Wilt Chamberlain
01-20-2017, 01:11 PM
In 71 days as president elect of the United States, Donald Trump told at least 82 untruths.
Many of Trump’s forays into fiction are familiar to those who watched his campaign: He’s still inflating statistics on undocumented immigration, crime and unemployment to paint a distorted picture of domestic safety. He’s still missing the mark on issues such as the documented effects of trade policy or the scientific consensus surrounding climate change. He’s still oversimplifying and overstating the Obama administration’s role in the rise of the Islamic States. And he’s still exaggerating the size of his crowds.
Since winning, however, Trump has added two new areas where he frequently strays from the facts: the size of his victory over Hillary Clinton and the role of Russia in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he won a “landslide” Electoral College victory—his margin actually ranks on the low end of the scale in modern presidential elections—and he claimed, without evidence, that he would have won the popular vote were it not for mass voter fraud. Regarding Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, Trump has repeatedly distorted U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusions to underestimate the agencies’ certainty about the intent of Russia’s interference, and he has falsely claimed the agencies say it in no way affected the election’s outcome.
POLITICO tabulated Trump’s untruths through a review of his public remarks, interviews and 346 tweets made since winning the election. Those statements were compared to publicly available information from objective sources, including data from some of the same federal agencies that will soon be part of Trump’s own administration. Statements made by Trump that are in public dispute were not included in the count unless they were directly contradicted by available evidence. Statements made multiple times were included in the count but not listed separately. Politico cut off its count at 5 p.m. Thursday.
Trump’s transition team did not reply to a request for comment.
Here are 82 of Trump’s transgressions against the truth since his election win.
1. “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million. … But we're getting them out of our country, they're here illegally.” (November 13 interview with 60 Minutes)
Trump is likely referring to a Department of Homeland Security report (https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/dhs-congressional-budget-justification-fy2013.pdf) that states there are 1.9 million non-citizen immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and could be deported. But “non-citizen immigrants” include both immigrants who are here illegally and immigrants who are here legally but do not have citizenship. For undocumented immigrants alone, the Migration Policy Institute estimates (http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/understanding-potential-impact-executive-action-immigration-enforcement) that there are about 820,000 with criminal records.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/trumps-transition-of-untruths-exaggerations-and-flat-out-falsehoods-214664?lo=ap_b1
Many of Trump’s forays into fiction are familiar to those who watched his campaign: He’s still inflating statistics on undocumented immigration, crime and unemployment to paint a distorted picture of domestic safety. He’s still missing the mark on issues such as the documented effects of trade policy or the scientific consensus surrounding climate change. He’s still oversimplifying and overstating the Obama administration’s role in the rise of the Islamic States. And he’s still exaggerating the size of his crowds.
Since winning, however, Trump has added two new areas where he frequently strays from the facts: the size of his victory over Hillary Clinton and the role of Russia in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he won a “landslide” Electoral College victory—his margin actually ranks on the low end of the scale in modern presidential elections—and he claimed, without evidence, that he would have won the popular vote were it not for mass voter fraud. Regarding Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, Trump has repeatedly distorted U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusions to underestimate the agencies’ certainty about the intent of Russia’s interference, and he has falsely claimed the agencies say it in no way affected the election’s outcome.
POLITICO tabulated Trump’s untruths through a review of his public remarks, interviews and 346 tweets made since winning the election. Those statements were compared to publicly available information from objective sources, including data from some of the same federal agencies that will soon be part of Trump’s own administration. Statements made by Trump that are in public dispute were not included in the count unless they were directly contradicted by available evidence. Statements made multiple times were included in the count but not listed separately. Politico cut off its count at 5 p.m. Thursday.
Trump’s transition team did not reply to a request for comment.
Here are 82 of Trump’s transgressions against the truth since his election win.
1. “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million. … But we're getting them out of our country, they're here illegally.” (November 13 interview with 60 Minutes)
Trump is likely referring to a Department of Homeland Security report (https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/dhs-congressional-budget-justification-fy2013.pdf) that states there are 1.9 million non-citizen immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and could be deported. But “non-citizen immigrants” include both immigrants who are here illegally and immigrants who are here legally but do not have citizenship. For undocumented immigrants alone, the Migration Policy Institute estimates (http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/understanding-potential-impact-executive-action-immigration-enforcement) that there are about 820,000 with criminal records.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/trumps-transition-of-untruths-exaggerations-and-flat-out-falsehoods-214664?lo=ap_b1