President Pants on Fire ... two thirds of Trump claims are lies
TWO in three major statements made by Donald Trump since he first stood for president have been found to be mostly bogus, false, or “pants-on-fire” fibs, according to an independent study which fact-checked his claims. The rolling analysis covers 370 of the most newsworthy and significant pronouncements over a year-and-a-half of speeches and statements the US president made on the campaign trail and after he entered the White House.
Pulitzer Prize-winning scrutineers PolitiFact found that 69 per cent of major fact-checked claims by Trump were classed as either mostly false, false or “pants on fire” against 26 per cent in a similar analysis of former president Barack Obama’s statements.
Just 16 per cent of Trump’s statements were either true or mostly true, against 48 per cent of Obama.
Nearly one in six comments were described as “pants on fire”, meaning they were not accurate and made a “ridiculous claim”, compared to just one in 50 made by Obama. Around one in three were classed as “false” or not accurate, and around one in five statements was “mostly false”, meaning that it contained an element of truth but ignored critical facts that would give a different impression.
According to PolitiFact, one of Trump’s biggest falsehoods since becoming leader of the free world was stating during a recent visit to US Central Command headquarters in Tampa that the media were to blame for letting Islamic terrorists get away with attacks by not wanting to report on it.
“Radical Islamic terrorists are determined to strike our homeland as they did on 9/11, as they did from Boston to Orlando, to San Bernardino and all across Europe,” Trump said. “You’ve seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe, it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported, and in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it.”
But PolitiFact said it found “no support” for the idea, saying the media may sometimes be cautious about assigning religious motivation to a terrorist attack when the facts are unclear or still being investigated, “but that’s not the same as covering them up through lack of coverage”. The fact-checking site was originally set up by the Tampa Bay Times, and investigates and rates the accuracy of the most prominent claims of elected officials, political candidates “and others who speak up in American politics” through speeches, news stories, press releases, campaign brochures, TV ads, Facebook postings and transcripts of TV and radio interviews.
One campaign trail comment that went straight in the “pants on fire” bin was Trump’s claim that outgoing president Barack Obama founded Isis and his presidential opponent Hillary Clinton was the “crooked” co-founder, while promising to “knock the hell “out of the terrorist group.
When Republican radio host Hugh Hewitt suggested there was a more cautious interpretation of his claim – that Obama and Clinton “created the vacuum” in the region and thus “lost the peace” to Isis, Trump rejected the analysis, preferring his literal version.
“No, I meant he’s the founder of Isis,” Trump told Hewitt. “I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton. The way he got out of Iraq, that was the founding of Isis, okay?”
But PolitiFact placed his statement in August 2016 in the “pants on fire” category, saying the terrorist group’s roots pre-date Obama’s presidency.
“There’s a credible critique that Obama’s and Clinton’s foreign policy and military decisions helped create a space in which Isis could operate and expand,” said PolitiFact. “But Trump explicitly rejected this formulation, saying he literally means Obama is ‘the founder of Isis’ and Clinton is the ‘co-founder’. In reality, the founder of Isis was a terrorist. All this makes Trump’s statement a ridiculous characterisation,” said PolitiFact. “He’s doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on it in various venues and has reinforced that he meant his words to be taken literally.”
One of the most bizarre claims came in January 2016, when his campaign’s TV advert shows dozens of people swarming over a border fence while a narrator says: “He’ll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.”
But what was shown was actually 5,000 miles away, in a small Spanish enclave on the mainland of Morocco.
PolitiFact said it was able to trace the footage back to the Italian television network RepubblicaTV which posted footage of migrants crossing the border into Melilla.
Asked about the video, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told a journalist: “No s***, it’s not the Mexican border, but that’s what our country is going to look like. This was 1,000 per cent on purpose.”
Of 15 completely accurate major statements made by Trump, only one has been made during his presidency, according to PolitiFact. Trump’s most recent truth was saying that America’s Got Talent star Jackie Evancho’s decision to sing at his inauguration was great for her career. He also got PolitiFact’s seal of approval for claiming that “the single-biggest problem is heroin that pours across our southern borders” during the third and final debate in October. The group said the vast majority of heroin in the United States comes from Mexico and South America.
There was a “mostly true” affirmation for stating last week that the US stock market has hit “record numbers” and that there “has been a tremendous surge of optimism in business”.
PolitiFact said the three major stock indexes, Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq, all closed at record highs for five consecutive days and while investors are optimistic about Trump’s plans to cut taxes and eliminate regulations, others say other factors are at play.
Trump’s office was approached for comment, but did not respond.