6 The Hampton Roads Messenger


Volume 10 Number 5


The ‘King of Whoppers': Donald Trump


He dominates the annual review of political falsehoods. BY BROOKS JACKSON, EUGENE KIELY, LORI ROBERTSON, ROBERT FARLEY AND D’ANGELO GORE


as “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey were “cheering”


the fall


of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Multiple news organizations and the New Jersey attorney general’s


office


searched for evidence of public celebrations at the time of 9/11 and found none.


happened,” It’s been a banner year for


political whoppers — and for one teller of tall tales in particular: Donald Trump.


In the 12 years of FactCheck.


org’s existence, they’ve never seen his match.


He stands out not only for the sheer number of his factually false claims, but also for his brazen refusals to admit error when proven wrong.


telling whoppers, of course. Once again this year there


politicians, in both parties, who hope voters


He is by no means the only one are plenty of


will swallow their deceptive


claims. Hillary Clinton, for one, said she was “transparent” about her use of a private email server, when in fact she wasn’t. That was one of the bogus claims she made about her unusual email arrangement while secretary of state.


But Trump topped them all when


he claimed to have seen nonexistent television coverage of “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the


collapse of the World


Trade Center towers on 9/11 — and then topped himself by demanding that fact-checkers apologize for exposing his claim as fantasy. And that’s only one example.


Here we’ve assembled, as we


do every year at this time, a generous sampling of the most far-fetched, distorted


or downright fallacious claims made during 2015.


In past years, we’ve not singled out a single claim or a single person, and have left it to readers to judge which whoppers they consider most egregious.


But this year the evidence


Trump’s Falsehoods We won’t get


is


overwhelming and, in our judgment, conclusive. So, for the first time, we confer the title “King of Whoppers.”


into Trump’s


controversial policy positions; it’s not a fact-checker’s role to offer opinions on whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea for the federal government to bar Muslims from entering the United States or to kill the families of terrorists, for example. What we focus on here are some of the many cases where he’s just wrong on the facts.


We start with his Nov. 21 claim to have watched on television


“Never former


state Attorney General John J. Farmer, a Republican appointee who later served as a senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission,wrote in response to Trump.


In a tweet, Trump demanded an


apology, citing as evidence one news story about an alleged incident that was unattributed, unverified and not televised. One of the reporters on that story said he visited the “Jersey City building and neighborhood where the celebrations were purported to have happened,” but he could “never verify that report.”


And Trump’s false claim about “thousands and thousands” of Muslims is just part of a pattern of inflammatory claims with little or no basis in fact. Here are some more — and it’s not an exhaustive list.


Trump boasted that he “predicted


Osama bin Laden.” Nope. The book Trump published in 2000 mentioned bin Laden once, and predicted nothing about bin Laden’s future plans.


Trump “heard” that Obama is


“thinking about signing an executive order where he wants to take your guns away.” If so, he misheard. What Obama reportedly considered was requiring large-volume private gun dealers to conduct background checks, not confiscating firearms from those who own them.


Obama


Trump said he “heard” the administration


plans to


accept 200,000 Syrian refugees — even upping that wildly inaccurate number to 250,000 in another speech. Nope and nope. The number is about 10,000.


Trump said he got to know Putin “very well” while the two were on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”Nope. The two men were interviewed separately, in different countries thousands of miles apart.


Trump claimed his campaign is “100 percent” self-funded. Nope. At the time, more than 50 percent of his campaign’s funds had come from outside contributors.


neutral. Nope. The pro-business Tax Foundation estimated


Trump said his tax plan is revenue the


Trump


plan would reduce revenues to the Treasury by more than $10 trillion over 10 years, even assuming his plan would create economic growth.


Trump told the story of a 2-year


old who got autism a week after the child got a vaccine. But there’s no evidence of such a link. The study that claimed to have found a link between vaccines and autism has been exposed as an “elaborate fraud.” It was retracted five years ago by the journal that published it, and the author was stripped of his license to practice medicine in Britain.


Trump said Mexico doesn’t have a birthright citizenship policy. It does.


Trump claimed credit for getting Ford Motor Co. to move a plant from Mexico to


Ohio. Ford says that’s


baloney; it made the decision years before Trump even announced his run for president.


Trump denied that he ever called


female adversaries some of these things: “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.” He used all of those terms.


Trump said in June “there are


no jobs” to be had, when official statistics were showing 5.4 million job openings — the most in 15 years.


Trump claimed economic growth


in the U.S. has “never” been below zero — until the third quarter of 2015. “Who ever heard of this?” he asked. Except it’s not unheard of. Economic growth has been below zero 42 times since 1946.


This is just a sampling of the falsehoods and exaggerations that lead us to award our “King of Whoppers” title to Trump.


Clinton’s Whoppers But enough


about the Republican front-runner . Democratic front-runner


Hillary


Clinton has told some whoppers, too.


Account:


Her Private Email Several


of


them regard the former secretary


problematic use of a private


email


of state’s server


for both her personal and official communication.


Clinton said in July that she “had done what other secretaries of state have done.” That’s not so. The State Department in October 2014 sent letters to three other previous secretaries: Madeleine


Albright,


Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Only Powell used personal email for official business. None of them had their own servers.


email account was “allowed by the State Department.”


Clinton later said her personal Federal rules


permitted the practice if work emails were preserved before she left office. But Clinton did not turn over her emails until 21 months after she left office.


Clinton said “turning over my server” to the government shows “I have been as transparent as I could” about her emails. But she did so in August — after the FBI opened an investigation into possible mishandling of classified information. Months earlier — in March — she had rejected calls to turn over the server to a neutral party, saying “the server will remain private.”


Clinton said “everybody in


government with whom I emailed knew that I was using a personal email.” Perhaps so. But even President


management deficiencies at senior levels.” On the day the report came out, four State Department employees were placed on administrative leave, and all four were later reassigned.


Charter Schools: could Clinton not provide said


“most charter schools … don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids. Or if they do, they don’t keep them.” But her campaign


any


evidence for such a sweeping claim. In fact, the campaign cited a Washington Post article about the rate of expulsions in Washington, D.C., but the


Post


wrote: “Many charter schools — 60 out of 97 campuses — did not expel students in 2011-12.” That not only doesn’t support Clinton’s claim, it is evidence that helps to refute it.


Other Democratic Whoppers Clinton’s Democratic rivals for


the 2016 presidential nomination


weren’t innocent, either. Sanders on Social Security: Sen.


Bernie Sanders of Vermont in


Security hasn’t


off a shopworn Democratic whopper when he insisted Social


October


dusted that


contributed


“one penny” — or “one nickel” — to the deficit. In fact, it contributed $73 billion to the deficit in 2014.


Sanders on Inequality: Sanders said in May that “in America we now have more income and wealth


WHOPPERS PAGE 14


January 2016


Obama said he did not know that she conducted all her government business using her personal email account and private server.


Phantom ISIS Videos:


also made up a claim about terrorists using Trump in recruiting


Clinton videos.


During the Dec. 19 Democratic debate, she said that Islamic State recruiters were “going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims,” but


her campaign could


produce no evidence that any such videos exist.


The best that her campaign aides could do was to cite an NBC News article quoting an expert as predicting that Trump’s remarks would “surely” show up in


social media. The article, however, contained


no evidence


Islamic that


it


State has


happened and made no mention of any video. Spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri later conceded that Clinton was “not referring to a specific video.” ABC News quoted


White House


and National Security Council aides as saying they are unaware of any examples of the Islamic State group using Trump in videos.


scrutinized by Republicans, Clinton said in October that all government terrorist facilities


attacks on U.S. diplomatic in


investigations Benghazi


that “nobody did concluded anything wrong.”


Not quite. An accountability board that Clinton herself appointed found “systemic failures and leadership and


into


Benghazi: On a subject intensely of the


the


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