The Spread Of Misinformation And Falsehoods
- Election Fraud Claims: A new report says that major social media companies continue to fuel false conspiracies about election fraud despite promises to combat misinformation ahead of the midterm elections.
- Russian Falsehoods: Kremlin conspiracy theories blaming the West for disrupting the global food supply have bled into right-wing chat rooms and mainstream conservative news media in the United States.
- Media Literacy Efforts: As young people spend more time online, educators are increasingly trying to offer students tools and strategies to protect themselves from false narratives.
- Global Threat: New research shows that nearly three-quarters of respondents across 19 countries with advanced economies are very concerned about false information online.
Scientists have concluded that 130,000 lives could be saved in the United States in the coming months if there was universal mask wearing. But Mr. Trump mocks facial coverings and disparages medical experts, undercutting their credibility with the public, most notably Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal governments chief epidemiologist who now has to have a security detail after vilification by the president and his allies. With views of the virus increasingly falling along party lines, many Americans express distrust over a possible new vaccine, which could lead to widespread resistance to inoculation.
Low Public Trust Could Hurt Vaccine Distribution In Minority Communities
After two centuries, it is impressive that Americans still are inclined to believe what a president tells them, especially at a moment of crisis, Beschloss said. When a president breaks that bond of trust with the American people, it makes it harder for future presidents to have the kind of moral authority that enables them to protect us.
NBC News has fact-checked Trump for more than four years. Based on thousands of hours of reporting and hundreds of reported fact checks, four issues stand above the rest as the falsehoods that define the Trump presidency.
More: Trump Has Longstanding History Of Calling Elections ‘rigged’ If He Doesn’t Like The Results
Despite being unable to substantiate his bold claim, Trump made it a topic for debate, and his allies in Congress helped breathe life into the claim. The election lie culminated on Jan. 6, 2021 when thousands of Trump’s supporters after his urging at a “Save America Rally” at the Ellipse, a park near the White House, demanding Vice President Mike Pence stop Congress from affirming Biden’s victory.
“Make no mistake, this election was stolen from me, from you, and from the country,” Trump told a crowd of thousands of angry supporters.
The subsequent siege on the Capitol left at least five people dead and burned images into history of a desecrated U.S. Capitol. But experts argue the entire event might have been stopped sooner had Trump admitted the truth to his supporters — that there was no legal way the election could be overturned in his favor.
Don’t Miss: What Is Trump Planning To Do
Other Investments And Debt
In 1984, Trump posed as his own spokesman John Barron and made false assertions of his wealth to secure a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans, including by claiming he owned over 90 percent of his family’s business. Audio recordings of these claims were released in 2018 by journalist Jonathan Greenberg.
When the stock market crashed in October 1987, Trump told the press he had sold all his stock a month before and taken no losses. But SEC filings showed that he still owned large stakes in some companies. Forbes calculated that Trump had lost $19 million on his Resorts International holdings alone.
Challenging estimates of his net worth he considered too low, in 1989 Trump said he had very little debt. Reuters reported Trump owed $4 billion to more than 70 banks at the beginning of 1990.
In 1997, Ben Berzin Jr., who had been tasked with recovering at least some of the $100 million his bank had lent Trump, said “During the time that I dealt with Mr. Trump, I was continually surprised by his mastery of situational ethics. He does not seem to be able to differentiate between fact and fiction.”
A 1998 New York Observer article entitled “Tricky Donald Trump Beats Jerry Nadler in Game of Politics” reported that “Nadler flatly calls Mr. Trump a ‘liar’,” quoting Nadler stating, “Trump got $6 million in the dead of night when no one knew anything about it” by slipping a provision into a $200 billion federal transportation bill.
On Winning The Elections
We ended up winning by a massive amount, 306. I needed 270. We got 306.
Repeated:1 Time
Fact: Okay, Donald Trump did not lie about winning the elections. But perhaps he was just bragging about how big the gap is almost likening it to a landslide win. Well, it’s not if you are familiar with how electoral colleges work, you would know that his margin was narrow. Clinton actually had more votes 2.8 million more. So maybe this really isn’t a lie, but misinformation brought about by ignorance.
Read Also: Why Did Trump Pull Out Of Paris Agreement
Master Of Lies Donald Trump Deserves To Be Locked Up
Donald J. Trump is a master of three kinds of lies: Lies. Damned lies. And plausible-sounding prevarications.
While running for office in 2016 and 2020 he spread them around like manure on the political landscape, leaving it rank, encouraging other politicians to do the same, including a number of feckless state officials in Alabama.
He lied his way through two national campaigns, compiling a record of untruths never before seen or heard in American presidential campaigning. Thousands littered the political fields six years and two years ago, respectively, none more egregious than The Big Lie of 2020-2022. The Big Lie he’s never proven before scores of judges that the election of 2020 was stolen from him.
He lied his way through a four-year term in office. By the time he left office on January 20, 2021 two weeks after calling in a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol and the electoral voting process occurring therein the number of documented lies and false statements totaled some 35,000.
Consider: In just the first ten days after the FBI executed a perfectly lawful search warrant pursuant to a showing of probable cause before a judge that he has violated multiple federal laws , the former defeated president and/or his spokespersons have said all of the following:
If Trump gets away with all of that without penalty, it will mean the U.S. document classification system can’t be enforced and all of the purloined Trump documents would be subject to open records laws.
The Top Ten Lies The Media And Top Level Democrats Told You About Donald J Trump
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Democrat leaders and the main stream media would like all voting Americans to forget all about these 10 whoppers you were told about Donald J. Trump. The article even overlooks a major revelation that was just revealed during the past few weeks the Russian Collusion smear that they leveled against Trump before and after he defeated Hillary Clinton. The Democrats even impeached him the first time over that lie. Here, the 2nd Impeachment is exposed as well that Trump endorsed the Jan. 6 2021 insurrection lie.
Now think about this please. In 2016, 62,984,828 American voters voted for Trump. Then in 2020, 74,268,924 voters voted for Trump. That tells me that 74,268,924 were so smart they didn’t believe the lies. However, somehow 81,268,924 voters voted for Joe Biden based to a large extent on the hundreds of lies he and the fawning media told them during his campaign.
Now that Joe Biden and his cronies have been exposed for EXACTLY who they are, it isn’t a question of if we will regain the House and the Senate in 2022, it is a question of how many seats Republicans will gain.
Most people that follow politics are already projecting major messages being delivered to professional liars in 2022, followed by a massive blow in 2024. “Fool us once, shame on you, fool us twice shame on us”.
We are awash in so many media lies that I thought it might be useful to list a few for easy reference, in no particular order.
You May Like: Did They Impeach Donald Trump
More: Trump Heads Into Flu Season Amid Pandemic Mocking Masks Holding Packed Campaign Rallies
“I think Trump understands the facts about how bad COVID is and probably knows masks work, but he is always appealing to his base,” said Erikson. “What Trump always does — and what ordinary politicians do to not do — is always appealing to his base rather than expanding his base, and the virus didn’t fall in line with them.”
A year into the crisis, more than 400,000 Americans have died from COVID-19.
TRUMP: ‘We had the biggest audience in the history of inaugural speeches.’
TRUTH: Photos from previous inaugurations tell a different story.
The Trump administration kicked off with the lie mocked around the world when Trump used his first full day in office in 2017 to excoriate a media report that estimated the crowd size of his inauguration at 250,000 attendees as a “lie” and instead, to insist he saw at least one million people.
“We had a massive field of people, you saw that. Packed,” Trump said in a speech at the Central Intelligence Agency. “I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks and they show … an empty field. I said, wait a minute, I made a speech! I looked out, the field was … it looked like a million, a million-and-a-half people.”
Later that day, he dispatched White House press secretary Sean Spicer, in Spicer’s first briefing room appearance, to claim “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.”
TRUMP: Alabama ‘will most likely be hit’ from Hurricane Dorian.
Trumps Conflicts Of Interest
Trump has massive and unprecedented conflicts of interest.
Prior to becoming president, Trump owned and ran a worldwide business empire. This included hotels, golf clubs and other business enterprises. Trump also licensed his name to domestic and foreign owned businesses around the world for lucrative fees. After he was elected, he promised to remove himself from all of his business operations. Instead, he simply transferred day-to-day control of the businesses to his sons by forming a revocable trust and retained his financial interests and the ability to profit from them, as well as the ability to reassume control. 30
Under the terms of the trust instrument, according to published reports, the trustees are required to distribute income or principal to Trump at his request or as the Trustees otherwise deem appropriate. 31 This leaves Trump and his family as the financial beneficiaries of the business operations and leaves his business empire inextricably entangled with his presidency. The steps Trump took, claiming to deal with his conflicts, did not actually address his massive conflicts of interest problems at all.
Don’t Miss: How Do I Email Donald Trump Personally
Which Properties Were Allegedly Misrepresented
The lawsuit lists some of the most well-known Trump properties:
Prosecutors allege that the value of an apartment Trump had in Trump Tower in New York was listed at $327m after its “wildly overstated” size was tripled and given an “unreasonable” price per square foot. The record sale in the entire tower was $16.5m.
The Mar-a-Lago club in Florida was valued as high as $739m by the Trump Organization. The attorney general’s office alleges the real value was closer to $75m and that it generated less than $25m per year.
Ms James’s announcement that she would pass the findings of her investigation to other law enforcement agencies was “an ominous signal” for Mr Trump, according to Miriam Baer, vice-dean at Brooklyn Law School.
“The New York attorney general went one step further today,” she told the BBC. “It announced that in addition to filing this civil complaint, it was also making a referral to federal law enforcement authorities for a criminal investigation.”
The lawsuit is one of a number of legal issues the former president is facing.
On 8 August, the FBI conducted a search warrant at his home in Mar-a-Lago as part of an investigation into his handling of classified records.
Federal investigators were then ordered by another judge to freeze their probe while a court-appointed official decides if any of the records should be private.
But on Wednesday a federal appeals court ruled that the justice department can resume reviewing the classified documents.
Trump Personally Interviewed Us Attorney Candidates
Breaking with well-established tradition of independence, President Trump is inviting a conflict of interest by personally interviewing potential U.S. Attorney nominees.
Flouting the American principle that no person is above the law, President Trump personally interviewed multiple candidates for U.S. Attorney positions who, if confirmed, would have jurisdiction over him and his businesses. 172 These positionsthe top federal prosecutors in each jurisdictionreport to the attorney general and are among the most powerful law enforcement officers in the country.
Ordinarily, presidents are much less involved in the hiring of U.S. Attorneys. It has been longstanding practice that candidates for these positions are vetted by the Department of Justice in consultation with home-state senators, even if those selected are ultimately nominated by the White House. 173 Particularly in the wake of President Trumps demands for loyalty pledges from law enforcement appointees including fired FBI Director James Comey, his close involvement in the selection process risks the appearance of corruption and favoritism. Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, explained that it is neither normal nor advisable for Trump to personally interview candidates for U.S. Attorney positions, especially the one in Manhattan. 174
Also Check: Does Trump Donate His Salary
Stories Chosen For You
A pair of congressional Democrats on Tuesday officially introduced their promised proposal to immediately halt all U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia for a year.
The legislation, spearheaded by Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Ro Khanna , follows the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, or OPEC+, agreeing to slash oil production to boost prices.
U.S. President Joe Biden and other critics of the move have framed it as Saudi Arabia siding with Russia several months into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deadly and dangerous invasion of Ukrainea position echoed Tuesday by the bill’s sponsors.
“Saudi Arabia’s disastrous decision to slash oil production by two million barrels a day makes it clear that Riyadh is seeking to harm the U.S. and reaffirms the need to reassess the U.S.-Saudi relationship,” Khanna.
The legislative proposal comes over seven years into the Saudi-led war on Yemen, which had created what is widely considered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Earlier this month, negotiators failed to extend a truce that began in April.
“There is no reason for the U.S. to kowtow to a regime that has massacred countless civilians in Yemen, hacked to death a Washington-based journalist, and is now extorting Americans at the pump,” Khanna said, referencing the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which the U.S. intelligence community concluded was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS.
More: Trump Not Backing Down On Claim That Alabama Could Have Been Hit By Hurricane Dorian
But many experts, including a former director of the National Hurricane Center, took the side of Birmingham forecasters on social media and called the parent statement was “so disappointing,” — illustrating how Trump’s falsehoods eroded the credibility of the institutions around him, too.
“Either NOAA Leadership truly agrees with what they posted or they were ordered to do it,” Bill Read wrote on Facebook. “If it is the former, the statement shows a lack of understanding of how to use probabilistic forecasts in conjunction with other forecast information. Embarrassing. If it is the latter, the statement shows a lack of courage on their part by not supporting the people in the field who are actually doing the work. Heartbreaking.”
As with most of Trump’s false or misleading statements, enabled by the power of the presidency and his allies, “Sharpiegate,” too, appeared to blow over.
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson, Jordyn Phelps and Meg Cunningham contributed to this report.
Also Check: What Has Trump Done For Farmers
The False Claim That Trump Had Won On Election Night
Trump falsely claimed in a speech on Election Night that he had won the election because he had leads in the vote counts in several key states. Trump used similar language in his rally speech on January 6, 2021 claiming that our election was over at 10 oclock in the evening, when the vote counts showed him leading in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, but then late in the evening or early in the morning, boom, these explosions of bullshit.
But it was clear to other key figures in Trumps orbit as it was to millions of others that his leads in the early Election Night count, as millions of votes remained uncounted, did not mean he had won. Bill Stepien, who was Trumps campaign manager, testified that Election Night was too early to call the race: It was far too early to be making any calls like that. Ballots ballots were still being counted. Ballots were still going to be counted for days.
Stepien said he had explained to Trump that early returns would be positive, but they would then have a long night waiting for the counting of additional ballots. The fact that states vote counts got worse for Trump as the hours went by, Barr said, was not indicative of fraud: Barr noted that people had been talking for weeks, and everyone understood for weeks, that that was going to be what happened on Election Night.
Trump Sued: Family Inflated Net Worth By Billions Says Lawsuit
in Washington and New York
New York attorney general Letitia James wants the Trumps to repay $250m that she says was illegally obtained
Donald Trump and three of his children have been hit with a fraud lawsuit after a New York investigation into their family company – the Trump Organization.
It alleges that they lied “by billions” about the value of real estate in order to get loans and pay less tax.
Prosecutors say the Trump Organization committed numerous acts of fraud between 2011-21.
Mr Trump has dismissed the lawsuit as “another witch hunt”.
The former president’s eldest children, Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric Trump, were also named as defendants alongside two executives at the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney.
The lawsuit has been brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is the state’s most senior lawyer, after a three-year civil investigation.
Her office does not have the power to file criminal charges, but is referring allegations of criminal wrongdoing to federal prosecutors and to the Internal Revenue Service.
“With the help of his children and senior executives at the Trump Organization, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system,” Ms James said in a statement.
She said Mr Trump’s own apartment in Trump Tower, which was valued at $327m , was among the properties whose values were allegedly misrepresented.
Recommended Reading: What Are Trump’s Policies
