Trump’s backers blind to facts
The world’s pre-eminent political mischief-maker, Donald J. Trump, has labeled his closest competitor “Lyin’ Ted.”
By doing that, Trump is willfully engaging in what they call “projection.”
He knows that fact-checkers have called into question many of his proclamations, so why not just project his alleged lack of veracity onto somebody else.
PolitiFact.com keeps a complete repository of the ever-growing list of statements made by public officials. It rates them based on their proximity to the truth.
It’s not that Ted Cruz can be compared to the “Honest Abe” Lincoln, but he fares much better than the man who’s nicknamed him “Lyin’ Ted.”
Of the 117 statements made by Trump that PolitiFact has evaluated, 77 percent have been rated “mostly false,” “false,’ or “pants on fire.”
By contrast, PolitiFact has taken a look at 101 of Cruz’s pronouncement, and only 66 percent have been rated “mostly false,” “false,’ or “pants on fire.”
PolitiFact stands by its claim that it’s an independent, non-partisan service that’s a division of the Tampa Bay Times.
It skewers Democrats as energetically as it does Republicans.
So Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are put under the same PolitiFact microscope.
A total of 117 of Clinton’s statements have been checked. Only 27 percent of those statements were ruled “mostly false,” “false,’ or “pants on fire.”
That’s much less than Trump’s 77 percent. It’s slightly lower that Bernie Sanders’ 29 percent.
Sanders beats Clinton in one regard. Two of Clinton’s statements were ruled “pants on fire.” None of Sanders 78 statements were given that distinction.
What separates Trump’s lack of truthfulness, is that when he’s questioned about specifics, he simply changes the subject.
So far, his fervent supporters don’t seem to mind when he’s uttered a blatant falsehood about the Iran nuclear deal and that, “We give them $150 billion, (and that) we get nothing.”
PolitiFact rated that “false,” because that $150 billion is a high estimate, and that the United States isn’t giving Iran a cent. It’s Iranian money that had been frozen because of sanctions.
We get nothing?
That’s false too.
The United States lifted those sanctions in exchange for blocking Iran from getting nuclear weapons in the future.
“I don’t know anything about David Duke,” Trump recently said about the one-time white supremacist.
Not true, according to PolitiFact. They rated Trump’s statement “pants on fire,” because he’d previously mentioned David Duke in 2000 and in 1991.
When Trump was recently questioned about his now defunct “Trump University,” he falsely claimed, “We have an ‘A’ from the Better Business Bureau.”
That one earned Trump another “false” rating from PolitiFact.
They checked and discovered Trump University (or the renamed Trump Entrepreneur Institute) had been given a D rating in 2010. And that it’s had no new BBB ratings since 2014.
What does all of this mean?
Well, Trump tells whoppers, and a lot of his supporters don’t care if he does.
When he claimed last July that the number of illegal immigrants in the United States is “30 million; it could be 34 million,” it fit his narrative that illegal immigrants are about to take over the country.
That’s a tragically flawed narrative.
The Department of Homeland Security said the number of illegal immigrants in this country was closer to 11.4 million in January of 2014.
And that rated Trump another “pants on fire.”
Pick a Trump statement. Any Trump statement.
Trump can stretch truth until it’s unrecognizable.
To him, the unemployment number isn’t 4.9 million, it’s “as high as 35. I even heard recently it’s 42 percent.”
“Pants on fire.”
When he says, “Right now we’re the highest taxed country in the world,” ignore him.
Especially since PolitiFact rated that statement “false.”
I don’t really blame the millions of people who’ve been lured into Trump’s web of lies.
He’s actually very good at making fiction sound like carefully manufactured non-fiction.
That’s why many of his most-devoted supporters still believe the president isn’t an American, despite clear-proof that he is.
Trump said he isn’t.
To them, regardless of the proof otherwise, that’s all that matters.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net
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