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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:44:37 GMT
Day 1 of the Trump defense team's opening arguments in his impeachment trial was a masterclass in disinformationSonam Sheth 9 hours ago www.businessinsider.com/trump-lawyers-opening-arguments-impeachment-trial-schedule-live-updates-2020-1?utm_source=yahoo.com&utm_medium=referral
Deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin falsely claims Trump had a legal basis for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas patrick philbin Senate TV Deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin took aim at House impeachment manager Hakeem Jeffries for claiming Trump had a "blanket defiance" to the House's impeachment inquiry that had no legal justification.
Philbin disputed the claim and pointed to an October 18 letter in which the White House said it would not comply with subpoenas issued by House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff — who is also the lead impeachment manager — for documents.
The reason the White House cited for not complying with the subpoenas was that the House had not yet formally launched the impeachment inquiry and therefore was "not authorized to conduct any such inquiry or to subpoena information in furtherance of it."
Fact check: The separation of powers doctrine indicates that even when it's not conducting an impeachment inquiry, Congress has the constitutional power to conduct oversight of the executive branch. Trump has stonewalled Congress at every turn, however, by falsely arguing that he is "absolutely immune" from not just prosecution, but any investigation whatsoever while he's in office.
He also issued a sweeping order directing all executive branch officials and six government agencies not to comply with any requests for documents or witness testimony even after the House formally opened its impeachment inquiry.
Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow pushes conspiracy theory about Ukrainian election interference jay sekulow Trump attorney Jay Sekulow. Screenshot via CSPAN Sekulow accused Democrats of creating a "false dichotomy" and suggesting that either Russia or Ukraine meddled in the election, but not both.
The US intelligence community determined with high confidence that the Russian government interfered in the race.
Sekulow accepted that conclusion but added that it was possible Ukraine could have interfered as well.
Fact check: There is no evidence to suggest Ukraine — meaning the Ukrainian government — carried out a campaign to intervene in the election. While it's true that some Ukrainian government officials voiced their disapproval of Trump during the 2016 campaign, so did officials from other countries, many of which are close US allies.
If a foreign official criticizing Trump is the standard to prove a government-sanctioned interference campaign in the 2016 election, that would mean well over a dozen countries meddled in the race.
More importantly, the theory that Ukraine interfered in the election was created by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, as Fiona Hill, the White House's former senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs, testified to Congress.
In November, Putin indicated his pleasure that Trump and right-wing politicians had picked up the conspiracy theory.
"No one is accusing us of interfering in the US elections anymore," Putin said at an economic forum in Moscow. "Now they're accusing Ukraine."
Trump's personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, slams Democrats for trying to 're-litigate' the Mueller probe before he himself proceeded to re-litigate the Mueller probe jay sekulow Senate TV Sekulow opened his remarks by asking senators and the public to put themselves in President Trump's shoes when he first came into office.
At the time, his campaign was under FBI investigation over whether it coordinated or conspired with the Russian government as it interfered in the 2016 election.
Six months into his term, Sekulow said, Trump "found a special counsel being appointed to investigate a Russia collusion theory."
Fact check: Former FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel after Trump himself fired then FBI director James Comey. Trump later cited "this Russia thing" as driving his decision to oust Comey.
"In their opening statement, several members of the House managers tried to once again re-litigate the Mueller case," Sekulow said, as he himself began to re-litigate the Mueller case.
Sekulow held up a stack of papers and said, "This is part one of the Mueller report. This part alone is 199 pages."
He continued: "The House managers, in their presentation, a couple of times referenced 'this for that,'" referring to the English translation of the latin phrase "quid pro quo."
"Let me tell you something," Sekulow said as he held up the first part of Mueller's report. "This cost $32 million. This investigation took 2,800 subpoenas. This investigation had 500 search warrants. This had 230 orders for communication records. This had 500 witness interviews. All to reach the following conclusion, and I'm going to quote from the Mueller report itself ... 'Ultimately ... this investigation did not establish that the campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election interference activities.'"
Fact check: Mueller's report did not conclude that there was "no collusion," as Trump, Sekulow, and their allies have claimed. It found that there was insufficient evidence to bring a criminal conspiracy charge against the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it. Prosecutors also found, however, that the campaign enthusiastically welcomed Russia's interference and sought to benefit from it.
Deputy White House counsel Michael Purpura lays out '6 key facts' about Trump and Ukraine that have no basis in the facts michael purpura Senate TV Purpura accused House Democrats of "selective leaks" and holding "closed-door examinations" with "handpicked witnesses," and later having "staged public hearings."
He then outlined what he said were six "key facts" that "have not and will not change":
The July 25 call transcript shows that the president did not condition either security assistance or a meeting on anything.
Fact check: The "transcript" Purpura referred to is a rough summary the White House released. The summary shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling Trump Ukraine is ready for more military aid. Trump replied: "I would like you to do us a favor, though," and immediately asked Zelensky to pursue investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, as well as conspiracy theories about Ukrainian election interference. Zelensky and other Ukrainians have repeatedly said there was no quid pro quo or pressure on them to launch investigations.
Fact check: It's true that Zelensky said he didn't feel pressured and that there was "no blackmail." But context matters, especially in a geopolitical relationship like this one, where there's a clear imbalance of power. As Insider's John Haltiwanger reported last year, Ukraine is still reliant on US military assistance as it fends off Russian aggression. By acknowledging feeling pressured, Zelensky would risk angering Trump. "Whether the hold, the security assistance hold, continued or not, Ukrainians understood that that's something the president wanted and they still wanted important things from the president," Holmes testified. "So I think that continues to this day. I think they're being very careful. They still need us now going forward."
Zelensky and Ukrainian officials did not even know the security assistance was paused until the end of August, over a month after the July 25 call.
Fact check: Laura Cooper, a Russia and Ukraine expert at the Pentagon, revealed in public testimony last year that the State Department emailed a member of her staff on July 25 — the day of the Trump-Zelensky phone call — saying Ukrainian embassy officials and the House Foreign Affairs Committee were asking about US military aid. In other words, Ukraine seemed aware of the freeze at the time Trump spoke with Zelensky. Not a "single wintess testified that the president himself said that there was any connection between any investigations and security assistance, a presidential meeting or anything." Fact check: Gordon Sondland, the US's ambassador to the European Union, testified that Trump engaged in a quid pro quo that involved conditioning military aid and a White House meeting on Ukraine launching the investigations he wanted.
Sondland also told Holmes Trump only cares about "the big stuff" as it relates to Ukraine. When Holmes noted that Ukraine is at war with Russia, Sondland said "the big stuff" is more about the Bidens. And Sondland raised the request for investigations at a July 10 meeting with Ukrainian officials after they asked when Zelensky could expect a White House meeting with Trump.
Security assistance was released on September 11 and a Trump-Zelensky "presidential meeting" happened on September 25, without Ukraine announcing any investigations.
Fact check: The president released the aid only after Politico publicly reported, on August 28, that he had frozen it, and after Congress and the public learned about a whistleblower's complaint against Trump. The "presidential meeting" Purpura referred to was a brief meeting on the sidelines of the UN. Zelensky himself said at the pull-aside that he was keen on meeting Trump at the White House. The president has not yet granted that request.
Democrats' "blind drive" to impeach Trump doesn't change that he's been a "better friend" and "stronger supporter" of Ukraine than his predecessor.
Fact check: Republican lawmakers have repeatedly pointed to Trump's sale of javelins to Ukraine as a sign of his strong support for the country's fight against Russian aggression on its eastern border. However, as Haltiwanger wrote, under the rules of the sale, the Javelin missiles have to be stored in western Ukraine, which is far from the frontlines of the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine against pro-Russia separatists. In short, the Javelins were essentially provided to Ukraine under the condition that they not be used in the conflict zone. Purpura concluded that each of the "facts" he laid out are "enough to sink the Democrats' case."
Deputy White House counsel Michael Purpura claims lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff fabricated the details of Trump's July 25 call with Ukraine's president Trump on phone White House Here's what Purpura said of Schiff's comments: "That's fake. That's not the real call. That's not the evidence here. That's not the transcript that [White House counsel] Mr. Cipollone just referenced. And we can shrug it off and say we were making light or a joke, but that was in a hearing in the United States House of Representatives discussing the removal of the President of the United States from office."
Fact check: Schiff was paraphrasing the call. He said as much before describing "the essence of what the president communicates," and not "the exact transcribed version of the call."
It's also impossible to access an exact transcript of the call because the White House has not released it to Congress or the public.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone attacks Democrats for running a closed impeachment process
House Democratic impeachment managers, from left, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., arrive for the start of the third day of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
House Democratic impeachment managers, from left, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., arrive for the start of the third day of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Associated Press
Addressing the impeachment process, Cipollone said: "If you were really interested in finding out the truth, why would you run a process the way they ran it? If you were really confident in your position on the facts, why would you lock everybody out f it from the president's side? Why would you do that?"
Fact check: The House committees overseeing the impeachment inquiry repeatedly invited Trump's lawyers to participate in the hearings. They declined to do so. The hearings themselves were initially conducted behind closed doors, but about 100 lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans on each committee spearheading the impeachment inquiry — were allowed to attend.
Afterward, the House Intelligence Committee released full transcripts of all the depositions. It also held public hearings with more than a dozen officials. The White House declined to send lawyers representing Trump to the public hearings as well.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone claims Trump has a 'strong record' of confronting Russia. It's a misleading statement. Vladimir Putin Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting of the Prosecutor General's Office Board in March 2019. Sergei Savostyanov\TASS via Getty Images Cipollone told senators that Trump has "a strong record" of confronting Russia.
"You will hear that President Trump has a strong record of support for Ukraine," he added. "You will hear that from the witnesses in their record that [House managers] didn't tell you about.""
Fact check: Here, Cipollone was likely referring to the Trump administration's decision to send lethal weapons known as Javelins to Ukraine, which the Obama administration refused to do.
Republican lawmakers have repeatedly pointed to Trump's sale of javelins to Ukraine as a sign of his strong support for the country's fight against Russian aggression on its eastern border.
However, as Insider's John Haltiwanger wrote, under the rules of the sale, the Javelin missiles have to be stored in western Ukraine, which is far from the frontlines of the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine against pro-Russia separatists.
In short, the Javelins were essentially provided to Ukraine under the condition that they not be used in the conflict zone.
Experts on the region have also repeatedly said that Ukrainian soldiers are more appreciative and in greater need of nonlethal aid.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone: House managers are trying to 'remove President Trump from the ballot' in the 2020 election pat cipollone Senate TV White House counsel Pat Cipollone kicked things off by claiming House impeachment managers are trying to "remove President Trump from the ballot" in the 2020 election.
Addressing the Senate, he added: They're asking you to "take that decision away from the American people."
"They're asking you to do something that no Senate has ever done, and they're asking you to do it with no evidence," Cipollone said.
He also referenced a "transcript" of the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky and said it was the "best evidence of what happened on the call."
Fact check: No transcript of the call has been released. The White House put out a rough summary of the conversation, but the full transcript is on a top-secret, codeword National Security Council server. White House lawyers made the unusual decision to move the transcript to the server — which is typically used to house sensitive information pertaining to national security — after multiple White House officials reported the call as being inappropriate and a potential violation of US law.
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:45:56 GMT
TRUMP'S STATE OF THE UNION #3
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 10, 2020 4:47:09 GMT
AP FACT CHECK: Trump hypes 'comeback,' impeachment acquittalHOPE YEN and CALVIN WOODWARD Associated Press February 9, 2020, 10:26 PM MST www.yahoo.com/finance/news/ap-fact-check-trump-hypes-052641695.htmlWASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says the world is witnessing a great American economic revival that he brought on by reversing course from the Obama years. Yet the economy is not so different from the robust one he inherited and disparages at every turn.
Trump's State of the Union speech came packed with assertions tailor-made for his reelection bid, during a week when his acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial emboldened him. He and his White House later glossed over inconvenient facts in asserting that the Russia investigation and impeachment inquiry had turned up nothing against him.
The leading Democrats vying to replace him tangled in a debate Friday night before New Hampshire voters try to give shape to a nomination race mangled in Iowa.
A sampling of recent rhetoric:
ACQUITTAL
WHITE HOUSE: “Today, the sham impeachment attempt concocted by Democrats ended in the full vindication and exoneration of President Donald J. Trump.” — statement Wednesday by press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
THE FACTS: Trump is not free of the taint of wrongdoing or fully exonerated. Key Republican senators who voted for his swift acquittal indicated the president did act improperly in the Ukraine matter, but that voters should decide whether to remove him from office.
The Republican-controlled Senate acquitted Trump last week of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, after narrowly rejecting Democratic demands to summon witnesses.
Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who cast a pivotal vote against hearing from witnesses and extending the trial, said he believed Democrats had proved their case of wrongdoing. He said ultimately, however, voters should issue the verdict of whether to remove Trump from office this close to a presidential election. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, described Trump's actions as “shameful and wrong,” but said his fate should be left up to voters.
"The voters will pronounce a verdict in nine months, and we must trust their judgment," she said.
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TRUMP: “We first went through Russia, Russia, Russia. It was all bulls—-.” — remarks Thursday to the nation.
THE FACTS: A two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller that produced guilty pleas, convictions or criminal charges against Russian intelligence officers, as well as Trump associates, is demonstrably not a hoax, as the president frequently describes it.
All told, 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. A sixth, longtime confidant Roger Stone, was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering over his efforts to get inside information about hacked Democratic emails that Wikileaks was releasing in 2016 in an effort to harm the Clinton campaign.
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. The special counsel didn't render judgment on whether Trump obstructed justice, citing in part Justice Department guidelines that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
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ECONOMY
TRUMP: “From the instant I took office, I moved rapidly to revive the U.S. economy — slashing a record number of job killing-regulations, enacting historic and record-setting tax cuts, and fighting for fair and reciprocal trade agreements. ... If we had not reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration, the world would not now be witness to America’s great economic success." — State of the Union address Tuesday.
THE FACTS: The U.S. economy indeed is healthy. But gains have largely followed along the same lines of an expansion that started more than a decade ago under President Barack Obama. And Trump never quite managed to achieve the liftoff he promised during the 2016 election.
Total economic growth last year was 2.3%. That is roughly in line with the average gains achieved after the Great Recession, and a far cry from growth of as much 3%, 4% or more that Trump told voters he could deliver. The president has also claimed that the U.S. added factories during his presidency after nearly 60,000 manufacturing establishments were shuttered during the previous two administrations. But increases in the number U.S. factories began in 2013, more than four years before the start of Trump’s presidency, according to Labor Department figures.
The tax cuts did temporarily boost growth in 2018 as deficit spending increased. But the administration claimed its tax plan would increase business investment in ways that could fuel lasting growth. For the past three quarters, business investment has instead declined.
It’s too soon to judge the impact of the updated trade agreement with Mexico and Canada as well as the pact with China. But Trump premised his economic policy on wiping out the trade gap. Instead, the trade deficit has worsened under Trump.
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IMMIGRATION
TRUMP: “Before I came into office, if you showed up illegally on our southern border and were arrested, you were simply released and allowed into our country, never to be seen again. My administration has ended catch-and-release. If you come illegally, you will now be promptly removed.” — State of the Union.
THE FACTS: Not true. Under previous administrations, Mexicans were quickly returned back over the U.S.-Mexico border, while others were held in detention until they were deported. Some migrants from other countries were released into the United States to wait out their immigration cases.
Despite Trump's claims that all migrants are now “promptly” removed, there is a 1 million immigration court case backlog, which means many migrants wait up to three years before a court hearing in front of a judge who will determine whether someone is deported. After a judge rules a migrant deported, travel papers must be obtained, which often leads to further delays.
As for ending “catch and release,” Trump actually expanded that policy last year during a surge in migrants, releasing thousands of migrants who flooded shelters along the border. The surge has since passed, so fewer people are being held and fewer would need to be released. Because an effort by immigration officials to detain children indefinitely was blocked by a judge, children are still released into the country.
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OIL AND GAS
TRUMP: “Thanks to our bold regulatory reduction campaign, the United States has become the number one producer of oil and natural gas, anywhere in the world, by far.” — State of the Union.
THE FACTS: Trump is taking credit for a U.S. oil and gas production boom that started under Obama. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says the U.S. has been the world’s top natural gas producer since 2009, the top petroleum hydrocarbon producer since 2013, and the top crude oil producer since 2018.
That’s owing to a U.S. shale boom that has driven production up since 2011, not to deregulation or any other new effort by the Trump administration.
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JOBS and TRADE
TRUMP: “The USMCA will create nearly 100,000 new high-paying American auto jobs, and massively boost exports for our farmers, ranchers and factory workers.” — State of the Union.
THE FACTS: Don't count on that.
The U.S. International Trade Commission examined the U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal in an April report. The report estimated that the deal would add only 28,000 auto industry jobs six years after the deal is put in place. Separately, government officials are quoted in the report saying they believe the sector would add 76,000 jobs based on their methodology.
It’s still not the 100,000 jobs claimed by Trump.
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TRUMP: “In eight years under the last administration, over 300,000 working-age people dropped out of the workforce. In just three years of my administration, 3.5 million working-age people have joined the workforce.” — State of the Union.
THE FACTS: Trump is being misleading with numbers to tarnish his predecessor’s record. It’s not clear what he means by “working-age.” But the total size of the U.S. labor force shows that the president is wrong.
During the eight years of Obama’s presidency, the labor force rose by 5.06 million, according to the Labor Department. The improvement reflected a rebounding economy from the Great Recession and population growth.
As the unemployment rate has fallen, more people are finding it attractive to work and are joining the labor force. This has enabled the labor force to climb by an impressive 4.86 million in just three years under Trump.
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DRUG PRICES
TRUMP: “For the first time in 51 years, the cost of prescription drugs actually went down." — State of the Union.
THE FACTS: Prices for prescription drugs have edged down, but that is driven by declines for generics. Prices for brand-name medications are still going up, although more moderately.
Nonpartisan government experts at the Department of Health and Human Services reported last year that prices for pharmacy prescriptions went down by 1% in 2018, the first such price drop in 45 years.
The department said the last time retail prescription drug prices declined was in 1973, when they went down by 0.2%.
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HEALTH CARE
TRUMP: “We will always protect patients with preexisting conditions.” — State of the Union.
THE FACTS: That's a promise, not a guarantee.
The Trump administration is backing a lawsuit by conservative-led states that would overturn the entire Obama health law, including the Affordable Care Act's guarantees that people cannot be turned down or charged more for insurance because of preexisting medical problems.
Trump and congressional Republicans have pledged they will protect people with preexisting conditions, but they have not specified how they would do that.
Estimates of how many people could potentially be affected if the law's protections for preexisting conditions are eliminated range from about 54 million working-age adults, in a study last year from the Kaiser Family Foundation, to as many as 133 million people, according to a 2017 government study that also included children.
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DEMOCRATIC DEBATE
Sen. AMY KLOBUCHAR of Minnesota, on rival Pete Buttigieg’s evolution on health care: “And Pete, while you have a different plan now, you sent out a tweet just a few years ago that said henceforth, forthwith, indubitably, affirmatively, you are for ‘Medicare for All’ for the ages.”
BUTTIGIEG: “Just to be clear, the truth is that I have been consistent throughout in my position on delivering health care for every American.”
THE FACTS: Klobuchar is right. Before he launched his presidential campaign, Buttigieg sounded supportive of “Medicare for All.” He isn't now.
In February 2018, he was involved in a Twitter exchange as liberals were pressing Democratic politicians to back a government health plan.
“When/where have you ever heard me oppose ‘Medicare for All?’” he asked in a Feb. 17, 2018, response to an activist’s query. A day later, he tweeted out a column he wrote as a Harvard University senior, saying he’d “been on record on this one since 2004.”
On the same day, he sent out a separate tweet: “Gosh! Okay ... I, Pete Buttigieg, politician, do henceforth and forthwith declare, most affirmatively and indubitably, unto the ages, that I do favor ‘Medicare for All,’ as I do favor any measure that would help get all Americans covered. Now, if you’ll excuse me, potholes await.”
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FORMER VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN, saying Obama asked him to get 156,000 troops out of Iraq: “I did that.”
THE FACTS: True, but that’s not the end of the story. Obama asked Biden to take the lead in efforts to withdraw troops and coordinate efforts to maintain stability in Baghdad. What Biden did not mention was that some of the troops had to go back.
Obama and Biden failed to win agreement from the Iraqi government to keep a limited number of U.S. troops there after December 2011. That was the deadline for a complete U.S. pullout under a deal negotiated by the Bush administration in late 2008. Biden was still vice president when Obama was compelled to return American troops to Iraq in 2014 after the rise of the Islamic State extremist group.
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ANDREW YANG, tech entrepreneur: “We have record high corporate profits in this country right now.”
THE FACTS: Corporate profits are high, but they’re not at record levels.
Companies earned $1.84 trillion in profits in 2018, slightly below the $1.86 trillion earned in 2014, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. But as a share of national income, corporate profits were 6.6% in 2018. That’s down from 7.6% in 2012 and significantly below the peak of 8.9% in 1929.
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TRUMP ON PELOSI
TRUMP, on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., ripping up his State of the Union remarks: “I thought it was a terrible thing when she ripped up the speech. First of all, it's an official document. You're not allowed. It's illegal what she did. She broke the law.” — remarks Friday.
THE FACTS: No laws were broken, legal experts say. That's because it was not an original government document, but Pelosi's copy of the speech.
Steven Aftergood, a records expert at the private Federation of American Scientists, said: “Legally, this is a nonissue. Pelosi was expressing contempt for the president’s speech, and her views are constitutionally protected.” He said her torn-up pieces of the speech might themselves be considered a new record of historical value.
Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, said Pelosi did not violate 18 U.S. Code Section 2071. That's the federal law defining the deliberate destruction of an official record that has been filed with a court or other government agency — a felony punishable by a prison term and by forfeiture of office.
Heidi Kitrosser, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, said: “This is not an archival document. ... This is one of many, many, many copies of President Trump's speech and Nancy Pelosi is free to do with it whatever she will.”
Kitrosser added that any disagreement with Trump's speech is protected by the First Amendment "and in Pelosi's case, under the speech and debate clause of the Constitution."
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Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Eric Tucker, Colleen Long, Ellen Knickmeyer, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Deb Riechmann in Washington, Arijeta Lajka in New York, Amanda Seitz in Chicago and Michelle L. Price in Las Vegas 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 May 17, 2020 6:08:50 GMT
AP FACT CHECK: Trump, GOP distortion on Flynn; virus fictionHOPE YEN, ERIC TUCKER and MATTHEW PERRONE Associated PressMay 16, 2020, 7:38 AM MST
FILE - In this May 15, 2020, file photo President Donald Trump speaks with reporters as he departs the White House on Marine One in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Fact Check Week
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and his GOP allies are misrepresenting the facts behind the legal case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn as they seek to allege improper behavior during the Obama administration in the presidential campaign season.
Broadly dubbing his allegations “Obamagate," Trump points to unspecified conspiracies against himself in 2016 and suggests the disclosure of Flynn's name as part of legal U.S. surveillance of foreign targets was criminal and motivated by partisan politics. There's no evidence of that.
In fact, the so-called unmasking of Americans' names like Flynn's is legal, and such requests have been more frequently sought in the Trump administration than in the last stretch of Obama's tenure.
In a politically tumultuous week, the president also mischaracterized messages between FBI employees and again alleged without evidence corruption involving Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's son, Hunter, in China.
Meanwhile, Trump continued to spread falsehoods about the availability of tests needed to help stem the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S.
A look at the past week's political rhetoric and reality:
FLYNN
TRUMP: “OBAMAGATE!” — tweet Wednesday.
TRUMP: “Biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA.” — tweet Thursday.
THE FACTS: He’s making an unsupported claim that former President Barack Obama broke the law.
Trump and his supporters have made the unmasking of Flynn one of their major talking points, claiming that it proves the Obama administration unfairly and illegally targeted Flynn and other Trump associates.
But there is nothing illegal about unmasking. The declassified document also states that the unmasking requests were approved through the National Security Agency’s “standard process.”
Earlier in the week, when Trump was asked by reporters to define Obama’s criminal offense in the alleged “Obamagate,” Trump failed to articulate one. “You know what the crime is,” he said Monday. “The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.”
During routine surveillance of foreign targets, names of Americans occasionally come up in conversation, either because the foreigner is talking to or about them. For privacy reasons, those names are generally concealed, or masked, before the intelligence is distributed to administration officials. U.S. officials can ask the agency that collected the intelligence to unmask the name if they think it is vital to understanding the intelligence.
While Trump casts unmasking as sinister, the number of identities unmasked in response to such requests has actually increased during the first years of the Trump administration from the final year of the Obama administration.
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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee: “The unmasking of General Flynn by the Obama Administration regarding conversations during the presidential transition are deeply troubling and smell of politics, not national security.” — statement Wednesday.
THE FACTS: There is nothing from newly released material that suggests the unmasking requests were rooted in politics rather than national security.
There were indeed multiple Obama administration officials, including then-Vice President Biden, who asked the NSA to disclose the name of an American whose identity was concealed in intelligence reports. That American was revealed to be Flynn.
But there’s nothing inherently unusual about the requests, and the documents released by the Trump administration say the people who made the requests were authorized to receive the underlying intelligence reports.
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SEN. RAND PAUL, R-KY: “But it should be and is illegal to listen to an American’s conversation. And it’s even worse if you’re listening to an American who just happens to be your political opponent from the opposite party.” — interview Wednesday on Fox News Channel.
THE FACTS: It is not illegal to listen to an American’s conversations, and law enforcement officials do it routinely with a warrant or court order. But in any event, that’s not what happened here.
No one was listening intentionally to an American’s conversation. Instead, U.S. officials learned of the conversations that involved or mentioned Flynn during surveillance of foreign targets.
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TRUMP, addressing the criminal case against Flynn that Trump's Justice Department is now seeking to drop: “This was all Obama, this was all Biden. These people were corrupt, the whole thing was corrupt, and we caught them.” — interview Thursday on Fox News.
THE FACTS: He’s suggesting partisan politics by the Obama administration were completely behind Flynn’s investigation. That's incorrect.
It is true that the counterintelligence investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, and into Russia in particular, began during the Obama administration. But it continued well into Trump’s own administration. The investigation into Flynn was taken over by a special counsel who was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, Trump’s own deputy attorney general.
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VIRUS TESTING
TRUMP: “We just cracked 10 million tests ... Ten million. ... If you look down here, these are other countries that have not done anywhere near what we’re doing. We’re double. If you add them up and double them, we’ve done more tests. But I can’t get the press to print that, unfortunately.” — remarks Wednesday with governors of Colorado and North Dakota.
TRUMP: “What we’ve done on testing, we’ve now tested more than the entire world put together.” — remarks Thursday to reporters.
THE FACTS: False. The U.S. has not tested more than all other countries combined, let alone double the number for the entire world. It also lags many countries in testing its population proportionally.
Together, just three countries — Russia, Germany and Italy — have reported more tests than the U.S.
This week, the U.S. had reported conducting more than 10 million tests since the pandemic began, after failing in the crucial early weeks of the outbreak. That compared with more than 23 million tests by the other countries in the top 10 of the testing count.
The U.S. was followed by Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Britain, India, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and France.
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BRETT GIROIR, the federal health official overseeing U.S. testing: “Everybody who needs a test can get a test. ... If you’re symptomatic with a respiratory illness, that is an indication for a test and you can get a test. If you need to be contact traced, you can get a test." — news briefing Monday.
THE FACTS: Not according to public health experts, who say the U.S. is not near the testing level to safely reopen.
Researchers at the Harvard Global Health Institute, for instance, said the U.S. should now be doing 900,000 tests a day to help stop the spread of the virus. Trump this week said the U.S. was doing about 300,000.
Giroir stressed that an adequate number of diagnostic tests were available for those with symptoms of COVID-19, but studies have shown many who get infected never show symptoms. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert, has urged enough testing to include at the least asymptomatic people in vulnerable populations, such as nursing homes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently broadened its guidelines for coronavirus testing to include certain asymptomatic people who may be seen at higher risk.
More than 40 states are failing to test widely enough to reach the level needed to safely loosen stay-at-home orders, according to an AP analysis of metrics developed by the Harvard Global Health Institute. The group includes four — Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Texas – that have already reopened.
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TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS
TRUMP: “In January I put – and I was criticized by everybody including Dr. Fauci — I put in a wall. We put in a very strong wall. Only a small number of people were allowed in, and they were all U.S. citizens. I can’t tell a U.S. citizen, you can’t come back into your country. ... We actually acted very early.” — interview Thursday with Fox News.
THE FACTS: The travel restrictions he imposed on China in late January had other loopholes besides the exceptions for U.S. citizens. It was not a solid wall or total “ban,” as he often puts it.
There were many gaps in containment and initial delays in testing in January and February, leading to the U.S. rising to No. 1 globally in the number of people infected by COVID-19.
His order temporarily barred entry by foreign nationals who had traveled in China within the previous 14 days, with exceptions for U.S. citizens, but also their immediate family and permanent residents.
Dr. Anne Schuchat, the No. 2 official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Associated Press the federal government was also slow to understand how much coronavirus was spreading from Europe, which helped drive the acceleration of U.S. outbreaks in February. Trump announced restrictions for many European countries in mid-March.
”I think the timing of our travel alerts should have been earlier," she said.
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MORE ON ‘OBAMAGATE’
TRUMP: “So even before I got elected, you remember the famous — the two lovers, right, Strzok and Page, the insurance policy, she’s going to win, but just in case she doesn’t we have an insurance policy. That means that if I won, they’re going to try and take me out.” — Fox News interview Thursday.
THE FACTS: There was no conspiracy afoot to take out Trump in the 2016 text message between two FBI employees.
Trump depicts the two as referring to a plot — or insurance policy — to oust him from office if he won the presidential election over Democrat Hillary Clinton. It’s apparent from the text that it wasn’t that.
Agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page, both now gone from the bureau, said the text messages reflected a debate about how aggressively the FBI should investigate Trump and his campaign when expectations at the time were that he would lose anyway.
Strzok texted about something Page had said to the FBI’s deputy director, to the effect that “there’s no way he gets elected.” But Strzok argued that the FBI should not assume Clinton would win: “I’m afraid we can’t take that risk.” He likened the situation to “an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.” He has said he was not discussing a plot to drive Trump from office.
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TRUMP, on Hunter Biden: “Worst of all, was the last eight years under President Obama and Biden, where his son gets a billion and a half dollars, and then they’re supposed to be tough on China. ... And he walked out of China with $1.5 billion dollars to invest for them, of which he makes hundreds of thousands — and actually millions — of dollars.” — interview Thursday on Fox News.
THE FACTS: There’s no evidence Hunter Biden pocketed $1.5 billion from China. More generally, accusations of criminal wrongdoing by father or son are unsubstantiated.
In 2014, an investment fund started by Hunter Biden and other investors joined with foreign and Chinese private equity firms in an effort to raise $1.5 billion to invest outside China. That’s far from giving Hunter Biden such a sum, as Trump describes it.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, wrote in an internet post last year that his client was an unpaid director of the fund at the time “based on his interest in seeking ways to bring Chinese capital to international markets.”
“He has not received any return on his investment," Mesires said.
Hunter Biden stepped down from the Chinese board last October as part of a pledge not to work on behalf of any foreign-owned companies should his father win the presidency.
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Associated Press writers Meghan Hoyer and Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.
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EDITOR'S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.COMMENTS
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Post by the Scribe on Jun 21, 2020 15:21:07 GMT
AP FACT CHECK: Trump at rally falsely cites a Biden apologywww.yahoo.com/news/ap-fact-check-time-trauma-122420888.html CALVIN WOODWARD and HOPE YEN Associated PressJune 20, 2020, 12:24 PM UTC President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center, Saturday, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) President Donald Trump speaks during an event on police reform, in the Rose Garden of the White House, Tuesday, June 16, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center, Saturday, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) President Donald Trump holds up an executive order on police reform after signing it in the Rose Garden of the White House, Tuesday, June 16, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) FILE - In this June 17, 2020, file photo President Donald Trump departs after speaing about the PREVENTS "President's Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End a National Tragedy of Suicide," task force, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) 1 / 5 Election 2020 Trump President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center, Saturday, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump falsely told supporters Saturday night that Democratic rival Joe Biden apologized for opposing his restrictions on travel from China early in the coronavirus pandemic. On multiple fronts, the revival of the Trump campaign rally marked the return of distortions from months ago.
Trump's remarks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, followed days of self-congratulation as well as trashing of the Obama administration in which Biden served as vice president. Many of the president's statements — on the pandemic, public unrest over police brutality, his record on veterans and more — were inaccurate.
A sampling from Saturday night and the past week:
RALLY
TRUMP, saying Biden accused him of being xenophobic for limiting travel from China, where the pandemic began: "He apologized a month later.”
THE FACTS: This didn't happen. Biden did not apologize. He actually supported Trump's travel restrictions.
The Democrat has indeed accused Trump of having a record of xenophobia, and hasn't apologized for doing so. Trump began calling the virus the “China virus” at one point, prompting Biden to urge the country not to take a turn toward xenophobia or racism in the pandemic.
Trump set that description aside for a time, but he went back to stereotyping at the rally, referring to the “kung flu” as well as the “Chinese virus.”
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TRUMP: "We passed VA Choice. ... It's never happened before.”
THE FACTS: A false and frequent statement, pilfering from President Barack Obama's record. VA Choice, which gives veterans opportunities under certain conditions to get private health care at public expense, passed during the Obama administration. Trump signed legislation expanding the program.
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VIRUS THREAT
TRUMP: “Biden got failing grades and polls on his clueless handling of the Swine Flu H1N1. It was a total disaster, they had no idea what they were doing.” — tweet Thursday.
THE FACTS: This is a distorted history of a pandemic in 2009 that killed far fewer people in the United States than the coronavirus is killing now. For starters, Joe Biden, as vice president, wasn’t running the federal response. Federal public health officials were not at all flying blind when the H1N1 pandemic, also known as swine flu, came to the U.S.
Then, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s flu surveillance network sounded the alarm after two children in California became the first people diagnosed with the new flu strain in this country.
About two weeks later, the Obama administration declared a public health emergency and CDC began releasing anti-flu drugs from the national stockpile to help hospitals get ready. In contrast, Trump declared a state of emergency in early March, seven weeks after the first U.S. case of COVID-19 was announced.
More than 119,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. The CDC puts the U.S. death toll from the 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic at about 12,500.
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VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: “Oklahoma has really been in the forefront of our efforts to slow the spread. And in a very real sense, they’ve flattened the curve. ... The number of cases in Oklahoma — it’s declined precipitously.” — remarks Monday.
THE FACTS: The curve has actually been spiking higher since late May, not flattening.
Oklahoma did report just 41 new coronavirus cases on May 28, a relative low number compared with early April. But infections have since increased. Last weekend, the state posted sharply higher numbers and set a daily record of new cases on Thursday, at 450.
Oklahoma is among the nearly half the states that have seen coronavirus infections rise since May when governors began loosening social distancing orders and as more people were able to get tests.
In Tulsa, the infection rate is also rising steadily after remaining moderate for months. The four-day average number of new cases in the city has doubled from the previous peak in April.
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JUNETEENTH
TRUMP: “I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. ... It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.” — Wall Street Journal interview Wednesday.
THE FACTS: It's not true that no one had heard of it. No doubt it is better known now.
Trump’s campaign originally scheduled its Tulsa rally for Friday, placing it on the date symbolizing the end of slavery, June 19; Trump agreed to shift it to Saturday. Over two days in 1921, whites looted and burned Tulsa’s black Greenwood district to the ground, killed up to 300 black Tulsans and forced survivors into internment camps.
Trump’s comment that no one knew about Juneteenth before the furor created by his rally is contradicted by the years of festivities, the official commemorations by all but a few state governments and routine White House acknowledgments of the occasion.
Trump’s staff members have put out statements under his name each year of his presidency marking Juneteenth.
“Melania and I send our best wishes for a memorable celebration to all those commemorating Juneteenth,” says the 2019 statement outlining events of June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived at Galveston, Texas, with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were free.
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POLICE PRACTICES
TRUMP, on abusive policing: “President Obama and Vice President Biden never even tried to fix this during their eight-year period. The reason they didn’t try is because they had no idea how to do it.” — Tuesday at the White House.
THE FACTS: That is false.
Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department opened 25 wide-ranging civil rights investigations into local law enforcement agencies across the country, including police departments in Chicago, Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri.
Those investigations were aimed at overhauling troubled departments with patterns of civil rights abuses and generally resulted in court-enforceable consent decrees requiring the agencies to commit to a series of fundamental changes with regard to the use of force, stops, searches and more.
Besides that, the Obama White House established a task force to come up with best policing practices and to recommend ways to improve community trust while also reducing crime. That task force released its report in 2015.
That year, President Barack Obama barred the government from supplying certain types of military equipment to local police departments, a policy Trump reversed two years later.
Public pressure may be more intense on Congress now to pass sweeping laws on policing, after nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But the limited steps Trump took Tuesday steered around Congress.
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VACCINES
TRUMP, on scientists: “These are the people – the best, the smartest, the most brilliant anywhere, and they’ve come up with the AIDS vaccine. They’ve come up with ... various things.” — Tuesday at the White House.
THE FACTS: No one has come up with a vaccine for AIDS, nor is there a cure. Nearly 38,000 people were diagnosed with HIV infection in the U.S. and about 1.7 million globally in 2018, according to the latest totals.
Powerful medicines have turned HIV into a manageable chronic condition for many patients, leading to major global efforts to get those drugs to more of the people who need them.
In addition, taking certain anti-HIV drugs every day also can work as prevention, dramatically reducing the chances that someone who is still healthy becomes infected through sex or injection drug use. A small fraction of the Americans who might benefit use that “preexposure prophylaxis.”
Yet there is "no vaccine available that will prevent HIV infection or treat those who have it,” says the U.S. Health and Human Services Department in outlining efforts to develop one.
Trump may have been trying to correct himself when he followed up with the comment that science has “various things” for AIDS.
As for a vaccine to end the coronavirus pandemic, Trump appears confident one will be ready by the end of the year, but public health authorities warn there’s no guarantee that any of the candidates currently being tested will pan out. Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health says a vaccine by year’s end is conceivable only if everything goes right in final testing this summer.
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VETERANS
TRUMP, talking about what he's done for veterans: “Every VA medical facility now offers same-day emergency mental health, something we didn’t have or even come close to having.” — remarks Wednesday.
THE FACTS: That's false. Same-day mental health service started at VA before Trump took office in January 2017.
The 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, during the Obama administration. By late 2016, the department’s blog announced that goal would be achieved by year’s end.
A Dec. 23, 2016, article in the Harvard Business Review cited new same-day services at all VA hospitals as evidence of notable progress at the department. David Shulkin, then VA secretary, told Congress in late January 2017 the services already were fully in place.
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TRUMP, on efforts to reduce the suicide rate by veterans: “We’re working very hard on this problem, and I think we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress. I even noticed your number: 20. Twenty is different than 24. You know what that means: each day. Hard to believe. Each day. But 20 is a big difference, and we’re getting it way down.” — remarks Wednesday.
THE FACTS: No. The veterans’ suicide rate hasn’t improved at all during Trump’s administration. Suicides have gone up by the latest measure.
The VA estimated in 2013 that 22 veterans were taking their lives each day on average (not 24, as Trump put it). But the estimate was based on data submitted from fewer than half the states. In 2016, VA released an updated estimate of 20 suicides per day, based on 2014 data from every state as well as the Pentagon. That's the figure Trump wrongly claimed as his own.
Last fall, VA changed how it counted, removing some active-duty service members and former members of the National Guard and Reserve who had been in the mix. That left a suicide rate of 17 per day by military veterans, a change that reflected no improvement but merely a different methodology.
For 2017, VA reported 6,139 suicides by military veterans, up by 139 from the year before.
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CHILDREN & COVID-19
TRUMP: “They’ve come out of this at a level that’s really inconceivable. By the way, the regular flu, other flus, other things, SARS or H1N1, any of them, if you look at the young people they were affected like everybody else, but for whatever reason with respect to COVID, the numbers are very, very low.” — remarks Monday.
THE FACTS: Although it’s true that children are less likely than adults to develop COVID-19, the CDC has nevertheless counted more than 86,000 infections by the virus in Americans younger than 18.
Trump’s statements overlook severe COVID-19 illnesses and some deaths of children in the U.S., even though kids in general tend to get less sick from it than adults do. He also glosses over the fact that kids can spread disease without showing symptoms themselves.
The CDC in April studied the pandemic’s effect on different ages in the U.S. and reviewed preliminary research in China, where the coronavirus started. It said social distancing is important for children, too, for their own safety and that of others.
“Whereas most COVID-19 cases in children are not severe, serious COVID-19 illness resulting in hospitalization still occurs in this age group,” the CDC study says.
Last month, the CDC also warned doctors to be on the lookout for a rare but life-threatening inflammatory reaction in some children who’ve had the coronavirus. The condition had been reported in more than 100 children in New York, and in some kids in several other states and in Europe, with some deaths.
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JUDGES
TRUMP: “These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts ... Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?” — tweets Thursday.
THE FACTS: Whether justices like or dislike a president is irrelevant to their rulings.
Trump was referring to two major decisions this past week on LGBT rights and immigration in which the conservative-leaning Supreme Court handed him defeats. But they were nothing personal.
Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s liberals in both cases. Also ruling against Trump in the LGBT case was Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of Trump's two appointees.
Roberts has sought to emphasize the judiciary’s independence from the political branches of government and make clear that justices are not “politicians in robes.” After Trump in 2018 went after a judge who ruled against his migrant asylum order, calling him an “Obama judge,” Roberts issued an extraordinary rebuke.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in response to an inquiry from The Associated Press. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Lauran Neergaard, Jessica Gresko and Mark Sherman 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 apnews.com/APFactCheck
Follow @apfactcheck on Twitter: twitter.com/APFactCheck
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Post by the Scribe on Jul 15, 2020 13:59:57 GMT
Trump's Falsehoods on Police Shootings, Biden, Coronavirus and Chinawww.yahoo.com/news/trumps-falsehoods-police-shootings-biden-115629841.html
Linda Qiu The New York TimesJuly 15, 2020, 4:56 AM
Trump
In a rambling, campaign-style appearance in the Rose Garden at the White House and in an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, President Donald Trump ranged across many topics, sprinkling questionable assertions throughout his remarks.
What Was Said
Catherine Herridge, CBS News reporter: “Why are African Americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country?”
Trump: “So are white people. So are white people. What a terrible question to ask. So are white people. More white people, by the way. More white people.” — in an interview on CBS
This is misleading. Although more white Americans have been killed by police than Black Americans, Black Americans are killed at a far higher rate than white Americans. Since 2015, The Washington Post has logged 2,499 white Americans killed by police for a rate of 13 per million, compared with 1,301 Black Americans for a rate of 31 per million.
A 2018 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found “consistent patterns of racial disparities in police use of force” and urged the Trump administration’s Justice Department to monitor and train local police departments.
The commission, an independent federal panel, cited data from The Post and The Guardian showing much higher death rates for Black, Latino and Native American people in officer-involved killings. Researchers have also found that Black Americans are also more likely than white Americans to be unarmed when killed.
“The best available evidence reflects high rates of use of force nationally, and increased likelihood of police use of force against people of color, people with disabilities, LGBT people, people with mental health concerns, people with low incomes and those at the intersections of these groups,” the commission wrote in a letter addressed to Trump.
What Was Said
“Biden personally led the effort to give China permanent most-favored-nation status, which is a tremendous advantage for a country to have. Few countries have it. But the United States doesn’t have it, never did, probably never even asked for it because they didn’t know what they were doing.” — in a news conference at the White House
False. “Most favored nation” refers to a principle of fair trade that members of the World Trade Organization confer on each other. The United States has enjoyed “most favored nation” status from all members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade since 1947, and all 164 countries in the WTO, except Cuba.
Countries may carve out their own exceptions to this rule, but there are just a few examples. The United States has declined to grant this status, also known as normal trade relations, to just two countries: Cuba and North Korea. Cuba reciprocates American sanctions, while North Korea is not a WTO member.
Furthermore, Joe Biden, the former vice president and Trump’s presumptive 2020 Democratic opponent, was “never the leader” in making the most-favored-nation status permanent for China, said Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Rather, it was an initiative of President Bill Clinton and established by President George W. Bush.
“Permanent MFN status was not a ‘tremendous advantage’ for China,” Hufbauer said. “For decades, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, the U.S. regularly granted MFN status to China. Permanent MFN did not lower any U.S. tariffs on imports from China. It just eliminated the need for an extension every two years.”
What Was Said
“If you look at the job he did on swine flu — I looked at a poll, they have polls on everything nowadays and he — they got very bad marks on the job they did on the swine flu. H1N1. He calls it N1H1. H1N1. Got very poor marks from Gallup on the job they did on swine flu. And they stopped very early on, testing.”
False. Trump was referring to the performance of Biden and the Obama administration in dealing with the potential for an earlier pandemic. Diagnostic tests for the swine flu were approved and shipped out less than two weeks after the H1N1 virus was identified in April 2009 and a day before the first death in the United States. From May to September 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shipped more than 1,000 kits, each one able to test 1,000 specimens.
Gallup polls showed that 67% of Americans were very or somewhat confident in the government’s ability to handle the H1N1 outbreak. This February, 77% of Americans told Gallup the same about the government’s ability to handle the coronavirus outbreak — but that percentage has slid as the pandemic has continued and the death toll has increased. In March, 61% said the same. By April, just 50% approved of Trump’s response.
Overall, about 56.7% of Americans now disapprove of Trump’s response, according to polls aggregated by FiveThirtyEight.
What Was Said
“We have just about the lowest mortality rate.”
This lacks evidence. It is difficult to ascertain accurate death rates for the coronavirus and compare them across countries because of differences in population, testing rates and health care systems. But based on existing data, Trump’s claim is not accurate. Out of the 20 countries most affected by the pandemic, the United States has the sixth-highest case fatality rate at 4% and the second highest rate of deaths per 100,000 people at 41.45, according to Johns Hopkins University.
What Was Said
“Think of this: If we didn’t do testing — instead of testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing, we’d have half the cases. If we did another — you cut that in half, you’d have yet again half of that.”
False. The suggestion that the number of positive cases is directly proportional to the number of tests conducted is false. Ramped-up testing does not account for the recent surge in cases. The spread of the disease does.
In early June, the United States was conducting about 450,000-500,000 tests daily and the number of daily positive cases hovered around 20,000, for a positive rate of around 4%.
This month, daily testing varied from about 600,000-800,000. By Trump’s logic, that would roughly correlate to daily positive cases of between 24,000-32,000. But in reality, the number has hovered around 60,000 cases in recent days as the positive testing rate doubled to about 8%.
What Was Said
“These are the actual key elements of the Biden-Sanders unity platform.”
This is exaggerated. Trump was referring to recommendations put forth by six policy task forces assembled by allies of Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, his rival in the Democratic primary. Some of his claims — such as saying Biden wants to reach carbon-neutrality, increase the refugee admissions cap, create a pathway for citizenship for immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally and abolish the death penalty — were accurate. But many others were dramatized.
The recommendations include a 100-day moratorium on deportations of people already in the United States — not stopping “all deportations” indefinitely, as Trump said.
Rather than “abolish immigration detention” altogether, the task force recommended ending the use of for-profit detention facilities and seeking alternatives for immigrants who “do not present a threat to public safety.”
The task forces did not call to “abolish immigration enforcement,” as Trump said, but asked for more oversight of enforcement agencies and reforms in practices.
They also did not support granting “work permits for illegal immigrants,” but rather asked for changes to the temporary work visa program and stronger labor protections for temporary workers.
The task forces did not call to “abolish our police departments,” though they did recommend creating guidelines on use of force, ending racial profiling and banning chokeholds.
Rather than “abolish prisons” and “all charter schools,” the recommendations call for an end to using for-profit private prisons, banning for-profit charter schools, if they receive federal funding, and subjecting all charter schools to more scrutiny.
What Was Said
“We want strong closed borders with people able to come in through merit through a legal process. They don’t want to have any borders at all. They’re going to rip down the wall. It was hard to get that built. And now it’s almost completed, it will be completed by a little after the end of the year.”
This is exaggerated. The Biden-Sanders unity task forces recommended halting the use of Pentagon funds to build Trump’s border wall, but did not say to tear down existing portions. The president’s claim that the wall is “almost completed” is also inaccurate.
First, it is unclear exactly what Trump’s current vision of a finished wall would look like. Despite promising a wall stretching for 1,000 miles — along a nearly 2,000 mile border where barriers already had existed for 654 miles — during the 2016 campaign, Trump has conceded that his wall may not be that long.
The Trump administration has received enough funding, including transfers from the Department of Defense, to build 738 miles. It has completed 235 miles and is on track to complete about 450 miles by the end of the year, according to Customs and Border Protection.
Other False Claims
Trump also repeated a number of other claims that The New York Times has previously fact-checked:
— He falsely claimed that before the coronavirus epidemic, China was having its “worst year, as you know, in 67 years.” (China’s economy grew at its slowest rate in 29 years last year.)
— He claimed “even experts didn’t want to” place restrictions on travel from China. (His health secretary said the restrictions were put in place in consultation with health officials).
— He falsely claimed that the European Union “was formed in order to take advantage of the United States.” (It was created with the support of the United States to diminish the risk of wars and promote economic cooperation.)
— He claimed that he “rebuilt” a “totally depleted” military. (The military has received some new equipment, but continues to use aging supplies.)
— He claimed that Biden’s son Hunter “walked out with $1.5 billion” from China. (This refers to a company associated with the younger Biden, but there’s no evidence he was personally paid.)
— He claimed, despite little evidence, that mail-in ballots would lead to “tremendous fraud.” (Voter fraud is extremely rare.)
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
© 2020 The New York Times Company
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Post by the Scribe on Oct 16, 2020 6:14:55 GMT
CNN reporter fact-checks dueling town halls in 3 minutes CNN 10.9M subscribers CNN's Daniel Dale fact-checks moments from two separate town halls for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump. #CNN #News
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