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FM
Former Member

New record: Donald Trump said 25 false things on Saturday

By the Star’s count, Donald Trump said more false things Saturday than on any other day in the campaign, excluding the debates.

Donald Trump said 25 false things Saturday, the most the Star has recorded on any nondebate day in the campaign so far.Donald Trump said 25 false things Saturday, the most the Star has recorded on any nondebate day in the campaign so far.  (Sarah Rice / GETTY IMAGES)  

WASHINGTON—Republican presidential candidate had a busy day on Saturday, Oct. 15. He did a rally in New Hampshire, a rally in Maine, and a brief speech at a Republican Hindu Coalition event in New Jersey.

He said 25 false things — a new record in our count. (For nondebate days, that is.) Here’s the list:

1. Falsely said, “The number of murders in our country is the highest it’s been in 45 years. They don’t tell you that.” (The increase in murders between 2014 and 2015, 11 per cent, was the highest in 45 years. But the number of murders was even lower than it was 45 years ago even with more than 100 million more people.)

2. Falsely said, “Remember when, in Massachusetts, I got almost 50 per cent of the vote with 11 people. I got 49.7 per cent of the vote.” (Trump got 49.3 per cent of the vote. Though the names of more than 11 people were on the ballot, he is wrong to suggest he got 50 per cent actually running against 10 others — there were only five still running at the time of the Massachusetts primary.)

3. Falsely said of hacked Clinton-campaign emails: “They show how the Clinton campaign gets the questions for the debates and the answers for the debates prior to the debate. And we still beat her easily in that debate.” (The question Clinton appears to have been provided was for a town hall during the Democratic primary, not a debate against him.)

4. Falsely said the U.S. trade deficit is “massive and getting bigger.” (“Massive” is subjective, but it is objectively false that the deficit is increasing. As of early October, it was down $4.3 billion (U.S.), or 1.3 per cent, from the same period in 2015.)

5. Falsely said of Syrian refugees, “We have no idea who they are, where they come from.” (Refugees to the U.S. are subjected to an extensive screening process.)

6. Falsely said of New Hampshire, “It shows we’re up 1 or 2 points here.” (It is not clear what “it” is, but Clinton leads in every major New Hampshire poll, and by 4 points on average.)

7. Falsely said, “By ‘open borders,’ she means totally unlimited immigration flowing into our country.” (Clinton supports limits on immigration.)

8. Falsely said, “Hillary’s plan includes an open border with the Middle East, meaning generations of radicalism within our shores.” (Clinton is not advocating unrestricted immigration or refugee intake from the Middle East.)

=To Be Continued=

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=Continued=

9. Falsely said, of his endorsements, “Both the Border Patrol agents and ICE have just done it. ICE did it last week.” (A union of Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, not the government entity itself, endorsed him. It did so three weeks ago, not last week.)

10. Falsely said of one of his sexual assault accusers, Summer Zervos: “Today, the cousin of one of these people, very close to her, wrote a letter that what she said was a lie.” (The cousin’s letter did not go so far as to say the accusation was a lie. It said Zervos had previously spoken highly of Trump, and concluded, “I can only imagine that Summer’s actions today are nothing more than an attempt to regain the spotlight at Mr. Trump’s expense.” There is no evidence the cousin is close with Zervos.)

11. Falsely said, of the assault allegations, “Many of them already proven so false.” (Trump’s campaign and other defenders have offered contrary accounts, but none of the assault claims have been definitively proven false.)

12. Falsely said on Twitter, “The failing NYTimes reporters don’t even call us anymore, they just write whatever they want to write, making up sources along the way!” (The New York Times contacts Trump’s campaign for comment on all of its stories about his behaviour.)

13. Falsely said, “Crooked Hillary is lifting your taxes way up,” and “Hillary will raise taxes, and raise your taxes by a lot.” (This claim would only be true if addressed to an audience of very rich people. The Tax Policy Center says most residents below the top 1 per cent will receive minor tax cuts under Clinton’s plan, while the top 1 per cent will be hit with an average increase of $118,000.)

14. Falsely said, of his tax plan, “We will lower taxes massively on all Americans … our biggest reductions will be for the working and middle class.” (Independent experts say the overwhelming majority of his cuts will go to the rich. Half go to the top 1 per cent, according to the Tax Policy Center, and some middle-class families will pay even more than they do now. Most families below the top 20 per cent of earners are expected to reap income gains of less than 1 per cent.)

15. Falsely said of Clinton, “She made 13 iPhones disappear, some with a hammer.”(Clinton used BlackBerrys, not iPhones.)

16. Falsely said, “The WikiLeaks documents show that the Clinton campaign was colluding directly with the Department of State and Justice on the investigation of her emails and her illegal server.” (The hacked emails released by WikiLeaks do not show any evidence of collusion over the investigation. A Clinton spokesman who formerly worked for the Justice Department said only that it had informed him of an impending legal hearing on a freedom of information lawsuit over her emails — a hearing that was public information.)

17. Falsely said, of Iraq, Clinton and Obama, “The way they got out was disgraceful — and ISIS formed.” (Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, formed long before the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011; it started using the name Islamic State of Iraq in 2006, under George W. Bush. While it added Syria to its name in 2013, that was not the formation of a new group.)

=To Be Continued=

FM

=Continued=

18. “To be deported from this country, you gotta be bad. Because we don’t deport.” (While Obama has primarily focused on deporting people with convictions, it is false to say the U.S. doesn’t deport under his administration. He has deported more people than any previous president, more than 2.5 million in all.)

19. Falsely suggested, by making a gesture of handing out dollar bills, that corruption was the reason more than 800 people slated for deportation were granted citizenship. (Homeland Security’s inspector general, who found the mistakes, attributed it to bureaucratic errors.)

20. Falsely said, “Our veterans, in many cases, are not treated as well — remember this, they’re not treated as well as illegal immigrants.” (The campaign’s justifications for this statement are outlandish. The Associated Press, Politifact and Washington Post have all found it false; the Post has called it “ridiculous.”)

21. Falsely said interest rates have been kept low because Obama wants them that way: “It’s horrible that he’s been able to get away with this.” (There is no evidence at all that Obama’s preferences have had any impact on the Federal Reserve’s rate decisions.)

22. Falsely said, “Over the last few years this administration has been steadily dismantling the federal criminal justice system. Tens of thousands of drug dealers have been released from prison early, including many illegal immigrants.” (Obama has issued 775 commutations in all. Not even all of those have gone to drug dealers.)

23. Falsely said, “We’re actually the highest-taxed major country anywhere in the world, by far.” (The U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate of any major country, but with regard to all taxes, it is among the lowest-taxed.)

24. Falsely said, “Our economy is practically not growing at all in the United States. Just about zero.”(The economy is growing steadily, though not rapidly. Second-quarter 2016 growth was 1.4 per cent. There has been growth every year since 2009.)

25. Falsely said, “If you remember, Hillary Clinton, when we brought killers, drug dealers, gang members back to countries and intelligently the countries said ‘we’re not taking them, we don’t want them, we’re not taking them,’ she said ‘Oh, bring them back.’” (This is a gross mischaracterization of the situation and Clinton’s role. Twenty-three countries refuse or often refuse to take back illegal immigrants convicted of crimes in America. Under a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision, American authorities cannot hold these people indefinitely for deportation, so they are released in America. They are not flown to their home countries and rejected, and Clinton does not personally decide to take them back. Both the Obama and Bush administrations have refused to retaliate against the refusing countries, like withholding visas.

=END=

FM

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