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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:30:56 GMT
When it comes to the orange menace and Republican leadership fact checking is a must because it is never what it seems to be. It is like listening to FOX News where you get partial facts which leads to misleading conclusions that end up being the opposite of what is implied. Much is meant to placate his base and the Republican Party but when you look at some of it you find better news for the opposition. I can't say I disagree with Trump on everything but the way he says things and what he represents is abhorrent. Cleverly worded speech but I would suggest Trump get a real speech writer.
 companion threadS
Fact-checking President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of CongressBy IMTIYAZ DELAWALA MaryAlice Parks and RYAN STRUYK Feb 28, 2017, 10:52 PM ET During his address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, President Donald Trump made a number of claims about a range of issues, including unemployment and immigration. Throughout the speech, a team of journalists from ABC News identified questionable statements and provided context, detail and additional information and statistics. Here is ABC News' fact-check of the address: Fact Check #1: Impact of immigrants on employment, wages and crimeWhat Trump said: "By finally enforcing our immigration laws, we will raise wages, help the unemployed, save billions of dollars, and make our communities safer for everyone." What we know: According to a major report last fall from the National Academies of Sciences, immigrants have “little to no negative effects” on the wages or employment of native-born workers in the United States. Instead, the biggest impact to wages was among previously arrived immigrants. That is to say, new immigrants can impact the jobs/employment of immigrants who have been in the U.S. longer. To the extent that negative wage effects were found, native-born teens and specifically high-school dropouts, who saw fewer hours of work, were some of the most affected. On crime, a number of scientific studies conducted over the past several years contradict the idea that immigrants are responsible for a disproportionate share of crime While the government doesn’t track the number of undocumented (or documented) immigrants that have committed crimes, studies have found that immigrants in the U.S. are less likely to commit violent crime than U.S. citizens. A 2015 study by the pro-immigrant, nonprofit American Immigration Council, found that “immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime.” This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education, according to the study. A 2016 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology actually suggests that communities that recorded significant increases in immigration had a sharper reduction in crime compared to areas that had less immigration. Slideshow: President Trump addresses joint session of Congress abcnews.go.com/Politics/photos/president-trump-addresses-joint-session-congress-45807222/image-45819637Fact Check #2: Number of Americans out of the labor forceWhat Trump said: "Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force." What we know: This number, offered by Bureau of Labor Statistics data, is misleading. It includes every person over 16 years old who isn't working -- people who are high school students, people who are in college and people who are retired. These groups account for more than half of the number Trump cites. It also includes people who are disabled or are stay-at-home parents. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts another number -– “number of unemployed persons” -- at 7.6 million people. Fact Check #3: The national debt, manufacturing jobs and trade deficitWhat Trump said: "In the last eight years, the past administration has put on more new debt than nearly all other presidents combined. We've lost more than one-fourth of our manufacturing jobs since NAFTA was approved, and we've lost 60,000 factories since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. Our trade deficit in goods with the world last year was nearly $800 billion dollars." What we know: The national debt ballooned from $10.6 trillion to $19.9 trillion under President Obama, according to the Treasury Department, which is nearly more than all other presidents combined. But the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes that all of the blame should not be placed on the Obama administration, since some of the debt increases were already projected to occur before Obama took office, and spending and tax decisions are also influenced by action or inaction by Congress. On manufacturing, the U.S. has lost roughly one-third of its manufacturing jobs since NAFTA was approved, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. According the U.S. Census Bureau, the trade deficit with the world last year was $734 billion. Fact Check #4: Military spending increaseWhat Trump said: "I am sending Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history." What we know: President Trump has proposed a 10 percent increase equal to $54 billion that would increase the Defense Department’s budget next year to $603 billion. The proposal has been met positively by Congressional Republicans, but Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has said the increase is only $18.5 billion above the level President Obama proposed for fiscal year 2018. McCain has proposed a defense budget of $640 billion for 2018 as a first step to restore military readiness. Fact Check #5: Trump's impact on job creation and investmentWhat Trump said: "Since my election, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, General Motors, Sprint, Softbank, Lockheed, Intel, Walmart, and many others, have announced that they will invest billions of dollars in the United States and will create tens of thousands of new American jobs." What we know: The companies President Trump named have made announcements about new jobs since his election. It’s unclear in some instances if Trump can take credit for these jobs. Ford, for instance, told ABC News that the company "didn’t have any direct negotiations" with then President-elect Trump around the move to create 700 jobs here and cancel plans to build a new plant in Mexico. But that Trump’s policy reforms –tax and also regulatory – "played a factor in our decision making. So in essence, yes he did play a factor as we made some of the decisions." Similarly while both GM and Intel announced the jobs will be added, they credited their long-term plans and general business growth for the investments. Companies though are quick to point to future optimism on pro-growth policies and tax reform. Fact Check #6: Cost of F-35 fighter jetWhat Trump said: "We've saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by bringing down the price of the fantastic new F-35 jet fighter, and will be saving billions more dollars on contracts all across our government." What we know: Lockheed Martin, a government contractor, has been direct in crediting President Trump’s personal involvement in reducing costs of the F-35 project. They said on February 3 that their agreement with the Defense Department for the next 90 F-35 aircraft represents $728 million in savings from their last contract and creates 1,800 new jobs. "President Trump’s personal involvement in the F-35 program accelerated the negotiations and sharpened our focus on driving down the price," the statement said. The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin also announced that for the first time the cost of new F-35 fighter aircraft had been reduced to less than $100 million per plane. But the announcement was in line with already existing Pentagon cost projections for the next lot of aircraft to be purchased. Lockheed Martin has told the Pentagon that by 2019 it expects to have unit costs down to $85 million. Fact Check #7: 2015 murder rate and Chicago shootingsWhat Trump said: "The murder rate in 2015 experienced its largest single-year increase in nearly half a century. In Chicago, more than 4,000 people were shot last year alone –- and the murder rate so far this year has been even higher." What we know: The number of murders in the U.S. did have its largest year-to-year increase in nearly five decades from 2014 to 2015 -- but it's important to note that violent crime in the United States has declined dramatically over the last two decades. Chicago accounts for nearly half of the increase in murders over the last year, according to data from the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association. In 2016, there were 4,331 shooting victims in Chicago. And there were 51 murders in Chicago in January 2017 -- one more than the 50 murders in January 2016, according to the Chicago Police Department. Fact Check #8: Terrorism-related convictions since September 11What Trump said: "According to data provided by the Department of Justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted for terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country." What we know: Last year, the Department of Justice provided a Senate panel with a list of 580 individuals who were convicted of terrorism or terrorism-related offenses between Sept. 11, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2014. While the Justice Department did not provide immigration-related information on those individuals, the Senate panel -- led by then Sen. Jeff Sessions, who's now the U.S. Attorney General -- conducted open-source research and determined that at least 380 of those 580 people were born outside the United States. However, a subsequent review by a Cato Institute analyst concluded that Sessions' findings were "flawed," with "two major problems:" "First, you might get the impression that all of those convictions were for terrorist attacks planned on U.S.-soil but only 40, or 6.8 percent, were. Second, 241 of the 580 convictions, or 42 percent, were not even for terrorism offenses. Many of the investigations started based on a terrorism tip like, for instance, the suspect wanting to buy a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. However, the tip turned out to be groundless and the legal saga ended with only a mundane conviction of receiving stolen cereal. According to Sessions’ list, that cereal thief is a terrorist." In addition, of the 380 foreign-born individuals identified by Sessions' office, about 24 were admitted to the United States as refugees.
Fact Check #9: Increasing Obamacare premiumsWhat Trump said: "Obamacare premiums nationwide have increased by double and triple digits. In Arizona, premiums increased 116 percent." What we know: It is true that premiums are on the rise. Insurers are set to raise the premiums for plans sold through HealthCare.gov by an average of 22 percent in 2017, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a report. This is approximately triple the percentage increase from 2015 to 2016, when premiums increased by 7.5 percent. As for the Arizona example, a recent HHS report supports the claim -- but there are some important caveats. Indeed, the report shows the 116 percent increase in the monthly cost of a Silver plan in Arizona between 2016 and 2017. However, Arizona is an outlier in that the increase seen there is not typical. True, nearly every state showed an increase, but none were as dramatic as the Arizona example. Additionally, these costs represent what a 27-year-old would pay before tax credits. Tax credits allow a large part of the population to pay some fraction of the actual price when it is all figured out. In 2016, a 40-year-old adult making $30,000 per year would pay about $208 per month for the second-lowest-silver plan. If this person is willing to switch to whatever the new second lowest-cost silver plan is in 2017, they will pay a similar amount (the after-tax credit payment for a similar person in 2017 is $207 per month or a change of 0 percent). Finally, we know that premiums had been increasing before the Affordable Care Act took effect – suggesting that it may not be appropriate to assign all blame for this increase on the ACA Fact Check #10: Border security and drugs entering the U.S.What Trump said: "We've defended the borders of other nations, while leaving our own borders wide open, for anyone to cross -- and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate." What we know: On border security, the U.S.-Mexico border is currently secured by fencing, billions of dollars in resources, thousands of Border Patrol agents and new technologies. Some 700 miles of border fencing have already been completed along the country's nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico, much of it during Barack Obama's presidency, as part of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was signed by President George W. Bush. Border Patrol employs a "digital wall" composed of about 8,000 cameras, which monitor the southern fence and ports of entry. Its resources also include more than 11,000 underground sensors, 107 aircraft, eight drones, 175 mobile surveillance units and 84 boats. Despite the security at the border, illegal drugs continue to make their way into the U.S. It’s unclear if drugs are pouring in at "unprecedented rates," but drug deaths are currently at their highest ever recorded level. Every year since 2009, drug deaths have outnumbered deaths by firearms, motor vehicle crashes, suicide, and homicide, according to the DEA’s 2016 National Drug Threat Assessment. In 2014, approximately 129 people died every day as a result of drug poisoning. Mexican criminal organizations remain the "greatest criminal drug threat to the United States," according to the same report. No other groups are currently positioned to challenge them, the DEA found. By controlling smuggling corridors, these criminals are able to introduce multi-ton quantities of illicit drugs into the U.S. on a yearly basis, according to the DEA. Fact Check #11: Healthcare options in Kentucky and nationwideWhat Trump said: "Governor Matt Bevin of Kentucky just said Obamacare is failing in his state -- the state of Kentucky -- and it's and unsustainable and collapsing. One third of counties have only one insurer on the exchanges they’re losing them fast, they’re losing them so fast -- they’re leaving and many Americans with no choice at all." What we know: Kentucky now will have 59 counties with only one health insurance option on the exchange for 2017. Off the exchange, most Kentucky counties will have only two options. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in states that use Healthcare.gov, the average number of insurers participating in the marketplace will be 3.9 in 2017 – down from 5.4 companies per state in 2016. The reason behind the exodus of major insurers (Aetna, Humana) has been one of numbers; they have reportedly been struggling to make money given the relative dearth of young, healthy people paying into the system to balance out the costs incurred by sicker and older people. This, combined with general uncertainty about the upcoming plans for the healthcare system, have companies backing away from potentially costly commitments. Fact Check #12: Jobs created by the Keystone pipelineWhat Trump said: "We have cleared the way for the construction of the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines -- thereby creating tens of thousands of jobs -- and I've issued a new directive that new American pipelines be made with American steel." What we know: A report from the State Department in 2014 estimated the Keystone pipeline project, through direct and indirect spending, could result in over 40,000 jobs. But most of those jobs are not permanent -- instead the State Department estimated that the Keystone jobs would mostly be four or eight months long, and many would not be construction-related. The report says the pipeline’s construction will likely lead to about 35 permanent, full–time jobs. ABC News' Dan Childs, Jack Date, Conor Finnegan, Mike Levine, Adam Kelsey, Serena Marshall, Luis Martinez, Lauren Pearle, Geneva Sands, Dax Tejera and Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:32:07 GMT
I found this particularly offensive especially when we know how offended the father of this Navy Seal is by Trump's actions AND the genocide going on in Yemen at the hands of our so called allies which by the way were "supposedly" guilty of the 9/11 terror flights (even though some of us think they were patsies in one way or another). We need Benghazi type hearings immediately.
www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-speech-yemen-widow-235551
Trump plays empathizer-in-chief with Yemen raid widow
By Michael Crowley
| 03/01/17 12:41 AM EST
President Donald Trump, facing questions about a controversial military operation, made the first U.S. combat death on his watch a moment of riveting drama during his Tuesday address to Congress.
In a scene of powerful emotion that brought the audience in the House chamber to its feet, Trump introduced and applauded Carryn Owens, the widow of Ryan Owens, a Navy SEAL killed during a late January raid in Yemen that went badly wrong.
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Trump approved the operation during his first week as president—but distanced himself from it only hours before his congressional address Tuesday, saying the planning had started “before I got here,” and that “they”—his generals—“lost Ryan.”
“Ryan died as he lived: a warrior, and a hero — battling against terrorism and securing our Nation,” Trump told Congress, falling silent for well over a minute as television cameras lingered on a sobbing Owens as she tilted her head heavenward and seemed to address her late husband.
But the display of raw emotion obscured the volatile state of Trump’s relationship with critics within the military, who worry that Trump is unprepared for the responsibility of being commander in chief.
Trump hits the reset button
By Eli Stokols
They include Owens’s father, who told the Miami Herald over the weekend that he refused to meet with Trump after his son’s remains arrived at Dover Air Force Base in early February. “Don't hide behind my son’s death,” William Owens said, questioning whether the raid had been undertaken as a “grand display” and calling for an investigation.
To some, the storyline—a parent furious over a son’s death under murky circumstances and politically-charged accusations—echoes the conservative outrage at Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama over the four Americans killed in the September 2012 terror attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
But while the Benghazi assault came as a surprise, the January raid in central Yemen was a carefully planned operation. Owens was shot early in assault on a remote compound that reportedly targeted a top leader of the country’s al Qaeda branch. The operation turned into an unexpectedly intense firefight requiring massive reinforcements, and left three other Americans wounded and 20 Yemenis dead, including several woman and children. U.S. forces also had to destroy one of their own $75 million aircraft on the ground after it was damaged.
The al Qaeda leader escaped, and several news organizations have reported that—contrary to public claims from the White House and Pentagon—the raid yielded no significant intelligence.
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:33:23 GMT
Quote from Fact Check article: And does anyone in their right mind think that a f***ing wall along any part of the border is going to stop the drug cartels?! Seriously?! They're going to tunnel underneath it, fifty to seventy feet down, like we know they've done in the San Ysidro/Otay Mesa/Tijuana sector near San Diego. You're never going to stop the drug flow that way. So apart from being just plain immoral and financially stupid, that wall is totally useless from the standpoint of security of any kind for either us or Mexico. And that part about his so-called "praise" of the Navy SEAL that was killed in Yemen...as the son of a father who fought and survived two hugely unpopular wars, in Korea and in Vietnam, what Trump did last night was predictably despicable and beyond the pale. |
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:33:56 GMT
It is a problem but any moron has to know that the only way the huge amount of drugs are coming into this country is via Mexican trucks freely crossing the border thanks to the Republican created, Bill Clinton authorized (against Democratic Party objections) NAFTA. Want to stop the drugs? Screw the wall and inspect ALL MEXICAN TRUCKS crossing the border with that wall money.
Why did Republican's refuse to work with Obama on meaningful immigration reform. Here is the real reason. Essentially it is fear driven by racism which is a very real tenet of Conservatism (Reptoidism).
The (Real) Reason Why the House Won’t Pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Christopher Parker· www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2014/08/04/the-real-reason-why-the-house-wont-pass-comprehensive-immigration-reform/
Monday, August 4, 2014
A national survey I conducted revealed significant discrepancies between Tea Party conservatives and non-Tea Party conservatives, especially when it comes to “illegal” immigrants and immigration policy:
◦When asked whether or not “restrictive immigration policies are based in part on racism,” 40 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives say that racism has something to do with restrictive immigration policy versus 18 percent of Tea Party conservatives.
◦Almost two-thirds (66 percent) of Tea Party conservatives want to eliminate birthright citizenship (part of the 14th Amendment) versus 46 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives — a 20-point difference.
◦Only 30 percent of Tea Party conservatives support the DREAM Act versus 50 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives, another 20-point difference.
It’s clear that Republican constituents are fraught with anxiety induced by the perception of a cultural threat. To verify this point, I probed how Tea Party identifiers felt about “illegal” immigrants’ presence in America. When asked about how they feel about “illegal aliens,” it turns out that 82 percent of Tea Party identifiers are either anxious or fearful of them.This is the real reason why the House GOP refuses to pass the Senate bill: their constituents are anxious, even fearful that immigrants will take over the country.
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:34:32 GMT
Nothing necessarily surprising about those statistics about Republicans, especially about those so-called "patriotic" Tea Baggers. "Their" America (i.e., Mostly White America) is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and they're angry about it (just look at the two Deplorables named Steve in Trump's advisory camp--Bannon and Miller). |
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:35:11 GMT
Whoppers Big and Small in Trump’s Speech
March 1, 2017
Dave Johnson
This is classic dumb guy wedding speech writing: “The chorus of their dating became an earthquake of their love.” – Samantha Bee on Trump’s speech
Donald Trump just gave a fact-free, and detail-free, speech to a joint session of Congress. Early on in the evening, the president – who has loaded his cabinet with billionaires and his administration with former Goldman Sachs executives – earned audible guffaws from the assembled lawmakers when he declared, in all seriousness, “We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption…”.
With illegal border crossings at the lowest level since 1972, Trump devoted a good portion of his speech to spreading fear of undocumented immigrants. But only those from the south. There are twice as many immigrant visa “overstays” by Canadians as Mexicans. Meanwhile back in the real world, net migration from Mexico is below zero – more are leaving than coming.
Trump claimed our borders are “wide open… for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate.” But not only are our borders more secure than ever, our country’s much-publicized opioid addiction problem is the result of pharmaceutical company marketing, not Mexican drug gangs. American physicians have legally prescribed enough painkillers – largely in Trump-voting states – to stupefy people enough to, well, elect Trump.
Trump also spoke of immigrants committing crimes, asking what would those in Congress say to an American family when immigrants take “a loved one” from them. However, the New York Times reports that “Contrary to Trump’s Claims, Immigrants Are Less Likely to Commit Crimes.” Oh well.
But rather than run the risk that facts might distract the public from his agenda of fear, Trump showcased family members of people who had been killed by immigrants, then announced that he is setting up an official Ministry of Fear, saying, I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American Victims. The office is called VOICE — Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests.
Trump stressed that immigrants take jobs and income from American families. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) took a 2014 look at this claim:
There is broad agreement among academic economists that in the long run, immigration has a small but positive impact on the labor market outcomes of native-born workers, on average.
Then Trump went after Muslims, saying, we can’t allow “allow uncontrolled entry” to our country because – “the vast majority of individuals convicted for terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country.” Pushing the fear further, he said, We cannot allow a beachhead of terrorism to form inside America — we cannot allow our Nation to become a sanctuary for extremists.
Trump conveniently neglected to mention the severe vetting process refugees and immigrants from Muslim countries already face, or the fact that over half of the people the Department of Homeland Security has determined were inspired by foreign groups to attempt terrorist attacks in the U.S. were born in the U.S. And he certainly wasn’t about to bring up native-born white, Christian terrorists.
Trump promised to “work to bring down the artificially high price of drugs and bring them down immediately.” This promise comes less than a month after this headline, “After meeting with pharma lobbyists, Trump drops promise to negotiate drug prices“.
On the very day headlines read, “Trump signs executive order to roll back clean water rule“, he said, “My administration wants to work with members in both parties to… promote clean air and clear water…”.
Trump also presented environmental destruction as a jobs program, saying, for example, We have cleared the way for the construction of the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines — thereby creating tens of thousands of jobs — and I’ve issued a new directive that new American pipelines be made with American steel.
In fact, as DeSmogBlog points out, much of the steel used to construct both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines were made by a Russian company tied to Vladimir Putin. And the jobs? A few thousand construction jobs, for a few months while the pipelines are constructed, in an economy adding more than 200,000 jobs a month, and then “Operation of the proposed Project would generate 35 permanent and 15 temporary jobs, primarily for routine inspections, maintenance, and repairs.”
These are just a few examples of what we are dealing with when Trump speaks. Big whoppers, little whoppers, bamboozlements, empty promises, detail-free policy mumblings, flat-out intentional lies, trickery, but always fear, fear and more fear.
This time his “tone” was supposedly easier to stomach. Did anyone fall for it?
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:35:38 GMT
Trump's weekend trips to Mar-a-Lago cost taxpayers millions
And this doesn't include the millions to keep his wife and son in NYC and his other children are also costing millions.
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:36:14 GMT
Quote by ronstadtfanaz: And of course this money has to be taken out of Meals On Wheels, NPR, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in order for it to be spent on Mar-a-Lago, a place that I hope is swamped by the Atlantic in the first act of climate change destruction. |
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:37:01 GMT
Every day there are new lies from this man, his party and the conservative minions...all boasts and lies of omission. AP FACT CHECK: Trump's miscues on trade and drug pricesAssociated Press HOPE YEN and CALVIN WOODWARD,Associated Press Sat, May 18 5:26 AM MST
www.yahoo.com/news/ap-fact-check-trumps-miscues-trade-drug-prices-122613295.html
In this May 14, 2019, photo, Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, shake hands prior to their talks in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, southern Russia. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, Pool)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump spoke this past week as if he's unaware that drug prices have gone up and tariffs came before him.
His boast that the U.S. never collected a dime on goods from China until he imposed them marked a series of statements misrepresenting how trade works as the two countries escalated their dispute with new and retaliatory taxes on each other's products.
Meantime, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared inaccurately that no traces of collusion between his country and Trump's 2016 campaign were found in the "exotic" special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller.
A look at some recent rhetoric:
TRADE
TRUMP: "We've been losing, for many years, anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion a year with China and trade with China. We can't let that happen." — remarks Tuesday at the White House.
TRUMP: "We lost $180 billion with the European Union." — remarks to National Association of Realtors on Friday.
THE FACTS: This is not how almost any economist would describe what is happening.
The United States does have a huge trade deficit with China, totaling $378.7 billion last year, as well as a $109 billion trade deficit with the EU. That means China and the EU exported far more to the United States than vice versa. But in return, U.S. businesses and consumers received goods and services with that money. Economists compare Trump's take on trade deficits to a shopper going to a store and complaining they "lost" money with what they bought.
Most trade experts see trade deficits or surpluses between two specific countries as economically meaningless. China's deficit with the United States is large in part because many goods, particularly electronics, that used to be made in different countries, typically in Asia, are now sent to China for final assembly, even though many key parts are still manufactured in countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
That has lowered the U.S. trade deficit with those countries over the years while increasing the gap with China.
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TRUMP: "Our economy is fantastic; (China's) is not so good. We've gone up trillions and trillions of dollars since the election; they've gone way down since my election." — remarks Tuesday.
THE FACTS: There's not much truth to this. The U.S. economy hasn't done as well, nor has China done as badly, as Trump says. The U.S. economy has grown at a healthy pace since Trump's inauguration in January 2017, but not by "trillions and trillions."
U.S. gross domestic product — the broadest measure of the country's growth — has increased by just over $1 trillion, to $18.9 trillion, in the past two years. Those figures are adjusted for inflation. China has seen its rate of economic growth tick down slightly, from 6.7% in 2016 to 6.6% last year, according to the International Monetary Fund. That is more than twice the U.S. growth rate in 2018 of 2.9%, although mature economies such as America's typically grow more slowly than developing countries such as China.
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TRUMP: "We're taking in, right now, hundreds of billions of dollars. We're taking in billions of dollars of tariffs. And those tariffs are going to be tremendously — if you look at what we've done thus far with China, we've never taken in 10 cents until I got elected." — remarks Monday with Hungary's prime minister.
THE FACTS: He's wrong. The notion that the U.S. suddenly has revenue coming in from tariffs, thanks to his trade dispute, defies history that goes back to the founding of the republic. President George Washington signed the Tariff Act into law in 1789 — the first major act of Congress — and duties from imports were a leading source of revenue for the government before the advent of the modern tax system early in the 20th century. Tariffs on goods specifically from China are not remotely new, either. They are simply higher in some cases than they were before.
Tariffs are a decidedly modest portion of revenue in modern times and Trump has not changed that with the escalation of his trade fight with China. Customs and duties generated $41.3 billion in revenues last year, up from $34.6 billion in 2017 (far more than 10 cents). That $6.7 billion increase occurred in part because of the president's tariffs. But it amounted to just 0.16% of federal spending.
Moreover, tariffs are taxes paid largely by U.S. business and consumers, not foreign countries.
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RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
PUTIN: "However exotic the work of special counsel Mueller was, I have to say that on the whole, he has had a very objective investigation, and he confirmed that there were no traces whatsoever of collusion between Russia and the incumbent administration, which we said was absolutely fake." — remarks Tuesday before a private meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Sochi, Russia.
THE FACTS: Putin is wrong about the Mueller report in regards to its findings of "collusion."
The Mueller report and other scrutiny revealed a multitude of meetings between Trump associates and Russians. Among them: Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer who had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.
On collusion, Mueller said he did not assess whether that occurred because it is not a legal term.
He looked into a potential criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and said the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence to establish criminal charges on that front.
Mueller noted some Trump campaign officials had declined to testify under the Fifth Amendment or had provided false or incomplete testimony, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what happened during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel wrote that he "cannot rule out the possibility" that unavailable information could have cast a different light on the investigation's findings.
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DRUG PRICES
TRUMP: "Drug prices have gone down for the first time in 51 years — they've gone down. First time in 51 years." — remarks Monday at White House dinner.
THE FACTS: That's an outdated boast. Trump appeared to be referring to recent decreases in the Labor Department's Consumer Price Index for prescription drugs. But the index was updated Friday, before Trump's latest claim, and it showed an increase of 0.3% in April for prescription drug prices when compared with the same month last year.
The index tracks a set of medications, both brand drugs and generics.
Other independent studies point to increasing prices for brand name drugs as well and more overall spending on medications.
An analysis of brand-name drug prices by The Associated Press showed 2,712 price increases in the first half of January, compared with 3,327 increases during the same period last year. However, the size of this year's increases was not as pronounced.
Both this year and last, the number of price cuts was minuscule. The information for the analysis was provided by the health data firm Elsevier.
An analysis by Altarum, a nonprofit research and consulting firm, found that in 2018, spending on prescription drugs was one of the main factors behind a 4.5% increase in U.S. health spending. Spending on prescription drugs grew much faster than in 2017, according to the study.
Economist Paul Hughes-Cromwick of Altarum, said he expects drug prices will continue to creep up.
"I would be quite surprised if by July the annual rate doesn't return to a more normal 2%-4% growth," said Hughes-Cromwick.
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JOBS:
TRUMP: "We have the most people working today than at any time in the history of our country." — remarks to real estate group Friday.
THE FACTS: True but not surprising. The record workforce is driven by population growth.
A more relevant measure is the proportion of Americans with jobs, and that is still far below record highs.
According to Labor Department data, 60.6 percent of people in the United States 16 years and older were working in April. That's below the all-time high of 64.7 percent in April 2000, though higher than the 59.9 percent when Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.
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TRUMP: "We have the biggest tax cut bill in the history of our country." — remarks to real estate group Friday.
THE FACTS: His tax cuts are nowhere close to the biggest in U.S. history.
It's a $1.5 trillion tax cut over 10 years. As a share of the total economy, a tax cut of that size ranks 12th, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. President Ronald Reagan's 1981 cut is the biggest followed by the 1945 rollback of taxes that financed World War II.
Post-Reagan tax cuts also stand among the historically significant: President George W. Bush's cuts in the early 2000s and President Barack Obama's renewal of them a decade later.
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Associated Press writers Christopher Rugaber and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.
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Find AP Fact Checks at apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Follow @apfactcheck on Twitter: twitter.com/APFactCheck
EDITOR'S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures
Don't Stop Me Now Cold Open - SNL
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:37:50 GMT
AP FACT CHECK: Trump takes credit for Obama's gains for vetsAssociated Press HOPE YEN and CALVIN WOODWARD,Associated Press 12 hours ago
www.yahoo.com/news/ap-fact-check-trump-takes-credit-obamas-gains-042848294.html
WASHINGTON (AP) — Boastful on the occasion of Memorial Day, President Donald Trump and his Veterans Affairs secretary are claiming full credit for health care improvements that were underway before they took office.
Trump said he passed a private-sector health care program, Veterans Choice, after failed attempts by past presidents for the last "45 years." That's not true. The Choice program, which allows veterans to see doctors outside the government-run VA system at taxpayer expense, was first passed in 2014 under President Barack Obama.
Trump's VA secretary, Robert Wilkie, also is distorting the facts. Faulting previous "bad leadership" at VA, Wilkie suggested it was his own efforts that improved waiting times at VA medical centers and brought new offerings of same-day mental health service. The problem: The study cited by Wilkie on wait times covers the period from 2014 to 2017, before Wilkie took the helm as VA secretary. Same-day mental health services at VA were started during the Obama administration under Wilkie's predecessor, David Shulkin.
The half-truths and exaggerations came in a week when selective accounting was a norm in Trump's rhetoric, extending into his trip to Japan , where he inflated the drop in the U.S. unemployment rate for women.
A look at the claims, about the Russia investigation, the border, drug prices and more:
VETERANS
TRUMP: "We passed VA Choice and VA Accountability to give our veterans the care that they deserve and they have been trying to pass these things for 45 years." — Montoursville, Pennsylvania, rally on May 20.
THE FACTS: Wrong. Trump is not the first president in 45 years to get Congress to pass Veterans Choice; Obama did it in the wake of a scandal at VA's medical center in Phoenix, where some veterans died while waiting months for appointments. The program currently allows veterans to see doctors outside the VA system if they must wait more than 30 days for an appointment or drive more than 40 miles (65 kilometers) to a VA facility.
Trump did expand eligibility for the program. Now, starting June 6, veterans are to have that option for a private doctor if their VA wait is only 20 days (28 for specialty care) or their drive is only 30 minutes.
Still, VA's top health official, Dr. Richard Stone, described the new program's start to "almost be a non-event" in testimony to Congress. That's in part because wait times in the private sector are typically longer than at VA. In 2018, 34 percent of all VA appointments were with outside physicians, down from 36 percent in 2017.
Also key to the Choice program's success is an overhaul of VA's electronic medical records to allow seamless sharing of them with private physicians, a process expected to take up to 10 years. Wilkie has said full implementation of the expanded Choice program is "years" away.
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WILKIE: "The first thing I did was change out the leadership at VA. ... (The president) also allowed me to change out leadership in the VA centers. If someone wasn't walking the post, getting to know the people who work for her or him, or getting to know those veterans, they had to leave. And, as a result, the Journal of the American Medical Association this year said that our waiting times are now as good or better than any in the private sector." — interview Thursday with Fox News.
THE FACTS: It's true that a study by the medical association came out in January that found wait times at VA medical centers on average were better than the private sector. But the improvement wasn't a "result" of anything that Wilkie did: The study involved a period largely covering the Obama administration — and before Wilkie became acting VA secretary in late March 2018.
In fact, in a VA press release in January announcing the study's results, Wilkie credits the department's "concerted" effort to improve access to care "since 2014."
The study covered four specialties, primary care, dermatology, cardiology and orthopedics.
It found that in 2014, the average wait time at VA medical centers was 22.5 days, compared with 18.7 days in the private sector, which was not statistically different. By 2017, the wait time at VA improved to 17.7 days, while increasing to 29.8 days for private doctors. Wait times at VA medical centers were shorter in all specialties except orthopedics.
According to the study, the number of patients seen yearly in VA increased slightly between 2014 and 2017, to about 5.1 million. VA patient satisfaction also rose, according to patient surveys cited in the study.
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WILKIE: The VA "had suffered from bad leadership. And that's a bipartisan comment. And the second thing I had to do was make sure that as we approach our veteran population that we make sure that they are at the center, their needs are at the center of what we do ... I think we've had it backwards at VA for many years. ... One of the things that we're doing at VA is that we have same-day mental health service. ... It is huge." — interview with Fox News.
THE FACTS: Same-day mental health service started at VA before Trump took office in January 2017, let alone Wilkie.
VA's effort to provide same-day primary and mental-health care when medically necessary at every VA medical center was publicized in April 2016 under the Obama administration. At the time, Shulkin was helping lead the effort as VA's top health official. By late 2016, the department's blog announced that the goal of same-day mental health services would be achieved by year's end.
A Dec. 23, 2016, article in the Harvard Business Review cites new same-day services at all VA hospitals as evidence of notable progress at the department. Shulkin, who was then named by Trump to be his VA secretary, told Congress in late January 2017 the services already were fully in place.
Trump selected Wilkie to be his VA secretary after firing Shulkin in March 2018 because of ethics charges and internal rebellion at the department over the role of private care for veterans. Trump's initial replacement choice, White House doctor Ronny Jackson, withdrew after allegations of workplace misconduct surfaced. While Wilkie has been credited by both parties in Congress for bringing stability to the department, the VA improvements he attributes to himself this past week are misplaced.
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ECONOMY
TRUMP, on the unemployment rate: "With women, we have the best numbers we've had in now 71 years. That's going to be, very soon, a historic number, meaning the best ever." — remarks Saturday with Japanese business leaders in Tokyo.
THE FACTS: The unemployment rate for women is not the best in 71 years.
According to the Labor Department, the women's unemployment rate fell last month to 3.1%. That's just the lowest since October 1953, or 66 years ago, when it also was 3.1%. The lowest on record was 2.4% in May 1953.
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TRUMP: "My Administration is achieving things that have never been done before, including unleashing perhaps the Greatest Economy in our Country's history." — tweet Wednesday.
TRUMP: "Most successful economy, perhaps, in our country's history." — remarks to reporters Wednesday.
THE FACTS: The economy is solid but it's not one of the best in our country's history, no matter how many times he asserts it. Trump is also claiming full credit for an economic expansion that began under Obama in mid-2009.
The economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. That growth was the highest in just four years for the first quarter.
In the late 1990s, growth topped 4 percent for four straight years, a level it has not yet reached on an annual basis under Trump. Growth even reached 7.2 percent in 1984.
While the economy has shown strength, it grew 2.9% in 2018 - the same pace it reached in 2015 — and simply hasn't hit historically high growth rates.
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TRUMP claims "the best unemployment numbers in history." — Pennsylvania rally on May 20.
THE FACTS: The 3.6% unemployment rate in the latest report is not the best in history. It's the lowest since 1969, when it was 3.5%. The U.S. also had lower rates than now in the early 1950s. And during three years of World War II, the annual rate was under 2%.
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TRUMP INVESTIGATIONS
TRUMP: "I don't do cover-ups." — Rose Garden remarks Wednesday to reporters.
THE FACTS: Federal prosecutors may not agree with that assertion, which he made in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's accusation that the president was engaged in a cover-up. Trump spoke after breaking off an infrastructure meeting when Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., came to the White House for it.
Prosecutors' court filings in December said Trump directed his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to make payments to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 presidential campaign. Both women alleged they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which the White House denies.
In particular, the Justice Department says the hush money payments were unreported campaign contributions meant to influence the outcome of the election. That assertion makes the payments subject to campaign finance laws, which restrict how much people can donate to a campaign and bar corporations from making direct contributions.
Trump has said the payments were "a simple private transaction," not a campaign contribution.
Separately, the Mueller report found that Trump dictated his son Trump Jr.'s misleading statement about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower to cloak its purpose.
Cohen, who pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance crimes in connection with those payments, had previously implicated Trump. The department's filings backed up Cohen's claims.
The Mueller report said Trump learned in summer of 2017 that the news media planned to report on the meeting at Trump Tower between senior campaign officials and Russians offering derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee.
Trump directed aides not to disclose the emails setting up the meeting. Before the emails became public, the president also edited a press statement for Donald Trump Jr. by deleting a line that acknowledged that the meeting was "with an individual who (Trump Jr.) was told might have information helpful to the campaign" and instead said only that the meeting was about adoptions.
That episode was among 10 identified by the Mueller investigation of possible obstruction of justice by Trump. Mueller said in his report that he could not conclusively determine that Trump had committed a crime or that he hadn't.
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TRUMP: "The greatest Hoax in American History." — tweet Wednesday.
THE FACTS: A two-year investigation that produced guilty pleas, convictions and criminal charges against Russian intelligence officers and others with ties to the Kremlin, as well as Trump associates, is not a hoax.
Mueller charged 34 people, including the president's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and three Russian companies. Twenty-five Russians were indicted on charges related to election interference, accused either of hacking Democratic email accounts during the campaign or of orchestrating a social media campaign that spread disinformation on the internet.
Five Trump aides pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller, and a sixth, longtime confidant Roger Stone, is awaiting trial on charges he lied to Congress and engaged in witness tampering.
Mueller's report concluded that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was "sweeping and systematic." Ultimately, Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. But the special counsel didn't render judgment on whether Trump obstructed justice, saying his investigators found evidence on both sides.
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TRUMP ON BIDEN
TRUMP, on Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden: "He's not from Pennsylvania. I guess he was born here but he left you, folks. ... He left you for another state and he didn't take care of you because he didn't take care of your jobs. He let other countries come in and rip off America." — Pennsylvania rally on May 20.
THE FACTS: It's true that Pennsylvania-born Biden left the state without taking care of jobs for the people he left behind. He was a boy, 10 or 11, when his family moved to Delaware in 1953.
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TRADE
TRUMP on his trade dispute with China: "I'll be honest, we are getting hundreds of millions of dollars brought into our country. We've never gotten 10 cents. We are getting hundreds of billions of dollars coming into our country." — remarks to reporters Thursday.
THE FACTS: This is not true. The tariffs he's raised on imports from China are primarily if not entirely a tax on U.S. consumers and businesses, %href_on(file:
EDITOR'S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:38:35 GMT
AP FACT CHECK: The silent partner in Trump's boastsAssociated Press HOPE YEN and CALVIN WOODWARD,Associated Press Sat, Jun 22 5:01 AM MST
www.yahoo.com/news/ap-fact-check-silent-partner-120134088.html
President Donald Trump says goodbye to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, at the West Wing of the White House, Thursday June 20, 2019, after their meeting in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has a silent partner behind several of the accomplishments he likes to boast about: Barack Obama.
Despite assailing his Democratic predecessor for waging a "cruel and heartless war on American energy," for example, Trump can brag about U.S. energy supremacy thanks to the sector's growth in the Obama years.
And the Obama-Trump decade is soon to yield an economic record if things stay on track a little longer — the most sustained expansion in U.S. history. Though Trump claims all the credit, the expansion started in Obama's first year, continued through his presidency and has been maintained under Trump.
There are no fist bumps in the offing, however.
The past week saw the kickoff of Trump's 2020 campaign with a rally in Florida. That and other events provided Trump a platform that he used to exaggerate what he's done, take some factually challenged swipes at Obama and Democrats at large, and make promises that will be hard to keep.
A sampling:
MIGRANTS
TRUMP, on separating children from adults at the Mexican border: "When I became president, President Obama had a separation policy. I didn't have it. He had it. I brought the families together. I'm the one that brought 'em together. Now, I said something when I did that. I'm the one that put people together. ... They separated. I put 'em together.' — interview with Telemundo broadcast Thursday.
JOSE DIAZ-BALART, interviewer: "You did not."
THE FACTS: Trump is not telling the truth. The separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents resulted from his "zero tolerance" policy. Obama had no such policy. After a public uproar and under a court order, Trump ceased the separations.
Zero tolerance meant that U.S. authorities would criminally prosecute all adults caught crossing into the U.S. illegally. Doing so meant detention for adults and the removal of their children while their parents were in custody. During the Obama administration, such family separations were the exception. They became the practice under Trump's policy, which he suspended a year ago.
Before Trump's zero-tolerance policy, migrant families caught illegally entering the U.S. were usually referred for civil deportation proceedings, not requiring separation, unless they were known to have a criminal record. Then and now, immigration officials may take a child from a parent in certain cases, such as serious criminal charges against a parent, concerns over the health and welfare of a child or medical concerns.
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TRUMP on detention centers at the border: "President Obama is the one that built those prison cells." — Telemundo interview.
THE FACTS: He has a point. Whether they are called prison cells or something else, Obama held children in temporary, ill-equipped facilities and built a large center in McAllen, Texas, that is used now.
Democrats routinely and inaccurately blame Trump for creating "cages" for children. They are actually referring to chain-link fencing inside the McAllen center — Obama's creation.
Conditions for detained migrants deteriorated sharply during a surge of Central American arrivals under Trump, particularly in El Paso, Texas.
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TRADE
TRUMP: "This will be the largest trade deal ever made, and it won't even be close. If you take a look at the numbers, second is so far away, you don't even call it second. So it's very exciting. And very exciting for Mexico; very exciting for Canada." — remarks Thursday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
THE FACTS: That's wrong, simply by virtue of the number of trade partners involved.
The proposed new agreement, replacing the North American Free Trade agreement, covers the same three countries. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiated by the Obama administration, included the three NAFTA partners — United States, Canada and Mexico — plus Japan and eight other Pacific Rim countries. Trump withdrew the United States from the pact on his third day in office.
Even the Pacific deal pales in comparison with one that did go into effect with the U.S. on board, the Uruguay Round. Concluded in 1994, the round of negotiations created the World Trade Organization and was signed by 123 countries. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston said the WTO's initial membership accounted for more than 90 percent of global economic output.
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TRUMP on his tariffs: "We are taking in billions and billions of dollars into our treasury. ... We have never taken 10 cents from China." — rally Tuesday in Orlando, Florida.
THE FACTS: It's false to say the U.S. never collected a dime in tariffs on Chinese goods before he took action. They are simply higher in some cases than they were before. It's also wrong to suggest that the tariffs are being paid by China. Tariff money coming into the treasury is mainly from U.S. businesses and consumers, not from China. Tariffs are primarily if not entirely a tax paid domestically.
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IRAN
TRUMP: "President Obama made a desperate and terrible deal with Iran - Gave them 150 Billion Dollars plus I.8 Billion Dollars in CASH! Iran was in big trouble and he bailed them out. Gave them a free path to Nuclear Weapons, and SOON. Instead of saying thank you, Iran yelled ... Death to America. I terminated deal." — tweet Friday.
TRUMP, on his accomplishments: "And then terminating one of the worst deals ever made, the Iran deal that was made by President Obama — paid $150 billion. Paid $1.8 billion in cash. I terminated that and Iran is a much different country." — Fox News interview Wednesday.
THE FACTS: There was no $150 billion payout from the U.S. treasury. The money he refers to represents Iranian assets held abroad that were frozen until the international deal was reached and Tehran was allowed to access its funds.
The payout of about $1.8 billion is a separate matter. That dates to the 1970s, when Iran paid the U.S. $400 million for military equipment that was never delivered because the government was overthrown and diplomatic relations ruptured.
That left people, businesses and governments in each country indebted to partners in the other, and these complex claims took decades to sort out in tribunals and arbitration. For its part, Iran paid settlements of more than $2.5 billion to U.S. citizens and businesses.
The day after the nuclear deal was implemented, the U.S. and Iran announced they had settled the claim over the 1970s military equipment order, with the U.S. agreeing to pay the $400 million principal along with about $1.3 billion in interest. The $400 million was paid in cash and flown to Tehran on a cargo plane, which gave rise to Trump's dramatic accounts of money stuffed in barrels or boxes and delivered in the dead of night. The arrangement provided for the interest to be paid later, not crammed into containers.
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ENERGY
TRUMP: "We've ended the last administration's cruel and heartless war on American energy. What they were doing to our energy should never be forgotten. The United States is now the No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world." — Orlando rally.
TRUMP: "We're now No. 1 in the world in energy." — Fox News interview Wednesday.
THE FACTS: As he's done many times before, Trump is crediting himself with things that happened under Obama.
Here's what the government's U.S. Energy Information Administration says: "The United States has been the world's top producer of natural gas since 2009, when U.S. natural gas production surpassed that of Russia, and the world's top producer of petroleum hydrocarbons since 2013, when U.S. production exceeded Saudi Arabia's."
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JOBS
TRUMP: "Almost 160 million people are working. That's more than ever before." — Orlando rally.
THE FACTS: True but that's a tribute to Americans making babies and immigrants coming to the country. Population growth, in other words.
Other than during recessions, employment growth has been trending upward since 1939, when the Labor Department started counting. The phenomenon is not a marker of leadership; it has spanned successful and failed presidents.
More on point, the annual rate of job growth has been within the same range since roughly 2011. It was 1.6% through May.
Another measure is the proportion of Americans with jobs, and that is still below record highs. The Labor Department says 60.6 percent of people in the U.S. 16 years and older were working in May. That's below the all-time high of 64.7 percent in April 2000 during Bill Clinton's administration, though higher than the 59.9 percent when Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.
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TRUMP: "Women's unemployment is now the lowest it's been in 74 years." — Orlando rally.
THE FACTS: No, the jobless rate for women of 3.1% in April was the lowest in 66 years, not 74, and it ticked up in May to 3.2%.
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ECONOMY
TRUMP: "It's soaring to incredible new heights. Perhaps the greatest economy we've had in the history of our country." — Orlando rally.
THE FACTS: The economy is not one of the best in the country's history. It expanded at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. That growth was the highest in just four years for the first quarter.
In the late 1990s, growth topped 4 percent for four straight years, a level it has not yet reached on an annual basis under Trump. Growth even reached 7.2 percent in 1984.
The economy grew 2.9% in 2018 — the same pace it reached in 2015 under Obama — and simply hasn't hit historically high growth rates.
Trump has legitimate claim to a good economy but when it comes to records, there's one he will have to share with Obama. The economy is on track to achieve its longest expansion ever, in July. Much of that decade-long growth came during Obama's presidency, an achievement that Trump so far has largely sustained. Other than in its durability, the economy is far from the finest in history.
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THE WALL
TRUMP: "We'll have over 400 miles built by the end of next year." — Fox News interview Wednesday.
TRUMP: "We're going to have over 400 miles of wall built by the end of next year. It's moving very rapidly." — Orlando rally.
THE FACTS: That's highly unlikely, and even if so, the great majority of the wall he's talking about would be replacement barrier, not new miles of construction. Trump has added strikingly little length to barriers along the Mexico border despite his pre-eminent 2016 campaign promise to get a wall done.
Even to reach 400 miles or 640 kilometers, he would have to prevail in legal challenges to his declaration of a national emergency or get Congress to find more money to get anywhere close.
So far, the administration has awarded contracts for 247 miles (395 km) of wall construction, but that initiative has been constrained by court cases that are still playing out.
In any event, all but 17 miles (27 km) of his awarded contracts so far would replace existing barriers.
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TAXES
TRUMP: "We've done so much ... with the biggest tax cut in history." — Orlando rally.
THE FACTS: His tax cuts are nowhere close to the biggest in U.S. history.
It's a $1.5 trillion tax cut over 10 years. As a share of the total economy, a tax cut of that size ranks 12th, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. President Ronald Reagan's 1981 cut is the biggest, followed by the 1945 rollback of taxes that financed World War II.
Post-Reagan tax cuts also stand among the historically significant: President George W. Bush's cuts in the early 2000s and Obama's renewal of them a decade later.
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ENVIRONMENT
TRUMP: "Our water and our air today is cleaner than it ever was. ... Our air — it's the best it ever was." — Fox News interview Wednesday.
TRUMP: "Our air and water are the cleanest they've ever been by far." — Orlando rally.
THE FACTS: Not true about air quality, which hasn't gotten better under the Trump administration. U.S. drinking water is among the best by one leading measure.
After decades of improvement, progress in air quality has stalled. Over the last two years the U.S. had more polluted air days than just a few years earlier, federal data show.
There were 15% more days with unhealthy air in America both last year and the year before than there were on average from 2013 through 2016, the four years when America had its fewest number of those days since at least 1980.
The Obama administration, in fact, set records for the fewest air polluted days, in 2016.
On water, Yale University's global Environmental Performance Index finds 10 countries tied for the cleanest drinking water, the U.S. among them. On environmental quality overall, the U.S. was 27th, behind a variety of European countries, Canada, Japan, Australia and more. Switzerland was No. 1.
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JUDGES
TRUMP on the confirmation of federal judges: "President Obama was very nice to us. He didn't fill the positions." — Orlando rally.
THE FACTS: Trump's sarcasm aside, he does have a better success rate than Obama in filling judicial vacancies. The Republican-controlled Senate in Obama's last two years avoided taking action on many of his nominees. Republicans still control the Senate and have been able to confirm about 120 of Trump's picks despite their slim majority. That's about 35 more than Obama had confirmed at this point in his presidency.
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HEALTH CARE
TRUMP: "We will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions. Always." — Orlando rally.
THE FACTS: His administration's actions say otherwise. It is pressing in court for full repeal of Obama's health law, which requires insurers to take all applicants, regardless of medical history, and charge the same standard premiums to healthy people and those who had medical problems before or when they signed up.
Trump and other Republicans say they'll have a plan to preserve protections for people with pre-existing conditions, but the White House has provided no details.
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ABORTION
TRUMP: "Leading Democrats have even opposed measures to prevent the execution of children after birth." — Orlando rally.
THE FACTS: Executing children is already a crime.
Trump is offering here a somewhat toned down version of a distorted story he's been telling for months that falsely suggests Democrats are OK with murder.
His account arises from extremely rare instances when babies are born alive as a result of an attempted abortion. When these cases occur, "execution" is not an option.
When a baby is born with anomalies so severe that he or she would die soon after birth, a family may choose what's known as palliative care or comfort care. This might involve allowing the baby to die naturally without medical intervention. Providing comfort without life-extending treatment is not specific to newborns. It may happen with fatally ill patients of any age.
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VETERANS
TRUMP: "We passed VA Choice. ...They've been trying to get that passed also for about 44 years." — Orlando rally.
THE FACTS: No, Congress approved the private-sector Veterans Choice health program in 2014 and Obama signed it into law. Trump signed an expansion of it.
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RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
TRUMP: "I'm the most transparent president in history. I let Mueller have everything they wanted." — Fox News interview Wednesday.
THE FACTS: It's highly questionable to say Trump was fully cooperative in the Russia investigation.
Trump declined to sit for an interview with Robert Mueller's team, gave written answers that investigators described as "inadequate" and "incomplete," said more than 30 times that he could not remember something he was asked about in writing, and — according to the report — tried to get aides to fire the special counsel or otherwise shut or limit the inquiry.
In the end, the Mueller report found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but left open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice.
According to the report, Mueller's team declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on whether to charge partly because of a Justice Department legal opinion that said sitting presidents shouldn't be indicted. The report instead factually laid out instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, specifically leaving it open for Congress to take up the matter.
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Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Christopher Rugaber, Matthew Daly, Seth Borenstein, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Colleen Long in Washington and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.
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Find AP Fact Check apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Follow @apfactcheck on Twitter: twitter.com/APFactCheck
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:39:32 GMT
AP FACT CHECK: Trump's bluster on hurricanes, guns, economyAssociated Press HOPE YEN, SETH BORENSTEIN and DARLENE SUPERVILLE,Associated Press 16 hours ago
www.yahoo.com/finance/news/ap-fact-check-trumps-bluster-041528922.html
President Donald Trump speaks at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Sunday, Sept. 1, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing another deadly mass shooting, President Donald Trump is deflecting on gun control.
Over the weekend, he pointed to mental illness as a likely culprit behind recent shootings in Odessa, Texas, and elsewhere, even though criminologists routinely point to gun ownership as a far better predictor of public mass shootings than indicators of mental illness. There were no immediate indications Sunday that mental illness contributed to the shootings that killed 7 and injured 22 others in Texas, a state with one of the most lenient gun control laws.
Trump also repeatedly marveled over Hurricane Dorian's size, incorrectly telling the public about its potential path and suggesting he's never heard of a "category 5" storm before. Dorian, in fact, is the fourth category 5 storm to happen under his watch.
The claims capped a week of distortion by Trump on various fronts, from the economy to Iran and North Korea.
A review:
HURRICANE DORIAN
TRUMP: "In addition to Florida - South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated." — tweet Sunday.
TRUMP: "The original course was dead into Florida. Now it seems to be going up toward South Carolina, toward North Carolina. Georgia's going to be hit. Alabama's going to get a piece of it, it looks like." — remarks to reporters Sunday.
THE FACTS: Trump goes astray in warning of trouble for Alabama, which is expected to be spared. As of Sunday, the National Hurricane Center forecast Dorian to be 40 to 50 miles (64 to 80 kilometers) off the Florida coast on Tuesday and Wednesday, with hurricane-force wind speeds extending about 35 miles (56 kilometers) to the west.
"Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian," tweeted the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama. "We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east."
Few, if any, meteorologists put Alabama in its path.
Asked if Trump had been briefed about the impact to Alabama, Christopher Vaccaro, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote in an email: "The current forecast path of Dorian does not include Alabama."
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TRUMP: "I'm not sure that I've ever even heard of a category 5. I knew it existed and I've seen some category 4's. You don't even see them that much. But a category 5 is something that I don't know that I've ever even heard the term other than I know it's there." — remarks Sunday at FEMA headquarters.
THE FACTS: In his third hurricane season as president, Trump has had plenty of exposure to category 5 storms.
He made the same claim two years ago, saying he wasn't aware of category 5 storms until Hurricane Irma. "In Florida, you got hit with the strongest winds ever recorded. It actually hit the Keys with a_it was a Category 5. I never even knew a Category 5 existed," Trump said in September 2017.
Since then, he's repeatedly marveled about the size of the storms — and by extension, his administration's response to it — including category 5 hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, Michael in 2018 and now Dorian.
Having four category 5 hurricanes in three years is actually more than any other president in history. George W. Bush had eight such hurricanes in eight years. Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan only had one during their two terms in office, while George H.W. Bush had two in four years and Carter had three in four years.
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TRUMP, on hurricane aid: "Will it ever end? Congress approved 92 Billion Dollars for Puerto Rico last year, an all time record of its kind for 'anywhere.'" — tweet Tuesday.
TRUMP, on Puerto Rico: "Congress approved Billions of Dollars last time, more than anyplace else has ever gotten." — tweet Wednesday.
THE FACTS: His figure of $92 billion is wrong, as is his assertion that the U.S. territory has set some record for federal disaster aid. Congress has so far distributed only about $14 billion for Puerto Rico.
It's a false claim he's made repeatedly. The White House has said the estimate includes about $50 billion in expected future disaster disbursements that could span decades, along with $42.7 billion approved.
That $50 billion in additional money, however, is speculative. It is based on Puerto Rico's eligibility for federal emergency disaster funds for years ahead, involving calamities that haven't happened.
That money would require future appropriations by Congress.
Even if correct, $92 billion would not be the most ever provided for hurricane rebuilding efforts. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 cost the U.S government more than $120 billion — the bulk of it going to Louisiana.
Trump frequently inflates and complains about the amount of disaster aid that Congress "foolishly gave" Puerto Rico after the deadly destruction from Hurricane Maria in 2017. He has talked as if he doesn't recognize the U.S. territory as American and, in an April tweet, said Puerto Rico officials "only take from USA."
Hurricane Dorian inflicted limited damage in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands before intensifying on its track toward the U.S. mainland.
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GUN VIOLENCE
TRUMP, addressing the mass shooting in Odessa, Texas: "For the most part, sadly, if you look at the last four or five going back ... five or six or seven years for the most part, as strong as you make your background checks, they would not have stopped any of it. So it's a big problem. It's a mental problem." — remarks Sunday.
TRUMP: "Our goal must be to identify severely disturbed individuals and disrupt their plans before they strike." — remarks Sunday at FEMA headquarters.
THE FACTS: He's oversimplifying the role of mental illness in public mass shootings and minimizing the ease with which Americans can get firearms. There was no immediate indication Sunday that mental illness was a factor in shootings in Texas.
Most people with mental illness in fact are not violent, and they are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators.
A country's rate of gun ownership is a far better predictor of public mass shootings than indicators of mental illness, said Adam Lankford, a University of Alabama criminologist who published a 2016 analysis of data from 171 countries.
"The key of what's going on here is access to guns for people who are dangerous or disturbed," Lankford said. Red flag laws make it easier to disarm people believed to be a danger to themselves or others, "but sometimes there are not clear warning signs or those signs are not reported to the authorities until after an attack," he said.
Last month, the U.S. Secret Service released a report on mass public attacks in 2018, finding that "no single profile" can be used "to predict who will engage in targeted violence" and "mental illness, alone, is not a risk factor."
Trump has offered contradictory messages in reacting to recent mass shootings. Days after the El Paso shooting last month, he said he was eager to implement "very meaningful background checks" on guns and told reporters there was "tremendous support" for action. He later backed away, saying the current system of background checks was "very, very strong."
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ECONOMY
TRUMP: "On this very day — I just saw a number — almost 160 million people are working. The most ever in the history of our country. I mean, we have incredible numbers." — remarks to reporters Friday.
THE FACTS: He's correct, but that's only because of population growth.
A more relevant measure is the proportion of Americans with jobs, and that is still far below record highs.
According to Labor Department data, 60.7% of people in the United States 16 years and older were working in July. That's below the all-time high of 64.7% in April 2000, though higher than the 59.9% when Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.
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TRUMP: "General Motors, which was once the Giant of Detroit, is now one of the smallest auto manufacturers there. They moved major plants to China, BEFORE I CAME INTO OFFICE. This was done despite the saving help given them by the USA. Now they should start moving back to America again?" — tweet Friday.
THE FACTS: That's inaccurate on several counts.
Still a giant, GM did not close factories in the U.S. and move them to China. It set up and expanded operations in China primarily to serve that market.
And by many measures, it is the largest U.S. automaker. The company made more money last year than crosstown rivals Fiat Chrysler and Ford, and GM sold more vehicles in the U.S. than the other two.
It remains the largest Michigan-headquartered employer in the state, with a workforce of 52,000 outpacing that of Ford, the state government and Fiat Chrysler, according to an analysis this year by Crain's Detroit Business. In southeast Michigan, it was No. 2, behind Ford, and ahead of Fiat Chrysler.
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NORTH KOREA
VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: "Watching those 55 small, flag-draped caskets come off the plane was an extraordinary experience. We brought back — we brought back our heroes, and there's more to come." — remarks Wednesday to the American Legion veterans group.
THE FACTS: No remains of U.S. service members have been returned since last summer and the U.S. suspended efforts in May to get negotiations on the remains back on track in time to have more repatriated this year. The U.S. hopes more remains may be brought home next year.
The Pentagon's Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency, which is responsible for recovering U.S. war remains and returning them to families, "has not received any new information from (North Korean) officials regarding the turn over or recovery of remains," spokesman Charles Prichard said last month.
He said his agency is "still working to communicate" with the North Korean army "as it is our intent to find common ground on resuming recovery missions" in 2020.
Last year, in line with the first summit between Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un that June, the North turned over 55 boxes of what it said were the remains of an undetermined number of U.S. service members killed in the North during the 1950-53 war. So far, six Americans have been identified from the 55 boxes.
U.S. officials have said the North has suggested in recent years that it holds perhaps 200 sets of American war remains. Thousands more are unrecovered from battlefields and former POW camps.
The Pentagon estimates that 5,300 Americans were lost in North Korea.
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TRUMP on North Korea's leader: "With respect to North Korea — Kim Jong-un, who I've got to know extremely well, the first lady has gotten to know Kim Jong-un and I think she'd agree with me, he is a man with a country that has tremendous potential." — news conference on Aug. 26 with French President Emmanuel Macron.
THE FACTS: Melania Trump doesn't know Kim. They have never met.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham clarified the president's comment, saying Trump confides in his wife on his relationship with Kim and "feels like she's gotten to know him, too."
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IRAN
TRUMP on Iran: "We gave them $150 billion and $1.8 billion and we got nothing. ... Look at what they did to John Kerry and to President Obama. Look what happened, where they're bringing planeloads of cash, planeloads, big planes, 757s, Boeing 757s coming in loaded up with cash. What kind of a deal is that?" — news conference with Macron.
THE FACTS: It's the kind of deal that did not actually take place.
When Iran signed the multinational deal to restrain its nuclear development in return for being freed from sanctions, it regained access to its own assets, which had been frozen abroad. There was no $150 billion gift from the U.S. treasury or other countries. Iran was allowed to get its money back.
The $1.8 billion refers to a separate matter, also misstated by Trump going back to before the 2016 election.
A payout of roughly that amount did come from the U.S. treasury. It was to pay an old IOU.
In the 1970s, Iran paid the U.S. $400 million for military equipment that was never delivered because the government was overthrown and diplomatic relations ruptured. After the nuclear deal, the U.S. and Iran announced they had settled the matter, with the U.S. agreeing to pay the $400 million principal along with about $1.3 billion in interest.
The $400 million was paid in cash and flown to Tehran on a cargo plane. The arrangement provided for the interest to be paid later.
In Trump's telling, one cargo plane with $400 million that was owed to Iran has become "big planes, 757s, Boeing 757s," loaded with a $1.8 billion giveaway. Kerry was then secretary of state.
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CLEAN AIR
TRUMP: "We're, right now, having the cleanest air and cleanest water on the planet." — remarks on Aug. 26 with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
THE FACTS: That's not true. Air quality hasn't improved under the Trump administration and dozens of nations have less smoggy air than the U.S.
Water? One measure, Yale University's global Environmental Performance Index, finds the U.S. tied with nine other countries as having the cleanest drinking water.
But after decades of improvement, progress in air quality has stalled. Over the last two years the U.S. had more polluted air days than just a few years earlier, federal data show.
There were 15% more days with unhealthy air in America both last year and the year before than there were on average from 2013 through 2016, the four years when the U.S had its fewest number of those days since at least 1980.
The Obama administration set records for the fewest air-polluted days.
The nonprofit Health Effects Institute's State of Global Air 2019 report ranked the United States 37th dirtiest out of 195 countries for ozone, also known as smog, worse than the global average for population-weighted pollution. Countries such as Britain, Japan, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Albania, Cuba, Russia, Vietnam, New Zealand and Canada have less smoggy air.
The U.S. ranks eighth cleanest on the more deadly category of fine particles in the air.
On environmental quality overall, the Yale index put the U.S. 27th, behind a variety of European countries, Canada, Japan, Australia and more. Switzerland was No. 1.
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ENERGY
TRUMP: "I feel that the United States has tremendous wealth. The wealth is under its feet. I've made that wealth come alive. ... We are now the number one energy producer in the world." — news conference with Macron.
THE FACTS: Sole credit to himself is not accurate. The greatest energy revolution of the past half-century happened on Obama's watch as U.S. petroleum and natural gas production achieved preeminence.
In 2013, the U.S. became the world's top producer both of natural gas and petroleum hydrocarbons, says the government's U.S. Energy Information Administration. As for crude oil specifically, the agency says the U.S. became the world's top crude oil producer last year. That is largely attributed to the shale oil boom that began late in George W. Bush's administration and proceeded apace during the Obama years.
The boom came because of fracking and other technology, such as horizontal drilling, that made it possible to find much more oil and gas without drilling more holes. As well, Obama lifted a decades-long ban on shipping U.S. oil overseas in 2015, helping increase demand for U.S. crude.
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TRUMP, on addressing climate change: "I feel that the United States has tremendous wealth. The wealth is under its feet. ... I'm not going to lose it on dreams, on windmills, which frankly aren't working too well." — news conference with Macron.
THE FACTS: In criticizing wind power, Trump misidentified his target. Wind turbines produce energy. Windmills mill grain and flummox Don Quixote.
Trump has ascribed a variety of evils to wind power over the years, usually with scant evidence, while praising coal, a well-documented cause of health problems.
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Associated Press writers Cal Woodward, Robert Burns, Jill Colvin, Josh Boak and Michael Biesecker in Washington and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.
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Find AP Fact Checks at apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Follow @apfactcheck on Twitter: twitter.com/APFactCheck
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:40:58 GMT
AP FACT CHECK: Trump's distortions on Ukraine, whistleblowerAssociated Press HOPE YEN and CALVIN WOODWARD,Associated Press 13 hours ago
www.yahoo.com/sports/ap-fact-check-trumps-distortions-153819989.html
WASHINGTON (AP) — A whistle blew, an impeachment inquiry swung into motion and the president at the center of it all rose defiantly to his own defense, not always in command of the facts.
A CIA officer, in a complaint filed under federal whistleblower protections that preserve anonymity, alleged President Donald Trump abused his office in pressing for a Ukrainian investigation of a Democratic rival, Joe Biden. That revelation persuaded Democrats to move ahead with an inquiry that could produce articles of impeachment. Trump has reacted with anger.
A look at Trump's words this past week on impeachment, Ukraine and other subjects:
UKRAINE
TRUMP, describing the July 25 phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart: "Another Fake News Story! See what was said on the very nice, no pressure, call."— tweet Thursday.
TRUMP: "My call was perfect." — remarks to reporters Thursday.
THE FACTS: It's a big stretch for Trump to say he placed no pressure on President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in that phone call — a conversation marked by Trump's blunt remark: "I would like for you to do us a favor," according to a White House account of the call.
Trump repeatedly prodded Zelenskiy to help investigate Biden and son Hunter, as well as to look into a cybersecurity firm that investigated the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee and concluded it was carried out by Russia.
The call followed a monthslong campaign by Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, conducted on Trump's behalf to get Ukrainians to scrutinize Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine when Joe Biden was vice president. It also followed Trump's abrupt suspension of military aid for Ukraine that Congress had approved. The aid was recently released.
When Zelenskiy thanked Trump for past U.S. aid and suggested his country might need more, Trump switched the topic to the investigation he wanted Ukraine to do. He asked Zelenskiy to work with Attorney General William Barr and Giuliani on the matter.
As for the call being "perfect," it was actually worrisome enough so that White House attorneys moved a rough transcript of it to a highly secure system where fewer officials would have access to it than is normally the case for conversations between Trump and world leaders.
The call and the broader effort to win a foreign government's help on a matter that could benefit Trump's reelection are what sparked the impeachment inquiry.
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TRUMP, denouncing information from the whistleblower: "All second hand information that proved to be so inaccurate." — tweet Friday.
THE FACTS: The whistleblower's accusations have not been shown to be incorrect. Several key details have actually been corroborated. For example, the White House account of the July 25 phone call showed that the whistleblower had accurately summarized the conversation, as relayed by unidentified U.S. officials, in the complaint sent to the acting director of national intelligence.
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TRUMP: "I want to see other countries helping Ukraine also, not just us. As usual the United States helps and nobody else is there." — remarks to reporters Wednesday.
TRUMP: "I'd withhold again, and I'll continue to withhold until such time as Europe and other nations contribute to Ukraine. Because they're not doing it; it's the United States. ... Why is it only the United States putting up the money?" — remarks to reporters Tuesday.
THE FACTS: It isn't only the U.S. putting up money. It's false to say "nobody else is there."
European Union institutions have provided far more development assistance than the U.S.— $425 million in 2016-2017 compared with $204 million from Washington. EU members, Japan and Canada also contribute significantly.
Since 2014, the EU and European financial institutions have mobilized more than $16 billion to help Ukraine's economy, counter corruption, build institutions and strengthen its sovereignty against further incursions by Russia after its annexation of Crimea.
The U.S. is a heavy source of military assistance. The aid package held back by Trump, and recently released, amounted to nearly $400 million in such aid. But NATO also contributes a variety of military-assistance programs and trust funds for Ukraine. In most such cases, the programs are modest and NATO countries other than the U.S. take the lead.
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TRUMP, in the July 25 call with Ukraine's leader: "Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk." — according to White House account of the conversation, released Wednesday.
THE FACTS: Germany is the third largest bilateral donor to Ukraine, after the EU and the U.S.
"Anyone who views this soberly will conclude Germany is strongly involved," said German foreign ministry spokesman Rainer Breul.
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GUN CONTROL
TRUMP, speaking of the Democratic senator from Connecticut: "Chris Murphy — who I've been dealing with on guns — you know, so nice. He's always, 'Oh, no, we want to work it out. We want to work it out.' But they're too busy wasting their time on the witch hunt." — news conference Wednesday.
THE FACTS: Trump is the main holdup on gun control legislation as he mulls whether to endorse expanded background checks.
The Democratic-controlled House passed a bill in February that would require background checks on all gun sales, including those between strangers who meet online or at gun shows. But Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said it's not clear the Senate would be able to pass the legislation or that Trump would sign it into law. Earlier this month, McConnell stressed that Congress would remain "in a holding pattern " on gun control as lawmakers await proposals from the White House.
A proposal being floated by Barr on Capitol Hill would require background checks on all commercial gun sales, including at gun shows. But Trump told reporters this month the plan was one of many ideas under consideration and he would go "very slowly."
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ECONOMY and TRADE
VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: "We have before the Congress what will be the largest trade deal in American history. ... It's time for Congress to pass the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and pass it this year." — remarks Thursday in Indianapolis.
THE FACTS: It's not the largest trade deal ever made.
It covers the same three countries as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the Trump administration is seeking to replace. In contrast, the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations concluded in 1994 created the World Trade Organization and was signed by 123 countries. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found the following year that the WTO's initial membership accounted for more than 90 percent of global economic output.
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TRUMP on the effects of the impeachment inquiry: "The stock market went up when they saw the nonsense. All of a sudden the stock market went down very substantially when they saw a charge. After they read the charge, the stock market went up very substantially." — remarks to reporters in New York on Wednesday.
THE FACTS: First, he's not actually charged with anything. He's saying the market went down Tuesday when the impeachment drive was announced and up after the White House memo on his phone call with Ukraine's president came out. That's roughly right, but it's wrong to tie the market fluctuations solely — or even primarily — to the impeachment episode.
The market cares even more about the economy, and currently the biggest wild card for the U.S. economy is how much Trump's trade war with China could curtail growth. Since it began last year, the stock market has fallen with each escalation of tensions and risen when the two sides appeared close to resolving the dispute.
The 142-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Tuesday was partly due to the impeachment developments but was also tied to Trump taking a hard line on China in a speech to the United Nations, which seemed to dim the prospects that coming talks would resolve the trade standoff. While the market did move higher Wednesday after the release of the memo, the Commerce Department released some solid numbers on the housing market around the same time.
Moreover, just after the comment on the stock exchange, Trump told reporters a deal with China "could happen sooner than you think," and the Dow quickly doubled its gain.
The economic-political dynamic was evident in the impeachment inquiries of Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. After the initial inquiry of Nixon in October 1973, the S&P 500 index fell 33% the next year. But the S&P 500 gained 39% after the Clinton impeachment inquiry started in October 1998. The difference: The economy was headed toward a recession in the mid-1970s, while the economy was growing strongly in the late 1990s. For Trump, the U.S. economy slowed to growth of about 2% in the second quarter from 3% in the first quarter and current estimates are for 2% growth in the third quarter.
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TRUMP: "Our country is the strongest it's ever been economically." — news conference Wednesday.
THE FACTS: It isn't.
In the late 1990s, growth topped 4% for four straight years, a level it has not reached on an annual basis under Trump. Growth reached 7.2% in 1984. The economy grew 2.9% in 2018 — the same pace it reached in 2015 under President Barack Obama — and hasn't hit historically high growth rates.
The unemployment rate is near a 50-year low of 3.7%, but the proportion of Americans with a job was higher in the 1990s. Wages were rising at a faster pace back then, too. More Americans are now out of the workforce, taking care of children or relatives, or going to school, while others became discouraged about their job prospects and stopped looking. The government doesn't count people as unemployed unless they are actively searching for jobs.
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TRUMP: "In America, the result was 4.2 million lost manufacturing jobs ... the United States is now taking that decisive action to end this grave economic injustice." — address Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly.
WHITE HOUSE: "The president is getting rid of the disastrous North American Free Trade Agreement and replacing it with a better deal, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Our country has lost 4 million manufacturing jobs since NAFTA went into effect." — news release Tuesday.
THE FACTS: The loss of factory jobs is not all due to NAFTA.
Trump is correct that the United States has lost nearly 4 million factory jobs since that pact took effect in January 1994. But most economists attribute the losses to other factors — the recessions of 2001 and 2007-2009, automation that lets machines replace workers and low-cost competition from China.
Trump's proposed NAFTA replacement is hardly expected to create a jobs boom. The independent International Trade Commission estimates that the new deal would create 176,000 jobs over six years, a rounding error in a country with 152 million nonfarm jobs.
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BEAUTY PAGEANT
TRUMP, recalling his days as the owner of the Miss Universe pageant: "It's a great thing. And we had a winner from Ukraine." — remarks Wednesday before a meeting with Zelenskiy.
THE FACTS: A Ukrainian woman has never won the Miss Universe title. Several made the top 10 during Trump's tenure at the pageant, which he bought in 1996 and sold in 2015. But none took the prize in the pageant's history, which dates to 1952. Ukrainian Olesia Stefanko was first runner-up in 2011.
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Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, Zeke Miller, and Paul Wiseman in Washington and Paul Harloff in New York contributed to this report.
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Find AP Fact Checks at apne.ws/2kbx8bd
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:41:45 GMT
AP FACT CHECK: Trump minimizes IS risk, distorts Iran payoutAssociated Press finance.yahoo.com/news/ap-fact-check-trump-minimizes-182217472.html
HOPE YEN
Associated PressJanuary 8, 2020
President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the White House on the ballistic missile strike that Iran launched against Iraqi air bases housing U.S. troops, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Washington, as Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, and Vice President Mike Pence, and others look on. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump wrongly dismissed the continuing threat of the Islamic State group and spread a false tale of the U.S. paying out billions of dollars to Iran as part of the multinational deal freezing its nuclear program in an address Wednesday that fell short on facts. apnews.com/d40501d9b0a712d02e2a6626f607ead2
He also made an assertion that is as dubious as it was provocative: that the Iranian missiles fired by Tehran at two military bases hosting U.S. forces in Iraq were paid for by money “made available” to Iran by the Obama administration.
A look at some of the president's claims in his remarks on Iran's missile strike on the two Iraqi bases: apnews.com/c7116313efdb56f4e928289faa1ad8cd
TRUMP: “Three months ago, after destroying 100% of ISIS and its territorial caliphate ..."
THE FACTS: His claim of a 100% defeat is misleading as the Islamic State still poses a threat.
IS was defeated in Iraq in 2017, then lost the last of its land holdings in Syria in March, marking the end of the extremists' self-declared caliphate.
Still, extremist sleeper cells have continued to launch attacks in Iraq and Syria and are believed to be responsible for targeted killings against local officials and members of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
As recently as this week, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the fight against ISIS in Syria was continuing.
IS controlled large swaths of northern and eastern Syria, where it declared a caliphate in 2014, along with large parts of neighboring Iraq.
U.N. experts warned in August that IS leaders are aiming to consolidate and create conditions for an “eventual resurgence in its Iraqi and Syrian heartlands.”
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TRUMP: “Iran’s hostility substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013. And they were given $150 billion, not to mention $1.8 billion in cash.”
THE FACTS: There was no $150 billion payout from the U.S. treasury or other countries.
When Iran signed the multinational deal to restrain its nuclear development in return for being freed from sanctions, it regained access to its own assets, which had been frozen abroad. Iran was allowed to get its money back. The deal actually was signed in 2015, after a 2013 preliminary agreement. Trump has taken the U.S. out of it.
The $1.8 billion is a separate matter. A payout of roughly that amount did come from the U.S. treasury. It was to pay an old IOU.
In the 1970s, Iran paid the U.S. $400 million for military equipment that was never delivered because the government was overthrown and diplomatic relations ruptured. After the nuclear deal, the U.S. and Iran announced they had settled the matter, with the U.S. agreeing to pay the $400 million principal along with about $1.3 billion in interest.
The $400 million was paid in cash and flown to Tehran on a cargo plane, which gave rise to Trump's previous dramatic accounts of money stuffed in barrels or boxes and delivered in the dead of night. The arrangement provided for the interest to be paid later, not crammed into containers.
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TRUMP: “The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration.”
THE FACTS: That accusation comes without corroboration. The administration has offered no information supporting the contention that in regaining access to $150 billion of its assets that had been frozen abroad, Iran steered a chunk of that money to the missiles that hit the bases in Iraq.
“I doubt anyone has the insight into Iran's budgetary mechanisms to say that this money was used for this purpose,” said Gerald Feierstein, a career U.S. diplomat who retired in 2016 as the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs.
“It's a funds-are-fungible kind of argument,” he said. "I mean, if they have money, can you say that dollar went directly to buy a missile, as opposed to freeing up another dollar that went to buy a missile?"
Gen. Joseph Votel, who retired from the U.S. Army in March as the top military commander for the Middle East, said he was not aware of any specific intelligence on this question. “I don't have anything that would particularly support that,” he said. “I'm not saying it did or it didn't, but I don't have details to demonstrate it one way or the other.”
As President Barack Obama's secretary of state, John Kerry said it was possible Iran would use some of the money being returned to it for malign activities. Whether it did in this case has not been established.
Iran has many sources of revenue tradingeconomics.com/iran/exports , despite the severe pinch of sanctions. Oil sales to China and other countries dominate its exports. It also sells chemicals, plastics, fruits and more abroad.
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TRUMP: “We are independent, and we do not need Middle East oil.”
THE FACTS: Trump’s declaration of energy independence is premature. The U.S. still needs plenty of oil from the Mideast.
The volume of U.S. oil imports from the Persian Gulf alone www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIMUSPG1&f=M — 23 million barrels in October – would not be easy to make up elsewhere, at least not without major changes in U.S. demand or production.
Technological advances like fracking and horizontal drilling have allowed the U.S. to greatly increase production, but demand remains brisk and the country still imports millions of barrels of oil from Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iraq and other countries. Moreover, much of what the U.S. produces is hard for domestic refiners to convert to practical use. So the U.S. exports that production and imports oil that is more suitable for American refineries to handle.
On energy more broadly, the U.S. is indeed close to parity on how much energy it produces and how much it consumes. In some months, it produces more than it consumes. But it has not achieved self-sufficiency. In the first nine months of last year, it imported about as much energy as it exported. www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/mer.pdf
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TRUMP: “The American military has been completely rebuilt under my administration, at a cost of $2.5 trillion.”
THE FACTS: That’s an exaggeration.
It’s true that his administration has accelerated a sharp buildup in defense spending, including a respite from what the U.S. military considered to be crippling spending limits under budget sequestration.
But a number of new Pentagon weapons programs, such as the F-35 fighter jet, were started years before the Trump administration. And it will take years for freshly ordered tanks, planes and other weapons to be built, delivered and put to use.
The Air Force’s Minuteman 3 missiles, a key part of the U.S. nuclear force, for instance, have been operating since the early 1970s and the modernization was begun under the Obama administration. They are due to be replaced with a new version, but not until later this decade.
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Associated Press writers Michael Biesecker, Lolita C. Baldor, Matthew Daly, Robert Burns and Cal Woodward contributed to this report.
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EDITOR'S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.
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Find AP Fact Checks at apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Follow @apfactcheck on Twitter: twitter.com/APFactCheck
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:43:22 GMT
AP FACT CHECK: No, Trump didn't save preexisting conditionsAssociated Press www.yahoo.com/news/ap-fact-check-no-trump-162419552.html
HOPE YEN,Associated Press•January 13, 2020
s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/oFg8FL8DJojmxf6nQKpV_A--~B/aD0zNjQ4O3c9NTQ3MjtzbT0xO2FwcGlkPXl0YWNoeW9u/https://media.zenfs.com/en/ap.org/ccfe219a02573630c426bd6d911205e5
President Donald Trump smiles while speaking at a campaign rally, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020, in Toledo, Ohio. (AP Photo/ Jacquelyn Martin)
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APTOPIX Election 2020 Trump
President Donald Trump smiles while speaking at a campaign rally, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020, in Toledo, Ohio. (AP Photo/ Jacquelyn Martin)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump made a striking claim Monday, insisting it was he who ensured that people with preexisting medical problems will always be covered by health insurance.
He wasn't.
He also complained anew that Democrats didn't allow him to send lawyers to the impeachment inquiry. The opposite is true: Democrats invited him to send lawyers to the inquiry and he said no.
HEALTH CARE
TRUMP: “I was the person who saved Pre-Existing Conditions in your Healthcare, you have it now, while at the same time winning the fight to rid you of the expensive, unfair and very unpopular Individual Mandate." — tweet.
TRUMP: “I stand stronger than anyone in protecting your Healthcare with Pre-Existing Conditions. I am honored to have terminated the very unfair, costly and unpopular individual mandate for you!”
THE FACTS: People with preexisting medical problems have health insurance protections because of President Barack Obama's health care law, which Trump is trying to dismantle.
One of Trump’s major alternatives to Obama's law — short-term health insurance, already in place — doesn’t have to cover preexisting conditions. Another major alternative is association health plans, which are oriented to small businesses and sole proprietors and do cover preexisting conditions.
Neither of the two alternatives appears to have made much difference in the market.
Meanwhile, Trump's administration has been pressing in court for full repeal of the Obama-era law, including provisions that protect people with preexisting conditions from health insurance discrimination.
With “Obamacare” still in place, preexisting conditions continue to be covered by regular individual health insurance plans.
Insurers must take all applicants, regardless of medical history, and charge the same standard premiums to healthy people and those who are in poor health, or have a history of medical problems.
Before the Affordable Care Act, any insurer could deny coverage — or charge more — to anyone with a preexisting condition who was seeking to buy an individual policy.
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TRUMP: “...and, if Republicans win in court and take back the House of Represenatives (sic), your healthcare, that I have now brought to the best place in many years, will become the best ever, by far. I will always protect your Pre-Existing Conditions, the Dems will not!” — tweet.
THE FACTS: Trump and other Republicans say they'll have a plan to preserve protections for people with preexisting conditions. The White House has provided no details.
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IMPEACHMENT:
TRUMP: “'We demand fairness' shouts Pelosi and the Do Nothing Democrats, yet the Dems in the House wouldn’t let us have 1 witness, no lawyers or even ask questions." — tweet.
THE FACTS: Not true. The House Judiciary Committee, which produced the articles of impeachment, invited Trump or his legal team to come. He declined.
Absent White House representation, the hearings proceeded as things in Congress routinely do: Time is split between Democratic and Republican lawmakers to ask questions and engage in the debate. Lawyers for Democrats and Republicans on the committee presented the case for and against the impeachment articles and members questioned witnesses, among them an academic called forward by Republicans.
The first round of hearings was by the House Intelligence Committee and resembled the investigative phase of criminal cases, conducted without the participation of the subject of the investigation. Trump cried foul then at the lack of representation, then rejected representation when the next committee offered it.
His lawyers will participate in the Senate's impeachment trial.
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Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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EDITOR'S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.
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Find AP Fact Checks at apne.ws/2kbx8bd
Follow @apfactcheck on Twitter: twitter.com/APFactCheck
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