
Trump On Iraq
Trump Claims U.S. Is The Highest Taxed Nation
Trump On Syrian Refugees

[Admin]

We don't know whether to laugh or cry.. From Mother Jones:

This Avalanche of Nonsense From Donald Trump Will Leave You Absolutely Speechless

KATIE HERZOGOCT. 26, 2016 11:54 AM

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

We fact-checked Donald Trump's latest comments on renewable energy. Turns out, they're not all true.
The Republican presidential nominee appeared on Herman Cain's radio show on Tuesday, and he had quite a bit to say about wind and solar power, and birds too. Here's part of the transcript, courtesy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, with our fact-checking notes added in brackets:

TRUMP: Our energy companies are a disaster right now. Coal. The coal business is—you know, there is such a thing as clean coal [False]. Our miners are out of work—now they're just attacking energy companies like I've never seen them attack anything before.

They want everything to be wind and solar. Unfortunately, it's not working on large-scale [False]. It's just not working [False]. Solar is very, very expensive [False]. Wind is very, very expensive [False], and it only works when it's windy [False].
CAIN: Right.

TRUMP: Someone might need a little electricity—a lot of times, it's the opposite season, actually. When they have it, that's when you don't need it. So wind is very problematic [False] and—I'm not saying I'm against those things. I'm for everything. I'm for everything.
CAIN: Right.

TRUMP: But they are destroying our energy companies with regulation [False]. They're absolutely destroying them [False].
CAIN: But their viability has to be demonstrated before you shove it down the throats of the American people. That's what you're saying.
TRUMP: In all fairness, wind is fine [True]. Sometimes you go—I don't know if you've ever been to Palm Springs, California—it looks like a junkyard [False]. They have all these different—
CAIN: I have.

TRUMP: They have all these different companies and each one is made by a different group from, all from China and from Germany, by the way—not from here [False]. And you look at all these windmills. Half of them are broken [False]. They're rusting and rotting. You know, you're driving into Palm Springs, California, and it looks like a poor man's version of Disneyland [False]. It's the worst thing you've ever seen [False].

And it kills all the birds [False]. I don't know if you know that…Thousands of birds are lying on the ground. And the eagle. You know, certain parts of California—they've killed so many eagles [False]. You know, they put you in jail if you kill an eagle. And yet these windmills [kill] them by the hundreds [False].

But solar and wind power are on a meteoric rise, whether Trump likes it or not.

[Admin]

How to deal with the post-truth propaganda, from Slate

Journalists need to find a new way to handle Kellyanne Conway

• William Saletan, Slate
  

This past Sunday on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd spent 13 minutes trying to get Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway to explain “why President Trump [sent] out his press secretary to essentially litigate a provable falsehood” about Trump’s inauguration. The falsehood, delivered by Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Saturday, was that Trump had attracted “ the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period .”

Spicer had also dismissed photos of the crowd, claiming they “were intentionally framed” to make it look small.
Conway dodged the question. Todd repeated it. Around and around they went. Todd grew exasperated. “It undermines the credibility of the entire White House press office,” he sputtered. Conway played the victim. “Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck,” she chided. “You’re supposed to be a news person,” she told him.

This is what happens when TV journalists treat Conway like a normal Washington flack. We’ve seen it in interview after interview. She disregards evidence and the rules of rational conversation. She says the crowd was bigger than it looked, and it would have been bigger if not for the rain, and millions watched it on TV, and millions more watched it online (we have no way to measure that, but so what), and you can’t really estimate crowd size anyway, and crowd size doesn’t matter.

She turns on a dime. One minute, she’s characterizing the contents of an intelligence briefing. The next, she’s insisting that Trump, unlike his critics, would never talk about such briefings because he’s “protecting our children, Chuck, by not leaking.”

An interview with Conway is like a game of Crazy Eights with one rule change: Every card is crazy. No matter what you say, she’ll pick a word from your question and use it to change suits. Use the word “fact,” and she’ll ask, “Chuck, do you think it’s a fact or not that millions of people have lost their plans or health insurance?”

Ask her about Russian interference in the election and she’ll reply, as in this interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC: “A lot of people in the mainstream media interfered with our election by trying to help Hillary Clinton win.” Ask her about the intelligence on the Russian hack—“You don’t believe the intercepts?” asked CNN’s Chris Cuomo—and she’ll say, “Here’s what I don’t believe … that [this issue is] so darn important to you now.”

Tell her there’s “no evidence that there were millions of illegal votes,” (Stephanopoulos again) and she’ll fire back, “There’s also no evidence that a recount is going to change the results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.” You’ll never win this game because you’ll have to use words. She’ll pick the one she likes and throw out the rest.
[img=620x0]http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/57fd95c14046dd8b008b53ad-1102[/img]
This drives journalists nuts. They feel a duty to rebut lies, and in the age of “John Oliver Destroys Something” headlines, there’s an appetite among liberal viewers for plucky correspondents eviscerating right-wing ideologues on-air. We’ve now seen one host after another—Todd, Cuomo, Anderson Cooper—lose his cool or waste a long interview trying to make Conway acknowledge elementary facts.

Of course, presidential flacks have always tried to stretch or shade the truth during on-air interviews. In his first briefings as press secretary to President George W. Bush, Ari Fleischer juggled contrary rationales for tax cuts, that the government could afford them or that a weak economy needed them, using whichever argument seemed to fit the evidence presented. In his first briefings as press secretary to President Obama, Robert Gibbs used the term “financial stability package” to mask the stench of corporate bailouts.

Reporters understood that no matter what they asked, Fleischer would defend tax cuts and Gibbs would defend bailouts. But the president’s spokesman would generally try to reconcile the president’s agenda with the facts. And if he couldn’t, he would at least clarify the agenda.

Conway brings none of that. She alters unwelcome questions, disregards the facts presented to her, and clarifies nothing. In part, that’s because Trump has no organized agenda. All he has is ego. So that’s what she fights for. She’s not there to persuade a skittish Republican senator to repeal the Affordable Care Act. She’s there to defend and avenge one man’s wounded pride.

It’s a waste of time to ask Conway about Trump’s strategy or to challenge her about right and wrong. She’ll just leave your head spinning. Instead, interviewers should stick to simple factual queries: “Do you have proof that this was the largest audience to witness an inauguration?” “Do you dispute that these two photos were taken at the same time of day?” “Doesn’t the date on the press release show that this investment was announced before the election?” “Do you have an Obamacare replacement plan that you can share with us today?”

Any answer besides “yes” or “no” should probably be met with “Let’s move on.” There’s no point in getting apoplectic at Conway. She’s never going to break. If you think the only way to beat these people is to make them admit their lies, you’re the one who will lose.

[Admin]

Fake terrorism!

Ever since the Cato Institute (a rightwing think thank) revealed that for the last four decades, exactly zero people were responsible for terrorism from the countries under the immigration ban, they have to artificially boost the danger. 

President Donald Trump on Monday accused the press of not reporting instances of terrorism. In a speech in front of military leaders at the US Central Command — the Pentagon agency that covers security interests in nations throughout the Middle East and Central Asia — Trump suggested the media was covering up instances of terror attacks. "All over Europe, it's happening," Trump said. "It's gotten to a point where it's not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that."

Trump: Press isn't reporting on terrorism - Business Insider

Then, of course, there was Kellyanne.. arguing she "misspoke" on MSNBC.. Hardly. She used the same bogus terrorist attack days earlier in a Cosmo interview..

White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway a cited a demonstrably nonexistent "massacre" as justification for President Donald Trump's temporary immigration ban in an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine days before making headlines by mentioning the falsehood on MSNBC's "Hardball."

Kellyanne Conway told fake 'Bowling Green Massacre' story more than once - Business Insider

Meanwhile, "keeping Americans safe" (and attacking the judiciary in the process) also involves this, apparently..

Lawmakers have struck down an Obama administration rule that attempts to keep guns out of the hands of people who suffer from mental illness.  The Republican-controlled House voted 235-180 in an apparent effort to improve gun ownership under President Trump. The rule affected nearly 75,000 Social Security recipients diagnosed with mental health conditions, such as extreme anxiety and schizophrenia, and are considered incapable of managing their own affairs.

House Republicans vote to end rule that prevents people with mental illness from buying guns | The Independent