Trump spoke on Saturday night to an audience of wildly enthusiastic supporters. His 100-minute speech was chock-full of exaggerations and lies, and his audience loved it.
Before he spoke, he said that he would run even if he is indicted.
Linda Qiu of the New York Times did a fact-check, but it is not complete. For example, Biden withdrew from Afghanistan to fulfill a deal (the Doha Agreement) that the Trump administration made with the Taliban to withdraw American troops by May 1, 2021. Biden pushed the withdrawal back to August 30, 2021. It was a bipartisan disaster.
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump revived familiar falsehoods and returned to old themes in a speech Saturday night at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Here’s a fact check of some of his claims.
WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“Killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan.”
False. Murders declined in New York by about 11 percent from 488 homicides in 2021 to 433 homicides last year. It was the lowest level since 2019, according to the city’s Police Department. Murders continued to decrease this year to 30 in January(compared with 31 in January 2022) and to 26 in February (compared with 36 in February 2022).
Those numbers also pale in comparison to the height of crime in New York in the 1980s and 1990s, when Mr. Trump was a mainstay of the city and when it regularly recorded more than 1,500 murders annually. Homicides peaked in 1990 at 2,245.
WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“We lost $85 billion worth of the greatest military equipment in the world.”
This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump was referring to, and overstating, the value of military equipment seized by the Taliban after the United States withdrew the last of its troops from Afghanistan last August.
According to quarterly Pentagon reports to Congress, the United States had provided $88.6 billion for security in Afghanistan from October 2001 to July 2021, and disbursed about $75 billion. That figure includes the amount spent on training, antidrug trafficking efforts and infrastructure, as well as $18 billion for equipment. Most of the $75 billion actually went toward “sustainment,” a category that includes salaries, communications and gas for vehicles.
CNN and other news outlets have reported that the United States left behind about $7 billion of military equipment.
WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“They want windmills all over the place that ruin our fields, kill our birds and are very unreliable and are the most expensive energy ever developed”
This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump has long been an ardent critic of wind turbines, but his complaints are overstated.
By one estimate, as many as 328,000 birds die each year flying into wind farms, but other things — inanimate and living — pose a far greater threat. Cats kill as many as four billion birds annually in the United States, fossil fuel power plants are responsible for 14.5 million and collisions with buildings as many as 988 million birds.
Wind power and other forms of renewable energy are becoming increasingly more affordable.
The Energy Information Administration estimated that onshore wind would cost about $30 per megawatt-hour by 2027, cheaper than the $52 for coal, $61 for nuclear, $41 for biomass and $47 for hydroelectric. It will remain more expensive than natural gas, solar and geothermal generation.
OTHER CLAIMS
Mr. Trump also repeated a number of other claims The New York Times had previously fact-checked:
- Mr. Trump inaccurately claimed to have “shut down” unauthorized border crossings. (The number declined during the pandemic, but began to increase again in the final months of his presidency.)
- He falsely claimed that “no other president had ever gotten anything from China, not even 10 cents.” (In the decade before Mr. Trump took office, the United States collected $8 billion to $14 billion per year from duties on Chinese imports.)
- He misleadingly characterized members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as “delinquent” on payments. (All member nations pay their bills.)
- He falsely said that “no one ever heard of” the Nord Stream 2 pipeline before he raised it as an issue and halted its construction. (His predecessors all opposed the project.)
- He misleadingly claimed that the Obama administration had only supplied Ukraine with “blankets.” (It committed more than $600 million in security assistance to Ukraine.)
- He falsely claimed to have “completed” building a wall along the southern border. (It has not been finished.)
- He claimed to have presided over the “best economy in history.” (Average growth, even before the coronavirus pandemic decimated the economy, was lower under Mr. Trump than under former Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.)
Linda Qiu is a fact-check reporter, based in Washington. She came to The Times in 2017 from the fact-checking service PolitiFact. @ylindaqiu
A few minutes ago I finished watching the most recent PBS News Hour talk of Brooks and Capehart on CPAC and the future of the Republican Party.
Capehart made a point when he talked about Trump’s followers not even knowing much of anything about the lies because they only watch FOX and ignore all the reputable news sources. FOX is their hometown news. He said they either don’t know or don’t care. Their reality is whatever FOX or Trump tells them.
Viewers of FOX “news” have never been informed about the text messages in which the main hosts and Murdoch himself admitted that Trump lost, knew they lied to viewers but worried they would lose their audience if they told the truth. They lied, but they didn’t tell their audience.
Yes, many viewers know the reported news outside of FOX. We can read. There is a lot of disinformation coming from Dominion about what commentators thought and reported. The Tucker Carlson interview has been exposed. Did you listen to it? He did nothing wrong. He only let the opposition state their beliefs and did not acknowledge how he felt about it. His job is to report the facts. I did not hear Hannity or Ingraham. Yes, they are Trump supporters. I am not especially interested in their beliefs…just the issues. I listen to pod casts from at least 6 notable commentators and former legislators. There are voter integrity reports coming in from all around the country that address fraud in voting–it is not a hoax.
Just where do you libs and leftists get information? CNN/MSNBC/ the View or do you rely on the New York Times? Yes, DJT is prone to exaggeration…as are many in government. He has been right on many issues and that is important to mainstream Americans. He has been attacked for years while White House corruption and the meritless members of the current administration are ignored. Confidence in health care, the economy, military readiness and our justice system is at an all-time low. That is what is important–not numbers.
April,
This came from Forbes—not a liberal publication:
Host Tucker Carlson said in text messages that far-right attorney Sidney Powell “is lying” and called her claims “insane” and “absurd,” saying it was “shockingly reckless” to push the Dominion fraud claims and Powell was “poison,” an “unguided missile” and “dangerous as hell” and he “hope[s] she’s punished.”
Carlson also wrote after the January 6 attack that Trump is “a demonic force, a destroyer,” and told host Laura Ingraham he “had to make” the Trump White House “disavow” Powell’s comments, calling her a “nut.”
Host Sean Hannity testified he “did not believe … for one second” that Powell’s voter fraud claims were true and it was “obvious” Powell’s allegations were false when she appeared on his program, also saying far-right attorney Rudy Giuliani was “acting like an insane person” and calling the lawyers “f’ing lunatics.”
Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott also testified she “had a number of conversations with [Hannity] where he wanted the President to accept the results” and said he had believed President Joe Biden had lawfully won the election “for some time.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/02/17/mind-blowingly-nuts-fox-news-hosts-and-execs-repeatedly-denounced-2020-election-fraud-off-air-here-are-their-most-scathing-comments/
Trump knew he lost the election. He lied. FOX knew he lost. They lied.
April,
You say you had to read other news sources because you knew Fox News was not telling you the truth.
You just admitted that you did not learn from Fox News that there was no evidence of voter fraud and you did not learn that Biden won the election fairly.
It’s weird to hear you say that’s okay with you, because you blame other Fox News viewers for being gullible enough to believe someone on Fox who Tucker presented as a reliable, trustworthy person. It’s weird to hear you say that you and other Fox viewers want Fox to amplify the lies of their guests without ever telling viewers those guests are lying, because if the Fox viewer wasn’t stupid, they would act like April and seek out sources that don’t lie.
April is blaming Fox News viewers for not seeking out other news sources that would inform them that the guests telling them lies on Fox shouldn’t be believed. April basically says it’s not Tucker’s job to tell viewers the truth, it is Tucker’s job to simply present the lie that Trump wants them to believe. And if a viewer believes the lie, April blames them because they just aren’t as smart as April is to know when a guest on Fox is lying and when they aren’t.
It’s shocking to read April scapegoating other Fox viewers for not being smart like April is, so they would know when a guest is lying to them. Because April believes that Fox should never tell them when a guest spouting Trump lies is lying.
Only Trump’s???
?? Only Trump’s what?
Only Trump’s what? LIES!
How do they compare to Putin’s lies?
Explain to me, Diane, why you allow this obvious Russian asset (was nice to add the -et) to post here? She obviously either a paid Putin troll or a wannabe apologist for authoritarianism.
Vera is in moderation. I don’t post her very hostile comments about her hatred for the US (she lives in Switzerland) or slavish devotion to Putin. Only her least offensive comments get through.
Putin’s lies are whoppers. Russia is not at war. 300,000 men have been mobilized for his special military operation, even convicts from prisons. Up to one million Russians have fled Russia, including the best educated, who don’t want to live in the repressive world Putin is restoring. Just saying that the nation is at war or opposing the war is grounds for arrest and prison. All independent media has been shut down. Putin has upped sales of oil to India and China so the economy stays strong. But freedom of thought and expression are dead.
And like disgraced lawyer Alex Murdaugh Fox kept adapting to new uncomfortable truths by asserting new corrosive lies. They should hire Santos as a pundit; they’re a match made in heaven.
It’s easy to fact check Donald Trump. If words are coming out of his mouth, it’s a lie.
Sent from AT&T Yahoo Mail for iPhone
All this is great. If Trump is the nominee, the Repugnicans lose. Again.
Go Donnie!
ROFLMAO.
A little fact check on the Fact Checker. Her figures are dated. For 2023 Murders are down 17% so far this year from last year as of 02/26/2023.
Murders have been dropping in NYC since mid 2021 . That drop was not reflected in the 2021 yearly figure. So to have some fun. It took Biden 6 months to curb the out of control crime that Trump caused in 2020.
In 2022 NYC murders were lower by substantial percentages than every year from 2011 all the way back to 1960 when “America was Great”.
A 17% yearly decline if it continues, will put the number of NYC murders in the range of 2013 -2019. Those were the safest years ever recorded by the NYPD since they started reliably tracking records. 17 and 18 being the lowest at under 300 . That is 40% less then rate of 1960 with near 2 million more residents today.
Yet the average citizen has been convinced that murders were rising since Bloomberg left office in 2013. Or worse that we need Rudy the Plunger Giuliani back . Incidentally murders in NYC started dropping after 1990 when Dinkins was Mayor. They had peaked in 1990 and had dropped 30% by the time the repugnant rioter came to office . Jan 6 was not the flakes first riot. Giuliani organized a police riot on the steps of City Hall in 1993 during the run up to the election.
Perhaps Biden should not be encouraging other Democrats to amplify the false Republican message on crime and actually protect the American people from the real threat, by holding the seditionists accountable for their crimes. If Garland can’t do the Job it is past time for him to move on!