Trump lies

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"The murder rate in our country is the highest it's been in 47 years, right?" Trump said at a White House meeting with members of the National Sheriffs Association, according to the Chicago Tribune. "Did you know that? Forty-seven years. I used to use that — I'd say that in a speech and everybody was surprised. Because the press doesn't tell it like it is. It wasn't to their advantage to say that." "But the murder rate is the highest it's been in, I guess, from 45 to 47 years."

FBI statistics show that the US murder rate in 2015 — the most recent year with available statistics — was 4.9 per 100,000 people. That's one of the lowest rates ever. The murder rate was that year less than half of the nation's peak rate of 10.2 in 1980, or its second-worst year, 1991, when the rate was 9.8. The 2015 murder rate was also notably lower than it was between 1996 and 2009, when it descended from 7.4 to 5.0.

Trump keeps repeating his debunked claim that the murder rate is at its highest in 47 years - Business Insider

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In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump named victims who were reportedly killed by undocumented immigrants and said:

“They are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources…We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities.”

Now as president, he has signed executive orders that restrict entry of immigrants from seven countries into the U.S. and authorize the construction of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. He also signed an order to prioritize the removal of “criminal aliens” and withhold federal funding from “sanctuary cities.”

But, what does research say about how immigration impacts crime in U.S. communities? We turned to our experts for answers.
Research has shown virtually no support for the enduring assumption that increases in immigration are associated with increases in crime.

Immigration-crime research over the past 20 years has widely corroborated the conclusions of a number of early 20th-century presidential commissions that found no backing for the immigration-crime connection. Although there are always individual exceptions, the literature demonstrates that immigrants commit fewer crimes, on average, than native-born Americans.

Immigrants Do Not Increase Crime, Research Shows - Scientific American

[Admin]

"Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?" Trump tweeted on Thursday morning. Gorsuch, who serves on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, was widely reported to have told Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut on Wednesday that he was "disheartened" by Trump's attempting to delegitimize a federal judge.

A representative for the Supreme Court nomination team confirmed the judge's remarks to Business Insider on Wednesday. 

At least one other senator, Republican Ben Sasse of Nebraska, said that Gorsuch made similar comments to him about Trump's remarks in private conversation. Sasse told MSNBC that Gorsuch got "pretty passionate" when asked about a Trump tweet referring to a "so-called" judge, and said any attack on "brothers or sisters of the robe" is an attack on all judges.

Trump accuses senator of misrepresenting Gorsuch 'disheartened' comment - Business Insider

[Admin]

19 lies this week, click the link for all of them, video plus transcript..

In week three, the Trump administration kept lying. Administration officials continued to dramatically overstate crime rates, defend their claims of voter fraud without providing proof, and delegitimize resistance by calling protesters “professional.” Watch all 19 lies in the video above. And check out the new installment of our new weekly series, “This Week in Trump’s America,” to get a comprehensive roundup of Trump’s third week in office.

WATCH: 19 lies the Trump administration told this week

[Admin]

The American president called the media the "enemy of the people"

Here is what that means:

Being branded an "enemy of the people" by the likes of Stalin or Mao brought at best suspicion and stigma, at worst hard labour or death. Now the chilling phrase - which is at least as old as Emperor Nero, who was called "hostis publicus", enemy of the public, by the Senate in AD 68 - is making something of a comeback. In November, the UK Daily Mail used its entire front page to brand three judges "enemies of the people" following a legal ruling on the Brexit process. Then on Friday, President Donald Trump deployed the epithet against mainstream US media outlets that he sees as hostile.

"The FAKE NEWS media (failing New York Times, NBC News, ABC, CBS, CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" he wrote on Twitter.

'Enemies of the people': Trump remark echoes history's worst tyrants - BBC News

And of course he does it repeatedly, like yesterday on a "campaign" rally in Florida (just a month into his Presidency..)

US President Donald Trump has launched another fierce attack on the media at a "campaign rally for America" event in the state of Florida. He told the crowd in Melbourne the media did not want "to report the truth" and had their own agenda.

Donald Trump savages media at Florida rally - BBC News

And this is a guy who took every little innuendo about his opponents in the campaign as the "truth" to slam them (even suggesting bizar stuff like Ted Cruz's father for being involved in Kennedy's assassination) and whipping up crowds that his Democratic opponent should be locked up.

And speaking about the press, he uncritically cites friendly press, even if they simply make up facts:

President Donald Trump cited a nonexistent incident in Sweden while talking about the relationship between terror attacks and refugees around the world during a rally in Melbourne, Florida, on Saturday. "You look at what's happening in Germany. You look at what's happening last night in Sweden ... Sweden ... who would believe this? Sweden, they took in large numbers, they are having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what's happening Brussels, you look at what's happening all over the world," Trump said. 

No incident occurred in Sweden on Friday night.

However, Fox News host Tucker Carlson ran an interview on Friday night's broadcast of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" with documentarian and media personality Ami Horowitz, who presented a clip from a new film documenting alleged violence committed by refugees in Sweden. The segment went on extensively about a supposed crime surge in Sweden and its links to immigrant populations. 

Crime rates in Sweden have stayed relatively stable, with some fluctuations, over the last decade, according to the 2016 Swedish Crime Survey.

This isn't the first time that there has been a correlation between Trump's statements and programming on cable news, of which he is a noted fan.

In late January, Trump tweeted about gun violence in Chicago shortly after after an "O'Reilly Factor" segment on the same topic, which cited the same statistics and even used the word "carnage," a recent favorite noun of Trump's.

In February, Trump declared in a tweet that he was calling "my own shots" in his administration shortly after MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough asked on air whether Trump's chief White House strategist, Steve Bannon, was "calling the shots" in the White House.

Trump cites nonexistent Sweden incident during rally - Business Insider

[Admin]

Soo, lets recapitulate

• Trump justifies a Muslim ban because of some incident happening in Sweden last Friday.
  
• Just like his counselor Kellyanne Conway mentioned a fake terrorist attack to justify the same.
  
• And her excuse, that she "misspoke" doesn't hold as she mentioned it several times before.
  
• But there was no Sweden incident last night.
  
• What there was is Tucker Carlson interviewing Ami Horrowitz blabbering about a rape epidemic caused by Swedish immigrants, and Trump latched onto that, apparently.
  
• He just confirmed that personally
  
• This Swedish rape epidemic by immigrants is a popular tune in alt-right world (various links here)
  
• But it's also nonsense, there is no Swedish rape epidemic purported by immigrants.
  
• And then we have the President arguing that the media are the enemy of the people..
  
• And other nonsense like he won the popular vote if not for millions voting illegally, etc.
  

[Admin]

Nice retort from former Swedish PM:

In fact, a 2016 crime survey found crime rates in Sweden have stayed relatively stable over the past decade.

Carl Bildt, the former prime minister of Sweden, has taken several shots at Trump on Twitter, including one Monday comparing Florida with Sweden:

Last year there were app 50% more murders only in Orlando/Orange in Florida, where Trump spoke the other day, than in all of Sweden. Bad.
— Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) February 20, 2017

Trump doubles down on 'Sweden' claims - Business Insider

And let's not forget how these Republicans want to keep you "safe"

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

So it's ok for them for you to be killed by a schizophrenic (or any other US gun owner), but they balk at the prospect of you being killed by a Muslim, despite the fact that the chances of the latter are orders of magnitude smaller than the chances of the former.
That's not exactly coolhearted evidence based policy, to put it mildly.

[Admin]

Wait, maybe he's right after all..

The world reacted with confusion after Donald Trump cited a Swedish terrorist attack during a campaign-style rally in Florida that appeared never to have happened.  One of the country's official Twitter accounts, controlled by a different citizen each week, said: "Nothing has happened here in Sweden. There has not [been] any terrorist attacks here. At all."

However, despite widespread debunking of his claims, it has since emerged a largely underreported attack did, in fact, occur last month. Three suspected neo-Nazis were arrested in January after a Gothenburg Asylum centre became the target of a homemade bomb attack, leaving one person seriously injured.  Security services said all three suspects had previously been members of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR), a group that openly promotes racist and anti-Semitic views and has vocally opposed non-white immigration to the country.

Donald Trump is right, there was a recent attack in Sweden. By neo-Nazis on a refugee centre | The Independent

[stpioc]

This is simply stunning..

On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to point out a fact he thought the media was underreporting: the decrease in the national debt in his first month.

"The media has not reported that the National Debt in my first month went down by $12 billion vs a $200 billion increase in Obama first mo[nth]," tweeted Trump.

The tweet, which echoes something Herman Cain said on Fox News' Fox & Friends an hour before, doesn't make sense for a few reasons.

First, it is true that the debt has probably ticked down but as noted by the Atlantic's David Frum, this is mostly due to the federal government rebalancing its intra-governmental holdings. Debt outstanding to the public has barely budged since Inauguration Day.

Additionally, the federal government is still operating under the budget passed before Trump came into office, so even if the overall debt decreased, his administration had little to do with it.

Finally, and most importantly, the economic circumstances during his and Obama's first month in office are vastly different and make the comparison totally off base.

Trump tweet on national debt in first month, under Obama stock market - Business Insider

[Admin]

Rather than the largely imagined rape epidemic in Sweden, there actually is a crime wave, but not the kind of violence you don't hear Trump (or anybody else from his camp) about:

Nearly 10 attacks were made on migrants in Germany every day in 2016, the interior ministry says. A total of 560 people were injured in the violence, including 43 children. Three-quarters of the attacks targeted migrants outside of their accommodation, while nearly 1,000 attacks were on housing. Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to open up Germany to people fleeing conflict and persecution has polarised the country and boosted hate crime.

Germany is struggling with a backlog of asylum applications and there are fears about security following a series of terrorist attacks across Europe. The interior ministry figures 3,533 attacks on migrants and asylum hostels in 2016 2.545 attacks on individual migrants 560 people injured, including 43 children 988 attacks on housing (slightly fewer than in 2015) 217 attacks on refugee organisations and volunteers

Germany hate crime: Nearly 10 attacks a day on migrants in 2016 - BBC News