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Ten photographs that made the world wake up to climate change
By Nell Lewis, CNN
Updated 4:43 AM EDT, Thu March 30, 2023
Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
Waterfalls pour off a Nordaustlandet ice cap in Svalbard, Norway, during an unusually warm summer in 2014
CNN
Water cascading from a wall of ice with gray brushstrokes of clouds overhead makes for a beautiful image – but the story behind it is one of destruction; Earth’s glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate due to human-caused climate change.
Canadian photographer Paul Nicklen remembers taking the photograph. It was August 2014, and temperatures in Svalbard, Norway, were unusually warm – hovering above 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius). As he came around the corner of an ice cap on Nordaustlandet island, he saw more than a dozen waterfalls pouring off its face.
“It was the most poetic, beautiful scene I’d ever seen, but it was also haunting and scary,” he recalls. The picture came to symbolize the realities of climate change and became Nicklen’s best-selling fine art image. It appeared multiple times in National Geographic, was used by Al Gore in his climate talks, and graced the cover of Pearl Jam’s 2020 album “Gigaton,” the title of which refers to the unit used to calculate ice mass.
Its beauty is central to its impact, believes Nicklen. “When you take a photograph that is in focus, properly exposed, moody and powerful, it creates a visceral reaction,” he says. “It has to be beautiful and engaging, it has to invite you in … and it has to have a conservation message.”
In 2014, Nicklen, along with his wife Cristina Mittermeier, and later joined by Andy Mann (both also award-winning photographers), co-founded the nonprofit organization SeaLegacy, which uses film and photography to raise awareness of climate issues and help protect the planet.
“Photography is one of the most effective and powerful tools we have to tell complex stories, like the story of climate change,” says Mittermeier.
n emaciated polar bear staggers on the search for food. The photograph, taken in 2017, received widespread attention, sparking a conversation around climate change.
She witnessed this power with one of her own photographs, taken in August 2017, which showed a starving polar bear. After being published in National Geographic, the photo and accompanying video went viral, shared on social media and by news organizations worldwide. It sparked a global conversation on climate change, provoking responses ranging from concern and empathy to climate denial. But there was no denying that it shook the world: “People still remember it and have strong reactions when they see it,” Mittermeier reflects.
As guest editors for CNN’s Call to Earth series, Nicklen and Mittermeier selected these two images, along with eight others, that they believe have alerted the world to the climate crisis.
War photographers
A kangaroo jumps past a burning house in Lake Conjola, Australia in December 2019. That season's bushfires were among the worst the country had ever seen, with nearly three billion animals killed or displaced.
Matthew Abbott/The New York Times
Nicklen compares photographing climate change to photographing conflict. “We’re out there on the front lines of the war being waged against our planet. It’s emotionally draining, exhausting,” he says.
In recent decades, as climate disasters have become more frequent and intense, images have more explicitly captured the urgency of the situation. Six dead giraffes, bodies emaciated from the lack of food and water, photographed by Ed Ram, show the horror of Kenya’s prolonged ongoing drought, which has threatened and displaced animals and humans alike. Photographs of wildfires, like those that ravaged Australia in 2019 and 2020, show the scale of devastation, with homes on fire and wildlife fleeing in despair.
The bodies of six giraffes lie on the outskirts of Eyrib village in Sabuli wildlife conservancy, Kenya, in 2021. A prolonged drought in the northeast of the country and the wider Horn of Africa has created food and water shortages for both animals and local communities.
Ed Ram/Getty Images
“They show that climate change isn’t just happening somewhere else, it’s happening everywhere,” says Mittermeier. “All of a sudden, it will come knocking a lot closer to your own door.”
Mittermeier remembers the work of her friend and one of her great influences, Gary Braasch, who she describes as a “chronicler of climate change.” The photographer, who died in 2016, dedicated the last two decades of his life to documenting how the Earth was changing in response to global warming – from Antarctica, with its melting glaciers, to Bhola Island in Bangladesh, where sea level rise and increasing erosion have turned villages into islands. Braasch’s commitment to the cause blazed the way for Nicklen and Mittermeier’s generation of conservation photographers.
Villagers stand on a remnant of a road in Bhola Island, Bangladesh, in 2005. The area, at the mouth of the Ganges delta, is still suffering from accelerated erosion due to sea level rise.
The slow retreat
These photos, taken in 2007 and 2022, show the retreating Sólheimajökull glacier in Iceland. In the last two decades, the speed of glacier melt is estimated to have doubled due to global warming.
At times however, climate change can be tediously slow to chronicle. Sea levels rise by a matter of millimeters each year – a barely visible increment despite happening at a faster rate than ever before. But such changes add up, and if they are visually documented over years or decades the impact becomes clear.
“It’s like photographing a slow-moving tsunami,” says Mittermeier. “It’s often hard to see in the moment, but when two images are put side-by-side, it’s hard not to see the impact the climate crisis is having.”
Read: Scientists are listening to glaciers to discover the secrets of the oceans
http://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/27/world/glaciers-listening-c2e-spc-intl-climate-scn/index.html
The work of photographer James Balog has been crucial in creating the visual narrative of climate change, she says. Using a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers around the world, his Extreme Ice Survey has demonstrated how glaciers are vanishing over time. The extensive archive of photos of each glacier taken year-round at every daylight hour has also provided a baseline from which future changes can be measured.
“It became just irrefutable proof,” says Mittermeier. “That was a very important moment for climate photography.”
. . .
Coexistence
Polar bears move into an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, Russia. The majestic mammals are at particular risk from climate change, which is melting the Arctic sea ice that they depend on.
Mittermeier and Nicklen also selected images where humans and nature collide. One effect of climate change is a dramatic loss of biodiversity. Since 1970, wildlife populations have plummeted by 69%, due predominantly to land-use change that has fragmented crucial habitats, and also rising temperatures, which have led to mass mortality events,
according to the WWF’s 2022 Living Planet Report. .. https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-US/#:~:text=Wildlife%20populations%20plummet%20by%2069,in%20species%20populations%20since%201970.
Read: The icy patience of an Arctic photographer
http://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/arctic-photography-florian-ledoux-climate-c2e-spc-intl-scn/index.html
With the Arctic warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the globe, the ice that polar bears depend on is melting away. Dmitry Kokh’s photograph “House of Bears,” one of the winners of the 2022 Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, shows polar bears roaming an abandoned Soviet settlement on Kolyuchin Island. While the buildings had long been deserted, Mittermeier believes it points to the increasing problem of polar bears – with no ice left to hunt on – encroaching on human spaces and encountering local people, leading to tragic outcomes for both sides.
Alice, Stanley and their child were displaced as floods destroyed their house in Kenya in 2017. They are photographed at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy together in the same frame as Najin, one of the last two northern white rhinos in the world. It's part of photographer Nick Brandt's "The Day May Break" series that portrays people and animals impacted by environmental destruction.
The effects of climate change will – and are already – hitting animals and humans alike. “It’s impossible to deny that we are all in this together,” says Mittermeier. “We are all impacted in devastating ways, and we cannot separate ourselves from the life we share this planet with.”
The series “The Day May Break” from photographer Nick Brandt portrays this by showing people and animals affected by environmental destruction. The photographs, taken in animal sanctuaries around the world, feature people that have been displaced by climate change events such as drought or floods, and animals that have been victims of habitat destruction or wildlife trafficking. Portraying both in the same frame shows how deeply our fates are intertwined.
Hope
A school of bright cardinalfish swerve to make way for a sea lion in the Galápagos. The archipelago off the coast of Ecuador is famous for its vibrant marine life and is one of the largest marine protected areas in the world.
Courtesy of Cristina Mittermeier
Among the images of devastation and displacement, there are also those that signify hope. In Brandt’s work, he points out that the subjects of the images, both people and animals, are survivors – “And therein lies hope and possibility,” he wrote in an email.
Read: The ocean’s ‘blue carbon’ can be our secret weapon in fighting climate change
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/02/opinions/mittermeier-nicklen-oceans-blue-carbon-climate-change-scn-spc-c2e/index.html
For Mittermeier and Nicklen, and SeaLegacy as a whole, striking a message of hope is vital to the wider mission. “Martin Luther King didn’t start his famous speech by reminding us that we live in a nightmare – he told us what the dream is,” says Mittermeier. “You have to point out what it is that we’re aspiring to and show where the hope is.”
The hope, she believes, is in wildlife and the ocean. Humans are just waking up to the role that both play in mitigating climate change, and restoring nature will be crucial in averting the crisis. For Mittermeier, her photograph of a sea lion rising up to the surface in the Galapagos – one of the largest marine protected areas in the world – shows how ocean life can flourish with the right protection. And Nicklen’s photograph of a bowhead whale represents to him one of our greatest allies in decarbonization: not only are whales’ bodies enormous stores of carbon, their feces fuels phytoplankton which soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Bowhead whales, like this one photographed near Baffin Island in Canada, can live to more than 200 years old. Some may have witnessed first-hand the effects of climate change since the Industrial Revolution.
Courtesy of Paul Nicklen
By showing off the beauty of the planet, the couple believe they can show people it is still worth fighting for.
“We’re trying to climb to the tallest mountain and scream from the mountaintops that this planet is dying, and that we are at risk,” says Nicklen.
“But the only emotion greater than fear is hope,” adds Mittermeier. “And the only way you can feel hope is if you take action.”
03:48
PROTECTORS OF THE SEA (at end of article)
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/world/climate-change-photography-paul-nicklen-cristina-mittermeier-c2e-spc-intl-scn-climate/index.html
Among 160 years of presidential scandals, Trump stands alone
YOURS:
By RUSS BYNUM yesterday
Though far from the only U.S. president dogged by legal and ethical scandals, Donald Trump now occupies a unique place in history as the first indicted on criminal charges.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-hush-money-new-york-indictment-election-027d0e5ac1881a4c55c6379deae75faa?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01
Two others, like Trump, found themselves impeached by Congress — Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his affair with a White House intern, and Andrew Johnson for pushing the limits of his executive authority in a bitter power struggle following the Civil War.
Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace over his role in the infamous Watergate break-in. And Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant both became forever tied to scandals in which close aides got prosecuted, though neither president was ever charged.
Here’s a look at how Trump’s predecessors fared:
BILL CLINTON
Clinton spent more than half his presidency under scrutiny in investigations that ranged from failed real estate deals to the Democratic president’s affair with a White House intern.
Investigators took a lengthy look into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s investments in the troubled Whitewater real estate venture. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, appointed to oversee the investigation in 1994, turned up no evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons. But two of their close associates, Jim and Susan McDougal, ended up convicted of Whitewater-related charges. So did Jim Guy Tucker, Clinton’s successor as governor of Arkansas.
Starr’s 1998 report packed with lurid details of Clinton’s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky proved far more damaging. While being questioned in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones, Clinton had denied having “sexual relations” with Lewinsky.
Starr concluded that Clinton had lied under oath and obstructed justice. That led to the House voting to impeach Clinton on Dec. 19, 1998. He was acquitted by the Senate, allowing him to remain in office until his term ended in January 2001.
RONALD REAGAN
Reagan never faced impeachment or court charges for the biggest scandal of his presidency. But the arms-for-hostages scheme that became known as the Iran-Contra affair dogged him long after he left the White House.
In 1986, during Reagan’s second term, the public learned that his administration had authorized secret arms sales to Iran while seeking Iranian aid in freeing American hostages held in Lebanon. As much as $30 million from the arms sales was diverted, in violation of U.S. law, to aid rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua.
Reagan’s national security adviser, John Poindexter, resigned and an aide, Lt. Col. Oliver North, was fired. Both were also convicted of crimes stemming from efforts to deceive and obstruct Congress. Their convictions were later overturned. President George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s successor, pardoned six others involved.
Reagan insisted money from the arms sales was funneled to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels without his knowledge.
RICHARD NIXON
Nixon resigned from office in August 1974 rather than face impeachment for his administration’s cover-up of its involvement in a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington
The bungled burglary at the Watergate office building resulted in the indictment of seven men, including two former White House aides. Five of the Watergate defendants pleaded guilty; two were convicted in criminal trials.
Intrigue over the 1972 Watergate break-in didn’t stop Nixon from cruising to reelection a few months later. He endured the storm until the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 approved three articles of impeachment accusing him of obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress.
Before the full House could vote, a bombshell tape recording was released in which Nixon could be heard approving a plan to pressure the FBI to drop its Watergate investigation. Nixon resigned after losing support from key congressional Republicans.
His vice president, Gerald Ford, became president and pardoned Nixon a month later.
ULYSSES S. GRANT
While never personally charged with crimes or formally accused of wrongdoing, Grant as president torpedoed a corruption case prosecuted by his own administration. The man on trial was Grant’s personal secretary in the White House.
In 1875, an investigation launched by Treasury Secretary Benjamin H. Bristow resulted in hundreds of arrests in a scheme known as the Whiskey Ring, in which distillers, revenue agents and fellow conspirators diverted millions of dollars in liquor taxes to themselves.
The Civil War general-turned-president found himself at odds with the crackdown when Gen. Orville E. Babcock ended up charged as a conspirator. Not only was Babcock the president’s personal secretary, but he and Grant had also been friends since the war.
Prosecutors said they had uncovered telegrams Babcock sent to ringleaders to assist their scheme. Regardless, Grant insisted on testifying in his aide’s defense.
To avoid the spectacle of the president appearing at Babcock’s trial, attorneys questioned Grant under oath at the White House on Feb. 12, 1876. A transcript of his testimony was later read in court in St. Louis. The jury acquitted Babcock, a decision largely credited to Grant’s unwavering defense.
ANDREW JOHNSON
The first American president to have his legacy tarnished by impeachment, Andrew Johnson’s woes arose from his intense feuding with Congress over Reconstruction following the Civil War.
The Tennessee Democrat had been elected vice president in 1864 as part of a unity ticket with Abraham Lincoln, and Johnson assumed the presidency after Lincoln’s 1865 assassination. From the White House, Johnson called for pardoning Confederate leaders and opposed extending voting rights to freed Blacks, infuriating congressional Republicans.
It was Johnson’s firing of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Lincoln appointee who favored tougher policies toward the defeated South, that prompted the House to pass articles of impeachment that accused the president of ousting and replacing Stanton illegally.
Johnson’s impeachment trial began in the Senate on March 5, 1868. It ended more than two months later, with senators just one vote short of removing Johnson from office. He served the remainder of his final year, but fellow Democrats denied him their nomination to run again.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-indictment-past-presidential-scandals-6fe9d423c42ea7fd945befcb4dd83704?utm_source=ForYou&utm_medium=HomePage&utm_id=Taboola
Right On ---- " Tuck is really Frumped "
MORE-- https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=image+of+trump+in+orange+prison+suit&tbm=isch&source=univ&fir=xjY0EbG8UzoRoM%252CzDALordldgAH9M%252C_%253BVNhDuUn34ie9sM%252CqY5HuV3vIUyTlM%252C_%253B8d6L85eeji1inM%252C3PiFtlHoU7NaFM%252C_%253B1sK2cTTNze6YkM%252CS-4gWlQaddlLdM%252C_%253BP6WqiwWrnewMaM%252CS-4gWlQaddlLdM%252C_%253BLCz7ENivfRNzgM%252CyiHmCwjjT_xqNM%252C_%253BE7KDAjqFMfOaxM%252CzDALordldgAH9M%252C_%253BVN92CILnwMdh9M%252CP37bDDacP-bsCM%252C_%253BhMr5rq9Hblq9eM%252Cemgr0OGjseEA-M%252C_%253BMozejJh_bJoZ5M%252CFhY6eRs9oIWW1M%252C_&usg=AI4_-kTonoJsjTVVUeRt306VMAeLnmVzEQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-sc2B3oT-AhV6l2oFHRMZALwQ420oAHoECCMQCg&biw=1407&bih=744&dpr=1.05
Donald Trump indicted; 1st ex-president charged with crime
By MICHAEL R. SISAK, ERIC TUCKER, COLLEEN LONG and JENNIFER PELTZ
14 minutes ago
NEW YORK (AP) — A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump on charges involving payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter, the first ever criminal case against a former U.S. president and a jolt to Trump’s bid to retake the White House in 2024.
The indictment, confirmed Thursday by Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, and other people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss sealed criminal charges, is an extraordinary development after years of investigations into his business, political and personal dealings. It is likely to galvanize critics who say Trump lied and cheated his way to the top and embolden supporters who feel the Republican is being unfairly targeted by a Democratic prosecutor.
Tacopina said in a statement: “He did not commit any crime. We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in court.”
The district attorney’s investigation centered on money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, whom he feared would go public with claims that they had extramarital sexual encounters with him.
In bringing the charges, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is embracing an unusual case that had been investigated by two previous sets of prosecutors, both of which declined to take the politically explosive step of seeking Trump’s indictment.
In the weeks leading up to the indictment, Trump railed about the investigation on social media and urged supporters to protest on his behalf, prompting tighter security around the Manhattan criminal courthouse.
Trump faces other potential legal perils as he seeks to reassert control of the Republican Party and stave off a slew of one-time allies who are seeking or are likely to oppose him for the presidential nomination.
The district attorney in Atlanta has for two years been investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to meddle in Georgia’s 2020 vote count. And a U.S. Justice Department special counsel is investigating Trump’s storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and his efforts to reverse his election loss.
The fate of the hush-money investigation seemed uncertain until word got out in early March that Bragg had invited Trump to testify before a grand jury, a signal that prosecutors were close to bringing charges.
Trump’s attorneys declined the invitation, but a lawyer closely allied with the former president briefly testified in an effort to undercut the credibility of Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
Late in the 2016 presidential campaign, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep her silent about what she says was a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier after they met at a celebrity golf tournament.
Cohen was then reimbursed by Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, which also rewarded the lawyer with bonuses and extra payments logged internally as legal expenses. Over several months, Cohen said, the company paid him $420,000.
Earlier in 2016, Cohen had also arranged for the publisher of the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer to pay Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 to squelch her story of a Trump affair in a journalistically dubious practice known as “catch-and-kill.”
The payments to the women were intended to buy secrecy, but they backfired almost immediately as details of the arrangements leaked to the news media.
Federal prosecutors in New York ultimately charged Cohen in 2018 with violating federal campaign finance laws, arguing that the payments amounted to impermissible help to Trump’s presidential campaign. Cohen pleaded guilty to those charges and unrelated tax evasion counts and served time in federal prison.
Trump was implicated in court filings as having knowledge of the arrangements, but U.S. prosecutors at the time balked at bringing charges against him. The Justice Department has a longtime policy that it is likely unconstitutional to prosecute a sitting president in federal court.
Bragg’s predecessor as district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., then took up the investigation in 2019. While that probe initially focused on the hush money payments, Vance’s prosecutors moved on to other matters, including an examination of Trump’s business dealings and tax strategies.
Vance ultimately charged the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer with tax fraud related to fringe benefits paid to some of the company’s top executives.
The hush money matter became known around the D.A.’s office as the “zombie case,” with prosecutors revisiting it periodically but never opting to bring charges.
Bragg saw it differently. After the Trump Organization was convicted on the tax fraud charges in December, he brought fresh eyes to the well-worn case, hiring longtime white-collar prosecutor Matthew Colangelo to oversee the probe and convening a new grand jury.
Cohen became a key witness, meeting with prosecutors nearly two-dozen times, turning over emails, recordings and other evidence and testifying before the grand jury.
Trump has long decried the Manhattan investigation as “the greatest witch hunt in history.” He has also lashed out at Bragg, calling the prosecutor, who is Black, racist against white people.
The criminal charges in New York are the latest salvo in a profound schism between Trump and his hometown — a reckoning for a one-time favorite son who grew rich and famous building skyscrapers, hobnobbing with celebrities and gracing the pages of the city’s gossip press.
Trump, who famously riffed in 2016 that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and “wouldn’t lose voters,” now faces a threat to his liberty or at least his reputation in a borough where more than 75% of voters — many of them potential jurors — went against him in the last election.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-hush-money-new-york-indictment-election-027d0e5ac1881a4c55c6379deae75faa?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01
Christie: GOP needs someone who can quickly take down Trump
By HOLLY RAMER today
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that Republicans need a candidate who can take out Donald Trump in a single, brutal swipe like the one Christie delivered to a different rival in 2016.
Speaking in New Hampshire, Christie recalled a favorite moment from his failed presidential campaign: embarrassing Marco Rubio on a debate stage three days before the first-in-the-nation primary. After Christie challenged Rubio’s lack of experience, the senator from Florida repeated himself twice in a cringe-worthy moment capped off by Christie saying: “There it is. The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.”
Trump will never step aside quietly, said Christie, who is mulling another run himself.
“You better have somebody on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco, because that’s the only thing that’s gonna defeat Donald Trump,” he said at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. “And that means you have to be fearless, because he will come back, and right at you.”
Voters need to think about who has the skills and guts to do that, Christie warned.
“Because it’s not going to end nicely, no matter what, his end will not be a calm and quiet conclusion,” he said.
While that debate moment was a high point for Christie, he dropped out less than a week later after finishing a dismal sixth in the New Hampshire Republican primary that year. He quickly endorsed Trump and was a close on-and-off adviser to Trump during his time in the White House, but broke with the former president after Trump refused to accept his loss of the 2020 election.
Christie has since emerged as one of the few prominent Trump critics in his party and has used his position as an ABC political analyst to argue that Trump is a far weaker today than he was in the past. On Monday, he accused Trump of leading Republicans down a “sinkhole of anger and retribution.”
“Donald Trump said a couple of weeks ago, ‘I am your retribution.’ Guess what everybody? No thanks. No dice,” Christie said Monday. “He doesn’t want to be my retribution. That’s baloney. The only person he cares about is him.”
Saul Shriber, 67, of Chester, said he voted for Christie in 2016 even though he wasn’t happy with the answer he got when he asked Christie, “When are you going to take down Trump?”
“I have my timetable,” Christie said at the time.
“I thought, if there’s anybody on the stage who could go after Trump, it would be him, the smash-mouth New Jersey guy,” Shriber said.
Reminded of their encounter Monday, Christie said he and the other candidates made a “strategic error” in thinking they’d get a chance to take on Trump one-on-one. Instead, their campaigns folded quickly.
Shriber found that answer satisfactory and said he would support Christie again.
“If he chose to talk to me truthfully, I’m all in favor,” he said. “I’m willing to forgive.”
New Hampshire was the linchpin of Christie’s 2016 campaign. The then-governor camped out in the state for months, holding dozens of town halls — a format he became famous for in New Jersey, as his colorful commentary and spirited clashes with critics frequently went viral.
Christie said earlier this month that he expects to make a decision in the next 45 to 60 days.
https://apnews.com/article/christie-2024-president-new-hampshire-trump-5ff8b0ca2553ea3800c92826088a40de?utm_source=ForYou&utm_medium=HomePage&utm_id=Taboola
Climate change impacts
NOA -- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
U.S. Department of Commerce
. . .
Our changing climate
We see climate change affecting our planet from pole to pole. NOAA monitors global climate data and here are some of the changes NOAA has recorded.
You can explore more at the Global Climate Dashboard.
* Global temperatures rose about 1.8°F (1°C) from 1901 to 2020.
* Sea level rise has accelerated from 1.7 mm/year throughout most of the twentieth century to 3.2 mm/year since 1993.
* Glaciers are shrinking: average thickness of 30 well-studied glaciers has decreased more than 60 feet since 1980.
* The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic at the end of summer has shrunk by about 40% since 1979.
* The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 25% since 1958, and by about 40% since the Industrial Revolution.
* Snow is melting earlier compared to long-term averages.
. . .
https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate/climate-change-impacts
============================================================
The Effects of Climate Change
The effects of human-caused global warming are happening now, are irreversible for people alive today, and will worsen as long as humans add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
NASA
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
Vital Signs of the Planet
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
Putin Has A Problem: The Russian Military Is Getting Slaughtered In Ukraine
By Stavros Atlamazoglou Published 11 hours ago
According to the Ukrainian estimates, which are corroborated to a certain degree by Western intelligence assessments, the Russian military and Wagner Group mercenary forces lost more than 1,000 troops killed and wounded in the past day of fighting.
And in the past five days, the Russian forces have lost more than 4,200 troops killed or wounded.
Ukraine War Update: Although the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut has been at the center of the fighting for the past weeks, the Russian forces have also been trying to gain ground in the east. However, despite repeated assaults, the Russian military has failed to achieve anything significant.
On day 394 of the war in Ukraine, the Russian forces are still looking for an operational breakthrough.
There Is Fighting in the East Too
Starting in March, the Russian military began a small-scale offensive along the Svatove-Kreminna line of contact in the east of Kharkiv. The offensive operation aims to reclaim lost territory.
In one of its most recent estimates on the war, the British Military Intelligence assessed that the Russian forces in the east are trying to reach Kupyansk and recapture the critical logistical node. The loss of the town last September during the lightning Ukrainian counteroffensive seriously restricted Russian offensive operations not only in the area but in the Donbas too.
The Russian assaults have managed to partially regain some control of the roads that lead to Kreminna but have largely failed to push the Ukrainians back to a safe distance.
“In places, Russia has made gains of up to several kilometres. Russian
If the Ukrainian military captures Kreminna and Svatove, Russian operations in the area would be severely hampered because of the loss of an additional two logistical nodes.
“Operationally, Russia’s intent in the north-east likely remains defensive. Commanders probably fear this is one of the sectors where Ukraine could attempt major offensive operations,” the British Military Intelligence added.
Meanwhile, the Russian forces continue to suffer extremely heavy casualties.
The Russian Casualties in Ukraine
The past 24 hours have been particularly deadly for the Russian forces.
According to the Ukrainian estimates, which are corroborated to a certain degree by Western intelligence assessments, the Russian military and Wagner Group mercenary forces lost more than 1,000 troops killed and wounded in the past day of fighting.
And in the past five days, the Russian forces have lost more than 4,200 troops killed or wounded.
This rate of casualties would be unthinkable before the start of the war, especially considering that during ten years of conflict in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, the Russian military lost 15,000 men killed.
Overall, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claimed that as of Friday, Ukrainian forces have killed approximately 169,170 Russian troops (and wounded approximately twice to thrice that number),
Destroyed equipment includes:
305 fighter, attack, bomber, and transport jets,
290 attack and transport helicopters,
3,574 tanks, 2,616 artillery pieces,
6,921 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles,
511 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS),
18 boats and cutters,
5,464 vehicles and fuel tanks,
276 anti-aircraft batteries,
2,208 tactical unmanned aerial systems,
277 special equipment platforms, such as bridging vehicles,
and four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems,
and 909 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses.
MORE: PAK DA – Is Russia New Stealth Bomer a Joke?
MORE: Was the F-14 Tomcat Retired Too Early?
MORE: Nimitz-Class – The Best Aircraft Carrier Ever?
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/03/putin-has-a-problem-the-russian-military-is-getting-slaughtered-in-ukraine/
===============================================================‘He’s Satan’: Russian Elites Call Putin Every Name in the Book on Leaked Call
Story by Alexander Motyl • Yesterday 4:21 PM
A tape-recording of a recent conversation between two members of the Russian elite has gone viral on Russian social media. .. https://meduza.io/feature/2023/03/26/v-set-slili-zapis-na-kotoroy-predpolozhitelno-prodyuser-prigozhin-i-milliarder-ahmedov-rugayut-putina-i-ego-okruzhenie-teper-prigozhin-ne-ponimaet-kak-zhit-s-etim-dermom
Yosif Prigozhin, a music producer, and Farkhad Akhmedov, a billionaire oligarch, allegedly discussed Russian strongman Vladimir Putin in the most unflattering way.
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/03/putin-has-a-problem-the-russian-military-is-getting-slaughtered-in-ukraine/
[...]
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/03/putin-has-a-problem-the-russian-military-is-getting-slaughtered-in-ukraine/
You don't care about Lieden, whoever that is. The next day you're "voting for Lieden"
Yet you continually refer to LIES, but NEVER provide proof.
That makes you the biggest liar, next to Trump
President Biden is rarely mentioned.
It's about time Trump was charged for that Huuuge violation !
All President Trump's Lies About the Coronavirus
---Wasn’t it Joe Lieden who told us “we won’t get covid if we have these vaccinations”--- LOLOL
Christian Paz August 31, 2020
President Donald Trump has repeatedly lied about the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s preparation for this once-in-a-generation crisis.
Here, a collection of the biggest lies he’s told as the nation endures a public-health and economic calamity.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=158020433
Trump lawyer ordered to turn over Mar-a-Lago case documents
By ERIC TUCKER 12 minutes ago
Attorney M. Evan Corcoran arrives at federal court in Washington, July 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court in a sealed order Wednesday directed a lawyer for Donald Trump to turn over to prosecutors documents in the investigation into the former president’s retention of classified records at his Florida estate.
The ruling is a significant win for the Justice Department, which has focused for months not only on the hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago but also on why Trump and his representatives resisted demands to return them to the government.
It suggests the court has sided with prosecutors who have argued behind closed doors that Trump was using his legal representation to further a crime.
The order was reflected in a brief online notice by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case is sealed, and none of the parties in the dispute is mentioned by name.
But the details appear to correspond with a secret fight before a lower court judge over whether Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran could be forced to provide documents or give grand jury testimony in the Justice Department special counsel probe into whether Trump mishandled top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago.
Related coverage..
* – Trump's potential indictment caps decades of legal scrutiny
* – AP sources: Manhattan DA postpones Trump grand jury session
* – Republicans invoke Soros to steer narrative on Trump probe
Corcoran is regarded as relevant to the investigation in part because last year he drafted a statement to the Justice Department asserting that a “diligent search” for classified documents had been conducted at Mar-a-Lago in response to a subpoena. That claim proved untrue as FBI agents weeks later searched the home with a warrant and found roughly 100 additional documents with classified markings.
Another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, told investigators last fall that Corcoran had drafted the letter and asked her to sign it in her role as a designated custodian of Trump’s records.
A Justice Department investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors is examining whether Trump or anyone in his orbit obstructed its efforts to recover all the classified documents, which included top-secret material, from his home. No charges have yet been filed. The inquiry is one of multiple legal threats Trump faces, including probes in Atlanta and Washington over his efforts to undo the election result and a grand jury investigation in New York over hush money payments. The New York case appears to be nearing completion and building toward an indictment.
Last week, Beryl Howell, the outgoing chief judge of the U.S. District Court, directed Corcoran to answer additional questions before the grand jury. He had appeared weeks earlier before the federal grand jury investigating the Mar-a-Lago matter, but had invoked attorney-client privilege to avoid answering certain questions.
Though attorney-client privilege shields lawyers from being forced to share details of their conversations with clients before prosecutors, the Justice Department can get around that if it can convince a judge that a lawyer’s services were used in furtherance of a crime — a principle known in the law as the “crime-fraud” exception.
Howell ruled in the Justice Department’s favor shortly before stepping aside as chief judge Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to discuss a sealed proceeding and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. That ruling was subsequently appealed, and the court records show the dispute before the federal appeals panel concerned an order that was issued last Friday by Howell.
The three-judge panel that issued the decision include Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan, both appointees of President Joe Biden. The order came just hours after the court imposed tight deadlines on both sides to file written briefs making their case.
A lawyer for Corcoran did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Wednesday, and a lawyer for Trump declined to comment on the sealed order.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-classified-documents-maralago-justice-department-1533b34b17c154be8576f581206a31b2?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01
I was rooting for Elizabeth Warren to be Biden's VP
Maybe she still has a future in that world.
Elizabeth Warren says Jerome Powell has ‘failed’ as Federal Reserve chair
"I don’t think he should be chairman of the Federal Reserve," the Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview on NBC News' "Meet the Press."
March 19, 2023, 9:12 AM CDT
By Summer Concepcion
For links and video:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/elizabeth-warren-jerome-powell-failed-fed-chair-rcna75635
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., slammed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in an interview Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press," saying he "has failed" and shouldn't be in his role.
"He has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy. One is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both," she said.
"Look, I don't think he should be chairman of the Federal Reserve. I have said it as publicly as I know how to say it. I've said it to everyone," said Warren, who is on the Senate Banking Committee.
Powell, first nominated by President Donald Trump in 2017, has faced criticism over his handling of banking regulations after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
Warren, who has been pressing for stricter banking regulations, said Powell “took a flamethrower to the regulations” when Trump was in office, adding that Trump gave Congress the “authority to lighten the regulations even more.”
"And then the CEOs of the banks did exactly what we expected. They loaded up on risk that boosted their short-term profits. They gave themselves huge bonuses and salaries and exploded their banks," Warren said.
In a letter Saturday, Warren urged the inspectors general at the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Fed Board of Governors to immediately open a "thorough independent investigation" to determine the causes of the bank management and regulatory issues that led to the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank.
“The bank’s executives, who took unnecessary risks or failed to hedge against entirely foreseeable threats, must be held accountable for these failures,” Warren wrote, asking for preliminary findings of the probe to be delivered to Congress within 30 days.
A group of Democrats led by Warren and Rep. Katie Porter of California announced legislation last week to restore bank regulations that were undone in 2018, during the Trump administration — an effort they say would address the cause of SVB's collapse.
At the time, Republicans in Congress pushed a bill — with the support of some centrist Democrats — that eased Dodd-Frank financial regulations on midsize banks, raising the “too big to fail” threshold from $50 billion in assets to $250 billion. The Warren-Porter bill, first reported by NBC News, would repeal that measure, but it faces a tough road to passage in Congress.
Some Democrats who voted for the 2018 bill are standing by their votes, joining Republicans in resisting more scrutiny for banks and arguing that the U.S. still has ways under existing law to tackle the issue.
President Joe Biden renominated Powell as Federal Reserve chairman in November 2021. The decision was met with pushback from some progressives, and certain Democrats had argued that Powell was too hands-off as a banking regulator.
Around that time, Warren was a leading opponent of Powell, calling him a "dangerous man" who had led an effort to weaken the nation's banking system at a hearing in late 2021.
Warren urged Powell to recuse himself from an internal probe into SVB last week, saying his actions "directly contributed to these bank failures."
“I’ve opposed him because of his views on regulation," Warren said Sunday on "Meet the Press," "and what he was already doing to weaken regulation."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/elizabeth-warren-jerome-powell-failed-fed-chair-rcna75635
Elizabeth Warren's media blitz on SVB, in 60 seconds
By RENEE KLAHR
03/19/2023 01:46 PM EDT
-- “These recent bank failures are the direct result of leaders in Washington weakening the financial rules,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote in a New York Times op-ed .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/opinion/elizabeth-warren-silicon-valley-bank.html .. this week. --
https://www.politico.com/video/2023/03/19/elizabeth-warrens-media-blitz-on-svb-in-60-seconds-860987
Pence says Trump was 'wrong' about Jan. 6 and that history will hold him accountable for it.
March 12, 202311:18 AM ET
By Scott Detrow, Joe Hernandez
That was the message former Vice President Mike Pence delivered at a Washington, D.C., dinner on Saturday night, in what amounted to his most forceful rebuke to date of the former president.
Pence laid into Trump for his efforts to pressure him into blocking the certification of the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, when he told supporters near the White House that he hoped Pence would "do the right thing." Protesters who later marched to the Capitol turned violent and stormed the building where the vote count was being certified. Some chanted "Hang Mike Pence."
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/12/1162923482/pence-trump-january-6-gridiron-dinner
YOUR POST:
A Republican group is putting up gigantic billboards to remind Trump that he lost
Cheryl Teh Oct 14, 2021, 9:33 PM
A group of Republican officials is launching an anti-Trump campaign to call for an end to vote audits.
* A Republican group is putting up billboards to remind former President Trump that he lost the 2020 election.
* The first billboard is up in Times Square, and reads "Trump lost. No more 'audits.'"
* The group plans to run these billboards in states where Trump is calling for vote audits.
....
https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-group-putting-up-billboards-remind-trump-that-he-lost-2021-10
Ukraine war: International court issues warrant for Putin's arrest
By Bart H. Meijer and Olena Harmash
March 17, 20235:00 PM CDT Last Updated 22 min ago
* Court in The Hague issues arrest warrant for Putin
* Putin accused of illegally removing children from Ukraine
* Russians react with outrage, disbelief, scorn
* 'Hands off Putin' says Russia's parliament chief
* Comes days before China's President Xi visits Moscow
AMSTERDAM/KYIV, March 17 (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, alleging Moscow's forcible deportation of Ukrainian children is a war crime, as the Kremlin reacted with outrage.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the move would lead to "historic accountability", adding that the deportations constituted a policy of "state evil which starts precisely with the top official of this state."
The announcement provoked a furious response from Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia found the very questions raised by the ICC "outrageous and unacceptable", and that any decisions of the court were "null and void" with respect to Russia. Russia, like the United States and China, is not a member of the ICC.
Russia has not concealed a programme under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
"Yankees, hands off Putin!" wrote parliament Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a close ally of the president, on Telegram.
"We regard any attacks on the president of the Russian Federation as aggression against our country," he said.
The United States said there was "no doubt" Russia was committing war crimes in Ukraine. The court also issued a warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia's commissioner for children's rights, on the same charges.
Putin, only the third serving president to have been issued an arrest warrant by the ICC, is unlikely to end up in court any time soon. But the warrant means that he could be arrested and sent to The Hague if he travels to any ICC member states.
"This makes Putin a pariah. If he travels he risks arrest. This never goes away. Russia cannot gain relief from sanctions without compliance with the warrants," said Stephen Rapp, former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes.
Residents of the Russian capital expressed disbelief at the news. "Putin! Nobody will arrest him," a man who gave his name only as Daniil, 20, told Reuters.
Maxim said, "We will protect him - the people of Russia."
BEIJING, MOSCOW TIES
Moscow's forces have been accused of multiple abuses during Russia's year-old invasion of its neighbour Ukraine, including by a U.N.-mandated investigative body that this week described soldiers making children watch loved ones being raped.
Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations its forces have committed atrocities during the invasion, which it calls a special military operation.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan began investigating possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine a year ago. He said he was looking at alleged crimes against children and the targeting of civilian infrastructure.
News of the arrest warrant came ahead of a planned state visit to Moscow next week by Chinese President Xi Jinping which is likely to cement much closer ties between Russia and China just as relations between Moscow and the West hit new lows.
Beijing and Moscow struck a "no limits" partnership shortly before the invasion, and U.S. and European leaders have said they are concerned Beijing may send arms to Russia.
China has denied any such plan, criticising Western weapon supplies to Ukraine, which will soon extend to fighter jets after Poland and Slovakia this week approved deliveries. The Kremlin said the jets would be destroyed and not change the course of the conflict.
China is keen to deflect Western criticism over Ukraine, but its close ties to Russia and its refusal to label Moscow’s war an invasion have fuelled scepticism about the prospect that Beijing might act as a mediator in the conflict.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Friday the United States had deep concerns China might try to promote a ceasefire because that would not currently lead to a just and lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia.
BAKHMUT FIGHTING
Ukrainian forces continued on Friday to withstand Russian assaults on the ruined city of Bakhmut, the focal point for eight months of Russian attempts to advance through the industrial Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine bordering Russia.
Bakhmut has become Europe's bloodiest infantry battle since World War Two. Russian forces have captured the city's eastern part but have so far failed to encircle it.
The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said Russia had carried out 19 airstrikes and 26 rocket attacks on Friday.
Russian forces also conducted four air strikes on the frontline town of Avdiivka south of Bakhmut on Friday, Yermak, the Ukrainian presidential staff chief, wrote on Telegram. "The city is being shelled almost around the clock," he wrote.
Reuters could not immediately verify those battlefield reports.
Russia denies deliberately attacking civilians but says it has hit infrastructure to degrade Ukraine's military and remove what it says is a potential threat to its own security.
Ukraine and its allies accuse Moscow of an unprovoked war to grab territory from its pro-Western neighbour.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-says-video-shows-russian-jet-intercepted-spy-drone-near-ukraine-2023-03-16/
US military releases footage of Russian fighter jet forcing down American drone over Black Sea
Story by Oren Liebermann • 2h ago
US European Command released footage of the Tuesday encounter between a US surveillance drone and the Russian fighter jets as it played out over the Black Sea.
2:50
Retired lt. general explains significance of Russian fighter jet forcing down US drone
The newly declassified video depicts critical moments in the mid-air encounter, which the Pentagon said lasted between 30 and 40 minutes.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-military-releases-footage-of-russian-fighter-jet-forcing-down-american-drone-over-black-sea/ar-AA18HAKn?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c68111bdaf2947aea0c37dc770a55899&ei=23
US Air Force MQ-9 camera footage: Russian Su-27 Black Sea intercept - bent propller on drone - US European Command
The video shows the camera of the MQ-9 Reaper drone pointed backward toward its tail and the drone’s propeller, which is mounted on the rear, spinning. Then, a Russian Sukhoi SU-27 fighter jet is shown approaching. As it draws closer, the Russian fighter jet dumps fuel as it intercepts the US drone.
In another portion of the footage, the Russian jet makes another pass. As it approaches, it again dumps fuel. The video from the drone is then disrupted as the Russian fighter jet collides with the MQ-9 Reaper, damaging the propeller and ultimately forcing the US to bring down the drone in the Black Sea. Russia has denied that a collision occurred.
When the camera comes back online in the footage, the view is again pointed backward, and the propeller is shown damaged from the collision. With the propeller damaged, the drone operators effectively flew the aircraft as a glider as it descended over the Black Sea, bringing it down in international waters southwest of Crimea. On its way down, two US officials told CNN the operators remotely wiped the drone’s sensitive software, mitigating the risk of secret materials falling into enemy hands before it crashed into the water.
The downing of the drone marked the first time Russian and US military aircraft have come into direct physical contact since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Despite the release of the dramatic footage, and back and forth over who is to blame, the Biden administration has not said it will take action against Russia over the downing of the drone, perhaps indicating a desire to not further escalate tensions after the Kremlin said Wednesday that relations between Moscow and Washington are at their “lowest point.”
A senior Biden administration official said the footage “absolutely confirms” that there was a physical collision and dumping of fuel, but it does not confirm the pilot’s intent.
On Wednesday two US officials familiar with the intelligence told CNN that senior officials at the Russian Ministry of Defense gave the order for the Russian fighter jets to harass a US drone over the Black Sea this week.
The high-level military officials’ connection to the incident suggests that the fighter jet pilots were not taking rogue action when they interfered with the US drone.
But, at this time there is no indication that the highest of political leaders in Russia – particularly those in the Kremlin, including President Vladimir Putin – knew about the planned aggression in advance, one of the US officials said.
National Security Council communications coordinator John Kirby said on “CNN This Morning” Wednesday that the drone had not been recovered and that he was “not sure” the US would be able to recover it.
Moscow had made clear it would attempt to retrieve the wreckage of the drone, and two officials told CNN Wednesday that Russia had reached the MQ-9 crash site in the Black Sea. Kirby would not confirm the reported development, but said the US had “made it impossible for them to be able to glean anything of intelligence value off the remnants of that drone, whatever remnants there might be on the surface of the water.”
The Kremlin has said a decision on whether to retrieve the drone will come from Russia’s Ministry of Defense.
“This is the prerogative of the military. If they believe that it is necessary for our interests and our security in the Black Sea, they will do it,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Thursday.
Peskov said he did not know what the ministry has decided.
Moscow and Washington have been in contact through military and diplomatic channels following the incident.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s MJ Lee, Jennifer Hansler and Kylie Atwood contributed to this report.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-military-releases-footage-of-russian-fighter-jet-forcing-down-american-drone-over-black-sea/ar-AA18HAKn?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c68111bdaf2947aea0c37dc770a55899&ei=23
Winners of the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards Open Competition
Alan Taylor | 1:31 PM ET | 22 Photos | In Focus
The top entries in the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards Open Competition have been announced, and the contest organizers were once again kind enough to share some of their winning and shortlisted photos below, from their 10 categories:
Architecture, Creative, Landscape, Lifestyle, Motion, Natural World & Wildlife, Object, Portraiture, Street Photography, and Travel. Captions have been provided by the photographers.
Hints: View this page full screen. Skip to the next and previous photo by typing j/k or ?/?.
-- I view the photos "using a Private Window"--
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2023/03/winners-2023-sony-world-photography-awards/673391/
6. She Is Bagheera. Shortlist, Motion. "The first obstacle of the course is the one I prefer most of all, because this is where it all begins. It is where the bond between human and dog is expressed in such a clear way, by such a magnetic look; where you can see the power of the dog’s muscles contracting and releasing energy at the handler’s every nod. Taken during a dog agility competition in Italy." #
12. Monte Rosa Hut—Blue Hour. Shortlist, Architecture. "I took this photograph as part of my Modern Alpine Architecture series. After crossing a glacier and hiking for many hours we arrived at the mountain hut and stayed there for the night. Early in the morning, before sunrise, I started my drone to capture the first light of the new day falling on this beautiful piece of architecture." #
22. Earth Pyramids. Shortlist, Landscape. "Taken in Percha, Italy. These earth pyramids were formed millions of years ago in the Dolomite mountains. On this particular morning they were in low clouds, which adds to the atmosphere." #
How Biden saved Silicon Valley startups: Inside the 72 hours that transformed U.S. banking
A historic rescue of a distressed industry came together rapidly, reshaping the government’s relationship with banks in far-reaching ways.
Security guards let individuals enter the Silicon Valley Bank's headquarters
in Santa Clara, Calif., on March 13, 2023. | AP Photo/ Benjamin Fanjoy
By ADAM CANCRYN, BEN WHITE and VICTORIA GUIDA
03/13/2023 08:25 PM EDT
On Sunday afternoon, an exhausted group of Biden administration officials gathered to put the finishing touches on a hastily composed plan to stave off a nationwide banking crisis.
Just a little more than 72 hours had passed since Silicon Valley Bank suddenly collapsed, rocking the tech industry and igniting fears that the U.S. was on the verge of a financial meltdown.
The bank’s demise had come as just as much of a surprise to the White House as it did to the public, triggering a weekend sprint to contain the fallout that spanned several agencies and all hours of the day and night.
The result, announced just minutes before financial markets in Asia reopened, was sweeping: The federal government would provide SVB’s depositors with access to all their funds, effectively averting painful financial uncertainty – and the threat of heavy losses – for thousands of venture-backed startups. Signature Bank, which had followed SVB into insolvency, would receive the same guarantee.
Even more critically, the Federal Reserve would provide a massive lifeline to the nation’s banks: It would single handedly give all other similar lenders access to funds designed to keep them afloat and quell the panic brewing across the country.
The swift and forceful action to rescue depositors at the two failed midsize lenders rewrote crucial banking guardrails in ways that could reverberate for years. It put the Biden administration’s stamp — for good or ill — on the sector’s future financial stability, while sending a message about the government’s willingness to rescue private businesses in new ways. It also was done without passing a single new act of Congress or holding hearings among elected officials in recent days.
The result, announced just minutes before financial markets in Asia reopened, was sweeping: The federal government would provide SVB’s depositors with access to all their funds, effectively averting painful financial uncertainty – and the threat of heavy losses – for thousands of venture-backed startups. Signature Bank, which had followed SVB into insolvency, would receive the same guarantee.
Even more critically, the Federal Reserve would provide a massive lifeline to the nation’s banks: It would singlehandedly give all other similar lenders access to funds designed to keep them afloat and quell the panic brewing across the country.
The swift and forceful action to rescue depositors at the two failed midsize lenders rewrote crucial banking guardrails in ways that could reverberate for years. It put the Biden administration’s stamp — for good or ill — on the sector’s future financial stability, while sending a message about the government’s willingness to rescue private businesses in new ways. It also was done without passing a single new act of Congress or holding hearings among elected officials in recent days.
And it almost didn’t happen.
President Joe Biden began the weekend highly skeptical of anything that could be labeled a taxpayer-funded bailout, according to four people close to the situation, who were not authorized to speak for attribution.
That would be a serious political risk for the president given that many of SVB’s customers were start-up entrepreneurs and investors with so much money deposited in the bank that they far exceeded the federal government’s $250,000 insurance limit. Signature catered in part to once-high-flying crypto investors.
‘Your deposits are safe’: Biden assures public after Silicon Valley Bank collapse
SharePlay Video
Biden, who as vice president had watched then-President Barack Obama get hammered over his role in bailing out giant banks during the financial crisis, had little desire for a repeat — especially since he had long embraced a “bottom-up, middle out” economic philosophy focused on average working families, the people close to the situation said.
Yet as officials worked through the weekend – mostly in open-ended virtual meetings tying several agencies together — to determine the blast radius of SVB’s failure, they concluded that failing to protect the bank’s depositors could leave small businesses across the country unable to access money needed to pay workers and keep their operations going.
“There’s not a way to help the people he wants without also helping the uninsured depositors who made a bad choice by putting too much money into a single bank,” said one adviser to the White House. “I have no doubt in my mind that he feels ambivalent about it. But he’s not willing to take a risk with this economy.”
Though there was little concern that the failures of SVB and Signature threatened to destabilize the entire banking sector, officials mapping the network of companies tied to those institutions worried that refusing to step in could disrupt large swaths of the economy.
Panicked depositors would likely pull their money en masse from other regional banks, creating a cascading crisis on top of the alarm already spreading throughout Silicon Valley.
Biden aides and Democratic lawmakers had also grown concerned about the viability of certain payroll-processing companies tied to SVB, two people familiar with the discussions said. If they were unable to function, the number of workers at risk of not receiving their paychecks would increase exponentially. The situation risked spiraling quickly from there, denting consumer confidence in the economy’s stability.
“There’s just a lot of sensitivity, and he doesn’t want to disrupt an economy that he thinks is doing really well for workers,” the adviser said. “The direction was: Stabilize everything.”
Biden eventually came around to the view that an emergency rescue was the only viable option after multiple briefings Friday through Sunday from chief of staff Jeff Zients and new National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard, who just joined the White House after serving as vice chair of the Fed and chair of the central bank’s Financial Stability Committee. He also spoke with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday about SVB’s failure and its impact on the state.
Biden received a final briefing from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen along with Zients and Brainard on Sunday afternoon shortly before the announcement.
Throughout the weekend, Biden’s inner circle emphasized the potential impact on workers’ paychecks, which they believed would resonate both with the president and the public, said one of the people familiar with the deliberations. And they urged Biden to speak to the public before U.S. markets opened to ward off runs on other regional banks.
Biden agreed, but not before stressing that his speech needed to play up his concern for small businesses and make it clear Americans should maintain trust in the banking system.
At 1 p.m. Friday, Yellen convened a team to come up with a battle plan: Fed Chair Jerome Powell, FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg, Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu, and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, whose regional branch oversaw the bank.
Their teams eventually settled on three potential options, according to a person familiar with the talks: looking for a buyer, backstopping uninsured depositors, and launching a new emergency lending program at the Fed. By Saturday, they’d agreed to pull the trigger and work on all three.
But it was not easy getting to the finish line, especially when it came to the FDIC and protecting all depositors at the two failed banks.
The FDIC’s decision was particularly fraught and down to the final hours, two people said. Agency officials worried that the proposal could create thorny issues for the agency, which is statutorily bound to protect the deposit insurance fund — a longstanding pot of money financed by bank fees.
It also raised questions about whether the FDIC might be expected to make all depositors whole anytime a bank fails, something it is not designed to do, making the decision especially painful for Gruenberg and his fellow board members.
Though the Fed and the FDIC were each designed to stop financial panics, the moves by both agencies also risked ratifying the notion that the government would always be there to dull the consequences of the collapse of a larger bank. It was the “moral hazard” question that dogged rescue efforts in 2008 and 2009.
But the administration needed a straightforward solution, and also faced increasing pressure from Capitol Hill, where California lawmakers inundated by worried constituents pushed officials to take whatever steps were necessary to maximize SVB’s chances of being bought by another bank.
Members of the California delegation spent the weekend scrambling for any information that might shed light on whether SVB’s extensive customer network of high-tech startups and powerful venture capitalists would be able to access their funds come Monday. A briefing with FDIC officials on Friday offered little substance — according to a lawmaker who attended – as the agency was still gathering information about the bank’s uninsured deposits.
As information trickled out on Sunday about a possible plan to backstop depositors, FDIC and Treasury officials wouldn’t even confirm or deny a widely reported auction process for SVB’s assets, Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat whose district includes a large section of Silicon Valley, said in an interview.
While lawmakers remained largely in the dark until shortly before the announcement, officials from the Fed, FDIC, White House and Treasury spent all weekend in rolling virtual meetings that continued through Friday and Saturday nights into Sunday.
The administration had yet to finalize its plan by the time Yellen went on “Face the Nation” Sunday morning, forcing her to remain noncommittal about a path forward. Yellen merely said the government would not be bailing out a bank’s investors.
Yet over the next several hours, officials raced to nail down the final details of their approach. Emails and drafts were exchanged among the top players right up until they pushed the button on the announcement and held press briefings. One person familiar with the meetings described them as short of frantic but “very driven and determined.”
As information trickled out on Sunday about a possible plan to backstop depositors, FDIC and Treasury officials wouldn’t even confirm or deny a widely reported auction process for SVB’s assets, Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat whose district includes a large section of Silicon Valley, said in an interview.
While lawmakers remained largely in the dark until shortly before the announcement, officials from the Fed, FDIC, White House and Treasury spent all weekend in rolling virtual meetings that continued through Friday and Saturday nights into Sunday.
The administration had yet to finalize its plan by the time Yellen went on “Face the Nation” Sunday morning, forcing her to remain noncommittal about a path forward. Yellen merely said the government would not be bailing out a bank’s investors.
Yet over the next several hours, officials raced to nail down the final details of their approach. Emails and drafts were exchanged among the top players right up until they pushed the button on the announcement and held press briefings. One person familiar with the meetings described them as short of frantic but “very driven and determined.”
Politicians sound off on SVB investors after bank failure
SharePlay Video
At 6:15 p.m. ET on Sunday, the Fed, Treasury and the FDIC jointly announced that the government would immediately provide access to all depositor funds held at the two failed banks, using the government’s power to immediately designate the institutions as systemically significant.
The action did forestall a market meltdown. Stocks ended Monday only slightly lower. But it did not keep investors from hammering other regional banks. Shares in First Republic, which saw lines of panicked depositors over the weekend, plunged 62 percent despite the government actions, suggesting investors still have doubts about the banking system, especially the tiers just below the most heavily regulated giant banks.
Bob Kocher, a partner at venture capital firm Venrock and former Obama-era White House official, said some panicked companies are going as far as transferring all their money into board members’ individual bank accounts while they set up their own new accounts with major financial institutions.
“There’s no way now as a board member you can sign off on putting all your money into a regional bank,” he said, adding that he expects to see significant outflows at similarly sized institutions like First Republic Bank and PacWest Bancorp. “Everybody’s racing to put their money into JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.”
Beyond making payroll, Kocher said, SVB’s failure raised questions about how companies would pay for basic services like cloud storage and website maintenance, as well a constellation of smaller suppliers, if their deposits got tied up in a troubled bank.
“I think it’s going to take at least a month or two for things to calm down and settle out,” he said.
There’s similar trepidation among Biden officials, who spent Monday holding their breath, closely monitoring banks’ falling stock prices for signs of broader contagion.
In the meantime, aides have tried to head off blowback from the party’s progressive wing, emphasizing that taxpayer money won’t directly go toward propping up SVB’s depositors — and that the toll on workers could have been far worse had they simply let the bank fail.
There’s similar trepidation among Biden allies, even as a handful of Democratic and Republican lawmakers voiced early support for the administration’s actions. And falling stock prices across the banking sector on Monday had officials holding their breath, closely monitoring for signs of broader contagion.
Biden officials in the meantime have also tried to head off blowback from the party’s progressive wing, emphasizing that taxpayer money won’t directly go toward propping up SVB’s depositors — and that the toll on workers could have been far worse had they simply let the bank fail.
Biden stressed that point on Monday in remarks aimed at calming the markets, expressing confidence that “the banking system is safe” while also repeatedly emphasizing that taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook for any losses.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, was similarly resolute. “The government is not bailing out anything,” she said in an interview.
“If the banks have made mistakes, if the investments have been bad, if they weren’t watching the balance sheet, they’re going to be held accountable.”
Jonathan Lemire, Sam Sutton and Eleanor Mueller contributed to this report
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/13/the-emergency-bank-rescue-that-almost-didnt-happen-72-hours-00086868
US turns to new ways to punish Russian oligarchs for the war
By FATIMA HUSSEIN today
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. has begun an aggressive new push to inflict pain on Russia’s economy and specifically its oligarchs with the intent of thwarting the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
From the Treasury Department to the Justice Department, U.S. officials will focus on efforts to legally liquidate the property of Russian oligarchs, expand financial penalties on those who facilitate the evasion of sanctions, and close loopholes in the law that allow oligarchs to use shell companies to move through the U.S. financial system.
Andrew Adams, who heads the KleptoCapture task force, .. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-business-merrick-garland-global-trade-fd472fe7e9eb525cc9f9401b8a623939 .. designed to enforce the economic restrictions within the U.S. imposed on Russia and its billionaires, told The Associated Press that the group is prioritizing its efforts to identify those who help Russians evade sanctions and violate export controls.
“These illicit procurement networks will continue to take up an ever-increasing amount of our bandwidth,” said Adams, who also serves as acting deputy assistant attorney general.
So far, more than $58 billion worth of sanctioned Russians’ assets have been blocked or frozen worldwide, according to a report last week from the Treasury Department. That includes two luxury yachts each worth $300 million in San Diego and Fiji, and six New York and Florida properties worth $75 million owned by sanctioned oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
The U.S. has begun attempts to punish the associates and wealth managers of oligarchs — in Vekselberg’s case, a federal court in New York indicted Vladimir Voronchenko after he helped maintain Vekselberg’s properties. He was charged in February with conspiring to violate and evade U.S. sanctions.
The case was coordinated through the KleptoCapture group.
“I think it can be quite effective to be sanctioning facilitators,” Adams said, calling them “professional sanctions evasion brokers.”
A February study led by Dartmouth University researchers showed that targeting a few key wealth managers would cause far greater damage to Russia than sanctioning oligarchs individually.
Other attempts to inflict pain on the Russian economy will come from the efforts to liquidate yachts and other property owned by Russian oligarchs and the Kremlin, turning them into cash to benefit Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long called for Russian assets to be transferred to Ukraine, and former Biden administration official Daleep Singh told the Senate Banking Committee on Feb. 28 that forfeiting Russia’s billions in assets held by the U.S. is “something we ought to pursue.”
Singh suggested the U.S. should “use the reserves that we have immobilized at the New York Fed, transfer them to Ukraine and allow them to put them up as collateral to raise money.” He ran the White House’s Russia sanctions program when he was national security adviser for international economics.
Adams said the KleptoCapture task force is pursuing efforts to sell Russians’ yachts and other property, despite the legal difficulties of turning property whose owners’ access has been blocked into forfeited assets that the government can take and sell for the benefit of Ukraine.
He stressed that the U.S. will operate under the rule of law. “Part of what that means is that we will not take assets that are not fully, totally forfeited through the judicial procedures and begin confiscating them without a legal basis,” Adams said.
He added that the task force has had “success in working with Congress and working with folks around the executive branch in obtaining authorization to transfer certain forfeited funds to the State Department.”
The Treasury Department said on Thursday that the government is “paving the way” for $5.4 million in seized funds to be sent as foreign assistance to Ukraine.
Additionally, strengthening laws that serve as loopholes for sanctions evaders will also be a priority across federal departments, officials say.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, under Treasury, is expected to roll out rules to address the use of the U.S. real estate market to launder money, including a requirement on disclosing the true ownership of real estate.
Steven Tian, director of research at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, who tracks companies’ disengagement from Russia, said the new real estate rule is long overdue.
“I would point out that it’s not just unique to Russian oligarchs. As you know, the real estate market makes use of shell companies in the United States, period,” Tian said.
Erica Hanichak, the government affairs director at the FACT Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes corporate transparency, urged the administration to put the rule forward by late March, when the U.S. co-hosts the second Summit for Democracy with the governments of Costa Rica, Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia.
“We’re viewing this as an opportunity for the United States to demonstrate leadership not only in addressing corrupt practices abroad, but looking to our own backyard and addressing the loopholes in our system that facilitate corruption internationally,” she said.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-sanctions-oligarchs-money-laundering-766fa10695ee7bb20175a474028ee562
Pence says Trump ‘endangered my family’ on Jan. 6
By ZEKE MILLER and CHRIS MEGERIAN
today
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday harshly criticized former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, widening the rift between the two men as they prepare to battle over the Republican nomination in next year’s election.
“President Trump was wrong,” Pence said during remarks at the annual white-tie Gridiron Dinner attended by politicians and journalists. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”
Pence’s remarks were the sharpest condemnation yet from the once-loyal lieutenant who has often shied away from confronting his former boss. Trump has already declared his candidacy. Pence has not, but he’s been laying the groundwork to run.
In the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Trump pressured Pence to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory as he presided over the ceremonial certification of the results. Pence refused, and when rioters stormed the Capitol, some chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence.”
The House committee that investigated the attack said in its final report that “the President of the United States had riled up a mob that hunted his own Vice President.”
With his remarks, Pence solidified his place in a broader debate within the Republican Party over how to view the attack. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, for example, recently provided Tucker Carlson with an archive of security camera footage from Jan. 6, which the Fox News host has used to downplay the day’s events and promote conspiracy theories.
“Make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace,” Pence said in his Gridiron Dinner remarks. “And it mocks decency to portray it any other way.”
Trump, meanwhile, has continued to spread lies about his election loss. He’s even spoken in support of the rioters and said he would consider pardoning them if he was reelected.
Speeches at the Gridiron Dinner are usually humorous affairs, where politicians poke fun at each other, and Pence did plenty of that as well.
He joked that Trump’s ego was so fragile, he wanted his vice president to sing “Wind Beneath My Wings” — one of the lines is “did you ever know that you’re my hero?” — during their weekly lunches.
He took another shot at Trump over classified documents.
“I read that some of those classified documents they found at Mar-a-Lago were actually stuck in the president’s Bible,” Pence said. “Which proves he had absolutely no idea they were there.”
Even before the dinner was over, Pence was facing criticism for his jokes about Transportation Secretary Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member in U.S. history.
Pence mentioned that, despite travel problems that were plaguing Americans, Buttigieg took “maternity leave” after he and his husband adopted newborn twins.
“Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets post-partum depression,” Pence said. ___
Megerian reported from Wilmington, Delaware.
https://apnews.com/article/pence-trump-january-6-capitol-riot-carlson-1e38cb44d55737031ca528b4f33aa1fb?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01
Ex-Trump attorney admits statements about 2020 election were false and is censured by judge
By Tierney Sneed, CNN
Updated 3:03 PM EST, Thu March 9, 2023''
00:51
Trump's legal adviser criticized his supporters in 2016 (2021)
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/09/politics/jenna-ellis-former-trump-attorney/index.html
CNN — Jenna Ellis was censured by a disciplinary judge in Colorado Wednesday, in the latest effort to hold accountable attorneys who boosted former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election reversal gambits.
Ellis signed a stipulation stating that several comments she made about the 2020 election violated professional ethics rules barring reckless, knowing or intentional misrepresentations by attorneys, according to documents posted by Colorado’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel. As part of the stipulation, Ellis agrees to pay $224.
Among the false statements highlighted in the stipulation were comments by Ellis on social media and in TV appearances claiming that the Trump campaign had evidence the election was “stolen.”
“The public censure in this matter reinforces that even if engaged in political speech, there is a line attorneys cannot cross, particularly when they are speaking in a representative capacity,” Jessica Yates, attorney regulation counsel for the Colorado Supreme Court, said in a statement.
Michael Melito, an attorney for Ellis, told CNN in a statement, “My client remains a practicing attorney in good standing in the State of Colorado. In a very heated political climate, we have secured that correct outcome.”
The censure was first reported by the Colorado Newsline.
https://coloradonewsline.com/briefs/former-trump-lawyer-jenna-ellis-censured-in-colorado-for-false-election-claims/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/09/politics/jenna-ellis-former-trump-attorney/index.html
Fox News spins lies in the service of greed
March 1, 2023 at 12:38 pm Updated March 1, 2023 at 12:38 pm
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/fox-news-spins-lies-in-the-service-of-greed/
Lawsuit against Fox shows the news behind the Trump news
By DAVID BAUDER today
FILE - Rupert Murdoch introduces Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the Herman Kahn Award Gala, Oct. 30, 2019, in New York. A defamation lawsuit against Fox News is revealing blunt behind-the-scenes opinions by its top figures about Donald Trump, including a Tucker Carlson text message where he said “I hate him passionately.” Carlson's private conversation was revealed in court papers at virtually the same time as the former president was hailing the Fox News host on social media for a “great job” for using U.S. Capitol security video to produce a false narrative of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Fresh revelations flowing from a major defamation lawsuit are shedding light on what was happening inside Fox News .. https://apnews.com/article/tucker-carlson-fox-news-murdoch-capitol-attack-96c305cf4046aaf373130876940fd06e?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_03 .. following the 2020 presidential election.
Here are some things to know about the case.
THE CASE
Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox for $1.6 billion, claiming the news outlet repeatedly aired allegations that the company engaged in fraud that doomed President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign while knowing they were untrue. Fox contends that it was reporting newsworthy charges made by supporters of the president and is supported legally by libel standards. The case is scheduled for trial next month.
ELECTION DISCONNECT
Dominion has produced evidence that prominent people at Fox knew the fraud allegations were untrue, even as they and the president’s allies were given airtime to repeat them. Fox’s Sean Hannity said in a deposition that he did not believe the fraud claims “for one second,” but he wanted to give accusers the chance to produce evidence. Fox founder Rupert Murdoch, questioned under oath, agreed the 2020 presidential election was free and fair: “The election was not stolen,” he said. Murdoch also said he was aware some Fox commentators — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Hannity — at times endorsed false claims, but he did nothing to stop them.
OX’S FEAR
The court papers have laid out a profound concern at Fox over the impact of its election night call that Democrat Joe Biden had beaten Trump in the battleground state of Arizona — a call that was accurate. Fox scooped its rivals on the call, but it infuriated Trump and many Fox viewers, who expressed their anger and began tuning in to rival conservative media outlets such as Newsmax. The call was making so many people uncomfortable at Fox that news anchor Bret Baier even suggested it be overturned and Arizona counted in Trump’s column. The Washington executive responsible for the declaration held firm and was proven right — then paid for it with his job two months later.
LIBEL LAW
In its defense, Fox has relied on a doctrine of libel law in place since a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that has made it difficult for plaintiffs to prove defamation. Public figures, and Dominion fits that standard in this case, have to prove not only that the information reported was incorrect, but that the news organization acted with “reckless disregard” about whether it was true or not. Fox says Dominion can’t prove its case, but some First Amendment advocates suggest the company has a strong argument. Their worry is that a prolonged legal battle would give the Supreme Court a chance to change libel laws that would weaken protection for all the media.
TRUMP’S INTEREST
Trump has taken a keen interest in the case, judging by his social media posts. Always concerned about loyalty, and nursing a long grudge about the Arizona call, he has expressed anger at revelations in the case that many people at Fox not only did not support his fraud allegations but privately disdained them.
Court exhibits released this week contained blunt, dismissive assessments of Trump by some people who thought they were involved in private conversations — including host Tucker Carlson, who said in a text message in January 2021 about the president, “I hate him passionately.”
THE ELECTION
Federal and state election officials, exhaustive reviews in multiple battleground states where Trump challenged his loss and Trump’s attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Nor did they uncover any credible evidence that the vote was tainted. Trump’s allegations of fraud also have been roundly rejected by dozens of courts, including by judges he had appointed.
https://apnews.com/article/fox-defamation-election-claims-trump-voting-machines-fb65c0fea93aa14bb7a5c802b60d596f?utm_source=apnews&utm_medium=relatedcontentmodule
McIlroy Day Hovland Bradley Young 277
The Most Decorated Female Soldier in the History of Modern Warfare
There are no National Defense Medals in World War I Serbia.
Military.com | By Blake Stilwell
LISTEN -- The Most Decorated Female Soldier in the History of Modern Warfare
https://www.military.com/history/most-decorated-female-soldier-history-of-modern-warfare.html?ESRC=mr_230306.nl
In 1912, the nations of the Balkans joined together to kick the Ottoman Empire out of Europe, end its influence in their countries and free the people living in those territories from Ottoman rule. Spoiler alert: They were wildly successful, but only after raising a combined army of more than 750,000 men. And at least one woman.
The Serbians had to call up 255,000 men, almost 9% of its total population at the time, so the army went far and wide to find conscripts. In the tiny village of Koprivnica, it called up Milunka Savic’s brother, who was suffering from tuberculosis
This region of Serbia just happened to be known as a hotbed of Serbian patriotism, so the Savic family wasn’t about to shirk its duty just because of a deadly lung infection. Milunka Savic cut her hair, donned a uniform and set out in her brother’s place as Milun Savic, which was a great ruse considering her village only had 20 people in it.
Pictured: Milun Savic, who is totally not Milunka Savic, no way.
Savic probably didn’t know she was about to set out on a seven-year rampage of destruction across two continents in three wars, but she was definitely willing to try.
The Serbians were divided into four groups, the bulk of which fought the Ottomans’ western army near Novi Pazar, right outside of Savic’s home village. At just 24 years old, she joined the Iron Regiment, which saw action almost immediately at the Battle of Kumanovo, the first major battle of the war, on Oct. 24, 1912.
When the Ottoman commander realized the Serbs weren’t ready at Kumanovo, he just attacked. Despite the surprise, the Serbs put such a beating on the Turks that the entire Ottoman offensive had to be scrapped, and they retreated from the area altogether.
The Serbians forced the Ottoman Army into a pocket from which it couldn’t escape, laid siege to Shkodër alongside their Montenegrin allies and occupied northern Albania until the war ended. After seven months, the Turks were essentially kicked out of Europe. Savic must have learned a lot from this first war, which was a good thing, because the next one came pretty quick.
Unhappy with how the spoils of war turned out for Bulgaria, that southeastern European country turned on the rest of its former allies. It was a bad call. Not only did Montenegro, Greece and Serbia have veteran armies by then, Romania and the Ottoman Empire wanted a piece of Bulgaria, too.
The Iron Regiment was sent to Bregalnica in July 1913. In what turned out to be the largest battle of the Second Balkan War, nearly hundreds of thousands of Serbians clashed with Bulgaria’s finest.
The Bulgarians’ plan was to surprise the Serbian Army, which, as we know, is a bad move. They tried to overpower the middle of the Serbian lines, which just happened to be Savic’s regiment. Savic’s superpower, it turns out, was lobbing grenades at enemy offensives, and she did it over and over at Bregalnica, running right into a charging army 10 times. For her trouble, she received her first medal for valor and a grenade to the chest.
Taken to the field hospital for shrapnel wounds, this is where Serbia’s army discovered her secret. But they didn’t give her a discharge; they gave her a promotion. This worked out for the Serbians, because they got the heroine they didn’t know they needed for the upcoming world war.
Riding high on back-to-back war victories, the Serbians were convinced that Bosnia and Herzegovina belonged to them, not the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which annexed it in 1908. Archduke Franz Ferdinand visited Sarajevo in 1914, where he became history’s most legendary gunshot victim, which led to World War I.
Austria marched a massive force right to Serbia, where the Serbians promptly handed them their fourth point of contact over and over. Savic fought at Cer, where the undersupplied and outnumbered Serbians gave the Allies their first victory over the Central Powers. Their next meeting came at the Kolubara River.
At Kolubara, Savic charged across No Man’s Land with two bandoliers of grenades and her standard-issue rifle. After single-handedly clearing an Austrian trench with those grenades, she ran to the next one, where 20 enemy soldiers surrendered. After sending the prisoners back, she assaulted another trench with grenades. She didn’t stop until shrapnel from an artillery shell hit her in the head.
When you can finally let your hair down and crush your country's enemies as the woman you are.
For her gallantry at Kolubara, she received the highest medal Serbia could bestow, the Karadjordje Star with Swords. Austria lost the battle and was forced to withdraw from Serbia, tail between its legs. Milunka Savic’s career wasn’t over. Serbia was surrounded by enemies Bulgaria, Austria, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, and Savic fought them all.
In 1916, she earned another Karadjordje Star with Swords for cleaning trenches full of Bulgarians by chucking grenades at them, even managing to capture 23 prisoners. The Serbians couldn’t hold out against all of its enemies and were forced to retreat across Albania. They were picked up by the French and Italians and joined the French Army of the Orient to continue the fight.
Savic was wounded a total of nine times over the course of her three wars. She was also awarded 12 medals, including two French Legions d'Honneur, Russia’s Cross of St. George, the British Medal of the Order of St. Michael, the Serbian Milos Obilic Medal, and she was the only woman in all of World War I to receive the French Croix de Guerre.
The monument to Milunka Savic in Jošanicka Banja.
As a recipient of the Legion d'Honneur, France offered to set her up in Paris with a home and a nice pension after the war, but she did not want to leave Serbia.
Instead, she became a factory worker, cook, nurse, janitor and, during World War II, ran a hospital for partisans.
She died in Belgrade in 1973, still the most decorated female combatant in history.
https://www.military.com/history/most-decorated-female-soldier-history-of-modern-warfare.html?ESRC=mr_230306.nl
The Most Decorated Female Soldier in the History of Modern Warfare
There are no National Defense Medals in World War I Serbia.
Military.com | By Blake Stilwell
LISTEN -- The Most Decorated Female Soldier in the History of Modern Warfare
https://www.military.com/history/most-decorated-female-soldier-history-of-modern-warfare.html?ESRC=mr_230306.nl
In 1912, the nations of the Balkans joined together to kick the Ottoman Empire out of Europe, end its influence in their countries and free the people living in those territories from Ottoman rule. Spoiler alert: They were wildly successful, but only after raising a combined army of more than 750,000 men. And at least one woman.
The Serbians had to call up 255,000 men, almost 9% of its total population at the time, so the army went far and wide to find conscripts. In the tiny village of Koprivnica, it called up Milunka Savic’s brother, who was suffering from tuberculosis
This region of Serbia just happened to be known as a hotbed of Serbian patriotism, so the Savic family wasn’t about to shirk its duty just because of a deadly lung infection. Milunka Savic cut her hair, donned a uniform and set out in her brother’s place as Milun Savic, which was a great ruse considering her village only had 20 people in it.
Pictured: Milun Savic, who is totally not Milunka Savic, no way.
Savic probably didn’t know she was about to set out on a seven-year rampage of destruction across two continents in three wars, but she was definitely willing to try.
The Serbians were divided into four groups, the bulk of which fought the Ottomans’ western army near Novi Pazar, right outside of Savic’s home village. At just 24 years old, she joined the Iron Regiment, which saw action almost immediately at the Battle of Kumanovo, the first major battle of the war, on Oct. 24, 1912.
When the Ottoman commander realized the Serbs weren’t ready at Kumanovo, he just attacked. Despite the surprise, the Serbs put such a beating on the Turks that the entire Ottoman offensive had to be scrapped, and they retreated from the area altogether.
The Serbians forced the Ottoman Army into a pocket from which it couldn’t escape, laid siege to Shkodër alongside their Montenegrin allies and occupied northern Albania until the war ended. After seven months, the Turks were essentially kicked out of Europe. Savic must have learned a lot from this first war, which was a good thing, because the next one came pretty quick.
Unhappy with how the spoils of war turned out for Bulgaria, that southeastern European country turned on the rest of its former allies. It was a bad call. Not only did Montenegro, Greece and Serbia have veteran armies by then, Romania and the Ottoman Empire wanted a piece of Bulgaria, too.
The Iron Regiment was sent to Bregalnica in July 1913. In what turned out to be the largest battle of the Second Balkan War, nearly hundreds of thousands of Serbians clashed with Bulgaria’s finest.
The Bulgarians’ plan was to surprise the Serbian Army, which, as we know, is a bad move. They tried to overpower the middle of the Serbian lines, which just happened to be Savic’s regiment. Savic’s superpower, it turns out, was lobbing grenades at enemy offensives, and she did it over and over at Bregalnica, running right into a charging army 10 times. For her trouble, she received her first medal for valor and a grenade to the chest.
Taken to the field hospital for shrapnel wounds, this is where Serbia’s army discovered her secret. But they didn’t give her a discharge; they gave her a promotion. This worked out for the Serbians, because they got the heroine they didn’t know they needed for the upcoming world war.
Riding high on back-to-back war victories, the Serbians were convinced that Bosnia and Herzegovina belonged to them, not the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which annexed it in 1908. Archduke Franz Ferdinand visited Sarajevo in 1914, where he became history’s most legendary gunshot victim, which led to World War I.
Austria marched a massive force right to Serbia, where the Serbians promptly handed them their fourth point of contact over and over. Savic fought at Cer, where the undersupplied and outnumbered Serbians gave the Allies their first victory over the Central Powers. Their next meeting came at the Kolubara River.
At Kolubara, Savic charged across No Man’s Land with two bandoliers of grenades and her standard-issue rifle. After single-handedly clearing an Austrian trench with those grenades, she ran to the next one, where 20 enemy soldiers surrendered. After sending the prisoners back, she assaulted another trench with grenades. She didn’t stop until shrapnel from an artillery shell hit her in the head.
When you can finally let your hair down and crush your country's enemies as the woman you are.
For her gallantry at Kolubara, she received the highest medal Serbia could bestow, the Karadjordje Star with Swords. Austria lost the battle and was forced to withdraw from Serbia, tail between its legs. Milunka Savic’s career wasn’t over. Serbia was surrounded by enemies Bulgaria, Austria, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, and Savic fought them all.
In 1916, she earned another Karadjordje Star with Swords for cleaning trenches full of Bulgarians by chucking grenades at them, even managing to capture 23 prisoners. The Serbians couldn’t hold out against all of its enemies and were forced to retreat across Albania. They were picked up by the French and Italians and joined the French Army of the Orient to continue the fight.
Savic was wounded a total of nine times over the course of her three wars. She was also awarded 12 medals, including two French Legions d'Honneur, Russia’s Cross of St. George, the British Medal of the Order of St. Michael, the Serbian Milos Obilic Medal, and she was the only woman in all of World War I to receive the French Croix de Guerre.
The monument to Milunka Savic in Jošanicka Banja.
As a recipient of the Legion d'Honneur, France offered to set her up in Paris with a home and a nice pension after the war, but she did not want to leave Serbia.
Instead, she became a factory worker, cook, nurse, janitor and, during World War II, ran a hospital for partisans.
She died in Belgrade in 1973, still the most decorated female combatant in history.
https://www.military.com/history/most-decorated-female-soldier-history-of-modern-warfare.html?ESRC=mr_230306.nl
In four years, President Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims
The Fact Checker’s database of the false or misleading claims made by President Trump while in office.
Updated Jan. 20, 2021
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?itid=lk_inline_manual_11
60 false claims in 2 hours: Trump’s CPAC speech was by far his most-dishonest single event as president
Trump made 111 false claims in all last week, the ninth-worst week of his presidency so far.
By Daniel Dale, Washington Bureau Chief
Wed., March 6, 2019
WASHINGTON— President Donald Trump made 60 false claims in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, shattering his old record for false claims in a single speech.
At 2 hours and 2 minutes, Trump’s speech to CPAC was also by far the longest of his presidency. If you’re counting false claims per minute, Star editor Ed Tubb notes, Trump made almost an identical amount to CPAC, 0.49 per minute, as he did in the Pennsylvania rally speech in August at which he set his old record of 36, 0.46 per minute.
But still: man, 60 false claims in a single speech.
Six of them were on the subject of his crowds. One of those was a lie he told even though hundreds of his supporters could see it was a lie.
When Trump seemed to be a couple minutes from finally reaching his conclusion, journalists including myself and hundreds of conference attendees watched dozens of people walk out of the room...
… after which, Trump said, “And, by the way, I’m watching those doors. Not one person has left, and I’ve been up here a long time…But not one person. So if you hear tomorrow, when they read ‘people left’ — nobody left early. There hasn’t been one person that’s left. But when you read it, you just say ‘fake news.’”
I’m skeptical of grand theories of Trump’s dishonesty; I think he often lies simply because that’s how his brain works. But there’s a school of thought that he tells extremely obvious lies as a demonstration of his power over people — to show that he can deny reality to people who know he is denying reality and still retain their fealty. It seemed like that might be what he was doing at CPAC.
Trump made 111 false claims in all last week, his ninth-worst week so far.
Donald Trump's false claims, by week
Trump is now up to 4,557 false claims for the first 773 days of his presidency, an average of 5.9 per day.
Now you can stay on top of Donald Trump’s lies and false claims like never before with Daniel Dale’s new Trumpcheck newsletter. Sign up here.
If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? You can read our detailed explanation here. The short answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not telling the truth.
The false things Trump said last week
Mar 3, 2019
"After more than two years of Presidential Harassment, the only things that have been proven is that Democrats and other broke the law. The hostile Cohen testimony, given by a liar to reduce his prison time, proved no Collusion! His just written book manuscript showed what he said was a total lie, but Fake Media won't show it."
Source: Twitter
in fact: Cohen never submitted a manuscript for the Trump book he had been discussing in early 2018, which his initial proposal suggested would be at least mildly positive. Center Street, the conservative imprint that had initially planned to publish the book, told Politico: "We never saw a manuscript from Mr. Cohen," Center Street publisher Rolf Zettersten said. The Daily Beast reported in May 2018 that the book deal had been "called off amid Cohen's legal woes." Politico reported: "Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, added in a statement: 'Sometime in early 2018, Mr. Cohen was offered a substantial advance for a proposal regarding a book on understanding Donald Trump. Mr. Cohen ultimately elected not to proceed. In other words, POTUS has yet lied again.'"
"I am an innocent man being persecuted by some very bad, conflicted & corrupt people in a Witch Hunt that is illegal & should never have been allowed to start - And only because I won the Election!"
Source: Twitter
in fact: There is simply no evidence that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign's relationship with Russia is illegal. Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Republican appointed by Trump.
Mar 2, 2019
"And, by the way, I'm watching those doors. Not one person has left, and I've been up here a long time...But not one person. So if you hear tomorrow, when they read 'people left' -- nobody left early. There hasn't been one person that's left. But when you read it, you just say 'fake news.'"
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: We were present at this speech, with a clear view of the doors, and dozens of people had left in the few minutes prior to Trump saying this. Journalist Asawin Suebsaeng of the Daily Beast saw the same thing: "Trump just started bragging that nobody had left early during his two hour speech at #CPAC2019 literally as a fairly long procession of people and students in the audience had been filing out very clearly. Attendees behind press area started laughing because they all could see."
"And we got them Accountability. You couldn't fire anybody in the VA. You had sadists. You had people that took advantage of our veterans. They've hit them. They were sadists. They were sick people. You couldn't fire them. You had thieves that were stealing -- openly stealing. You couldn't fire them. I got a bill passed: VA Accountability. Now you look at the guy, you say, "Get the hell out of here. You're fired. Get out."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: As FactCheck.org reported: "It was possible for VA employees to be fired before Trump signed the Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act in June 2017. That law does make it easier for the VA secretary to remove employees by shortening the firing process and expediting the appeals process for senior executives, among other things. But the VA was already terminating about 2,300 employees (for performance and disciplinary reasons) each fiscal year on average before Trump's presidency going back to 2005."
"And we will never forget our military. We will never forget our veterans. We are taking care of our veterans like they've never been taken care of before. We just got them Choice, so now they can go see a doctor. Now they can go and see a doctor instead of waiting on line for weeks and weeks and weeks...And VA Choice, they thought -- for many, many decades they'd been trying to get VA Choice. You couldn't get it. Now, instead of waiting on line for two days, nine days, three weeks -- people were dying. People that weren't very sick would be dead by the time they saw a doctor, six weeks later. Now these great veterans, if there's a big wait, they go outside, they go to a local doctor. We pay the bills. They get better. Everybody is happy. And we actually save a lot of money, if you can believe it. And I got that approved after 44 years of being unable to get it approved -- for our veterans. We love our veterans."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The Veterans Choice health program was passed and created in 2014 under Obama. The law Trump signed in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, modified the Choice program.
"And then -- and then we had Florida, and many others. And we have a candidate, Ron DeSantis -- a friend. A friend of many of us in this room. But nobody knew he was running. He was running against, in the primary, somebody that was easily going to win. He was scheduled to be the next governor of Florida. But Ron has been great to me on the witch hunt. He's been a defender of me against these phoney charges of Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia...But then we have Florida. So, Ron DeSantis is at three. Three. He calls up, 'Sir, can I have your endorsement?' I said, 'Ron, you're at three. Your opponent is, I guess, agriculture commissioner -- has $22 million in the bank. His poll numbers are very good. He's up in the 20s or 30s.' I said, 'Ron, don't make me do this, Ron.' 'Sir, I can win.' 'All right, Ron. Here we go.'...But I said, 'Ron, don't do it.' I said, 'All right, I'll do it.' He went from 3 to 60. To 60. And then he ran against a guy who had unbelievable support. He had every celebrity go into Florida. He had money all over the place. And Ron was in there pitching, and I was in there pitching with him. And we now have a great governor in the state of Florida."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: DeSantis was not at 3 per cent in the polls for Republican nominee for Florida governor at the time Trump tweeted his support in December 2017 (which was before DeSantis had not officially entered the race). In September 2017, DeSantis was at 7 per cent in a poll by St. Leo University. In August 2017, DeSantis was at 9 per cent in a poll by Florida Atlantic University. He was at 17 per cent in the most last poll before Trump made a second announcement, in which he offered a "full" endorsement.
"The Green New Deal, right? Green New Deal -- I encourage it. I think it's really something that they should promote. They should work hard on. It's something our country needs desperately. They have to go out and get it. But I'll take the other side of that argument only because I'm mandated to. I'm mandated.But they should stay with that argument. Never change. Never change. No planes. No energy. When the wind stops blowing, that's the end of your electric. Let's hurry up. 'Darling' -- 'Darling, is the wind blowing today? I'd like to watch television, darling.' No, but it's true."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The Green New Deal some Democrats have endorsed -- which at the time existed only in the form of a vague resolution -- did not say "no planes" or "no energy." As for planes, it merely called for "overhauling transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing; clean, affordable, and accessible public transit; and high-speed rail." Trump did not make up this claim out of thin air: a "FAQ" page posted by a leading Green New Deal proponent, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calls for the government to "build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary." But other Democrats did not endorse the FAQ (which Ocasio-Ortez's office quickly deleted), just the official resolution. As for energy, the resolution calls for "meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources, including by dramatically expanding and upgrading renewable power sources; and by deploying new capacity." Trump was likely meaning to suggest the Green New Deal would mean no non-renewable energy, such as oil, gas and coal.
"The Green New Deal would completely abolish the American oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power industries."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The Green New Deal some Democrats have endorsed -- which at the time existed only in the form of a vague resolution -- did not say anything about nuclear power. It called for "meeting 100 per cent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources." Some Democrats believe nuclear power should be part of the mix in this future scenario, some do not. Trump was not simply making this claim up out of thin air: a "FAQ" page shared and then deleted by the office of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leading proponent of the Green New Deal, said, "A Green New Deal is a massive investment in renewable energy production and would not include creating new nuclear plants. It's unclear if we will be able to decommission every nuclear plant within 10 years, but the plan is to transition off of nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible. No one has put the full 10-year plan together yet, and if it is possible to get to fully 100% renewable in 10 years, we will do that." But this statement has not been endorsed by Democrats broadly. The Washington Post reported: "Nuclear lobbyists applauded the noncommittal language in the Green New Deal resolution, while simultaneously pressing for pro-nuclear language in the actual legislation. 'We commend efforts to promote the adoption of clean and zero-emission sources of electricity to address climate change,' Nuclear Energy Institute president Maria Korsnick said. 'Any approach to eliminating greenhouse gas emissions requires all clean energy technologies, including nuclear, to work together to address that urgent problem.'"
"We had a rally at the airport (in Georgia), where 55,000 people showed up to the airport. It was one hangar. They had three other hangars that were full. They went so far back. The problem was they gave the press, like these guys -- they gave the press too good a location because the people behind them couldn't see properly. I was so angry. But we had 55,000 people show up. I said, 'You're going to win the election.' He won the election. He won it fairly easily, against their star. And now David Perdue is going to win for senator in 2020."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: There were nowhere close to 55,000 people at Trump's November rally in Macon, Georgia for Republican governor candidate Brian Kemp. As the Washington Post reported: "Kemp's campaign estimated that 10,000 people attended in total, and the Bibb County Sheriff's Office estimated 12,500 inside and nearly 6,000 outside, according to a fact-check by WMAZ. The overflow crowd sandwiched between the airport and the corporate office numbered in the "hundreds," according to Atlanta magazine. The most generous tally, 18,500, is a far cry from the 55,000 Trump claimed." The Post added: "He previously claimed it was two hangars. But there was only one hangar. The crowd at this event was divided in three: people inside, people just outside the open hangar and a third group watching a TV screen on a different part of the premises, sandwiched between the airport and a corporate office."
"Then he (Brian Kemp) had a tough race against the new star of the Democrat Party -- not Democratic. It's Democrat. We have to do that. ...But then, he had an election against their star who followed me after the State of the Union Address. I didn't think she was great. But she's their star. And who showed up? Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and President Obama. And they campaigned for her, and they worked so hard. And all our man had was Trump. And we kicked their ass. True."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Michelle Obama did not visit Georgia to campaign for Stacey Abrams. She did not campaign for Abrams at all, a spokesperson for Barack Obama said.
"Then we have Georgia -- the governor of Georgia. Great guy. Where's Georgia? Great guy. He was losing in the primary by 10. I got a call from David Perdue and Sonny Perdue -- two great guys. 'Could you endorse him?' I said, 'Let me check.' And I checked him. He was a Trumper before Trump was a Trumper. And I said, 'I love this guy.' He's down by 10. He won by 40. Can you believe that? I endorsed him, Mark. He won by 40."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Trump's endorsement of Brian Kemp in the Republican primary for Georgia governor indeed caused Kemp's numbers to skyrocket, but Kemp was not "down by 10" at the time of the endorsement. The most recent public poll before the endorsement had Kemp up three points. Trump himself has previously said Kemp was merely down five points before the endorsement, not ten: "The other day we endorsed a great gentleman from Georgia. He was probably five points down. He won the election by 40," he said at a rally on July 31.
"And two (senators) that we didn't like got out. They said, 'They retired.' They didn't retire. They were retired. They said, 'These two senators have decided to retire.' No, no, no. They retired because they had like very little support. Like how about five per cent? And eight per cent."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Trump was clearly referring to Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, two of his most frequent Republican critics. Both of them left office in 2018 rather than face a difficult Republican primary. Trump's basic point was fair: he could reasonably argue that they were effectively forced out of office because of their unpopularity with Trump-loving Republican voters. His numbers, however, were exaggerated. In a 2018 poll reported by pro-Trump outlet Breitbart News, Corker trailed 48 per cent to 29 per cent in a hypothetical primary matchup against Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who ended up winning the seat. In a 2017 poll reported by the Tennessee Star, 41 per cent of Tennessee voters said Corker deserves re-election. Both of these results were poor for Corker, but they were not "five per cent" or "eight per cent." Similarly, a month before Flake announced in 2017 that he would retire, The Hill reported on a poll that had Flake trailing a possible primary opponent, Kelli Ward, 58 per cent to 31 per cent, with "only a 25 per cent favourability among Republican primary voters." Again: poor numbers, but not "five per cent" or "eight per cent."
"Then, in an act and a statement, the likes of which I don't think I've ever heard, in Virginia, the governor -- a Democrat -- stated that he would allow babies to be born, to be born outside. He would wrap them. He would take care of them. And then he'll talk to the mother and the father as to what to be done. And if they didn't want the child, who is now outside of the womb -- long outside of the womb -- they will execute the baby after birth. They will execute the baby after birth. And that's one many people have never even heard of or thought about."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam did not state that he would execute a baby after birth; his comments were far less clear. He told a radio station: "You know when we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of, obviously, the mother, with the consent of the physicians, more than one physician by the way. And it's done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that's nonviable. So in this particular example, if a mother is in labour, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother." The comments prompted an uproar from pro-life conservatives, who accused him of endorsing infanticide. Northam's spokesperson, however, said he was speaking only about the rare cases where a woman with a non-viable pregnancy goes into labour. Regardless, Northam clearly did not say he would execute a baby
"Sadly, on immigration and so many other issues, Democrat lawmakers have totally abandoned the American mainstream. But that's going to be good for us in 2020. They're embracing open borders, socialism, and extreme late-term abortion."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Democrats do not support "open borders." They endorse various border security measures, just not Trump's border wall. (Also, of course, only a small fraction of Democratic officeholders identify as socialists of any kind.)
"The Democrats in Congress don't want to touch any of it. Visa lottery -- that's where they put in the names; they put it in a lottery, and you pick, 'Oh, here's a wonderful person. Wonderful. You know, he killed four people.' 'Here's -- here's another wonderful.' And then they get in and we say, 'Gee, that person just came into our country. He just robbed a store and killed somebody.' How is that possible? Because they send us the people they don't want."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: This is, as usual, an inaccurate description of the Diversity Visa Lottery program. Contrary to Trump's claim that foreign countries "send us" less-than-fine people in the lottery in order to get rid of them, would-be immigrants sign up on their own, as individuals, of their own free will, because they want to immigrate.
"The Democrats in Congress don't want to touch any of it. Visa lottery -- that's where they put in the names; they put it in a lottery, and you pick, 'Oh, here's a wonderful person. Wonderful. You know, he killed four people.' 'Here's -- here's another wonderful.' And then they get in and we say, 'Gee, that person just came into our country. He just robbed a store and killed somebody.'"
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Trump was wrong to suggest that the U.S. is forced to take in lottery winners whom the government knows has committed crimes. Lottery winners are subjected to extensive vetting, including criminal background checks, and are regularly rejected for various reasons involving criminal pasts; contrary to Trump's suggestion, the U.S. is not forced to accept people with no questions asked after their names are selected.
"And we want to end catch-and-release. We catch them, we realize they're a criminal, and we have to release them. Think of this: they come onto our land, they put one foot on our land. We now have to take them through a massive court trial. Who does this? Other countries say, 'Get the hell out of here.' We have to take them through court. So we catch them. We talk to them. If they're criminals, or if they're not, we release them. We say, 'Come back for a hearing in front of a judge.' You know how many judges you need to do this? We have 900,000 people backlogged. That's the good news. The bad news? Nobody shows up. Three per cent of the people come back for a trial. It's insane."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: "Three per cent" is not even close to accurate. The Justice Department says 72 per cent of people showed up for their immigration court hearings in 2017. For asylum seekers in particular, it was 89 per cent. There is no group for which it was anywhere around 2 per cent. A 2017 report released by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates a hard line on illegal immigration, concluded that 37 per cent of people who were free pending trial did not show up for hearings over the past two decades. The author of the report, a former immigration judge, said the number was 39 per cent in 2016. In other words, even according to vehement opponents of illegal immigration, most unauthorized immigrants are indeed showing up for court.
"And we want to end catch-and-release. We catch them, we realize they're a criminal, and we have to release them. Think of this: they come onto our land, they put one foot on our land. We now have to take them through a massive court trial. Who does this? Other countries say, 'Get the hell out of here.' We have to take them through court. So we catch them. We talk to them. If they're criminals, or if they're not, we release them. We say, 'Come back for a hearing in front of a judge.'"
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Unauthorized immigrants to the U.S. do not get the right to a trial if they are caught after merely touching U.S. land; in cases where they are caught near the border, they are subject to rapid deportation, known as expedited removal, without seeing a judge. Also, the U.S. has no obligation to release criminals; even before Trump, people with serious criminal pasts were subjected to mandatory detention. If migrants declare that they are seeking asylum, they do have a right to a legal process -- but the U.S. is far from the only country to afford them this right. "This statement is patently false," James Hathaway, law professor and director of the refugee and asylum law program at the University of Michigan, said in an email in response to a previous version of Trump's claim. "It is completely routine in other countries that, like the U.S., have signed the UN refugee treaties for asylum-seekers to have access to the domestic legal system to make a protection claim (and to be allowed in while the claim is pending). If anything, the U.S. is aberrational in the opposite direction: U.S. domestic law falsely treats the granting of protection to refugees as a matter of discretion, whereas international law *requires* a grant of protection to anyone who meets the refugee definition. This doesn't mean that refugees have a right to stay in the U.S. or anywhere else forever -- but they *do* have a right to stay for the duration of the persecutory risk, unless another safe country that has also signed the refugee treaties agrees to take them in."
"I mean, what's going on is incredible. And when those caravans are formed, do you think those countries that we used to give a lot of money to -- I've cut it way back. I've cut it way back. Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. Do you think they're giving us, as we say, their best and their finest? 'Oh, let's send our best people up to America. Let's have our best people go in the caravan so we can give America our greatest people.' No, no, no, no. They give us some very bad people. People with big, long crime records. People with tremendous violence in their past. Murderers, killers, drug dealers, human traffickers. They want to keep their good people because they're smart. It's so sad to see how stupid we've been."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: There is no evidence for this conspiracy theory. (It is nearly identical to Trump's baseless conspiracy theory about the diversity visa lottery program: he has repeatedly and falsely claimed that foreign governments put their unwanted citizens into the lottery to dump them on the United States.) Migrants in Latin American caravans have decided on their own to leave their home countries. They have not been dumped into caravans by governments looking to get rid of them.
"These ruthless cartels terrorize innocent communities on both sides of the border and spread instability throughout our hemisphere. When I was there two weeks ago, 26 people were killed very close to where I was, on the Rio Grande. Sounds nice, right? The Rio Grande. Rough. Rough stuff. Twenty-six people were killed, and they were buried right near where I was standing. And the paper doesn't write about it. The news doesn't write about it."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Trump was exaggerating. Nobody was buried "right near where I was standing." He appeared to be talking about the discovery of at least 24 bodies in an apparent shootout in Mexico. CNN reported "the remains were found about 56 miles west of McAllen, Texas," where Trump had visited. The CBS affiliate in Austin, Texas reported that the bodies were discovered "two hours from McAllen."
"The lawless chaos on our southern border provides a lucrative cash flow to some of the most dangerous criminal organizations on the planet. Deadly cartels constantly -- daily, hourly -- violate our borders to flood our cities with drugs that kill thousands and thousands of our citizens violently. What are these people talking about when they talk about the border? 'Keep it open.' Keep what open? Have you been there? Have you seen? I just got back. I've been there many times. I see what's happening. I don't like it."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Democrats do not support open borders and do not call for Trump to "keep it open." They oppose his border wall but support various other border security measures.
"The crazy female senator from the state of Ohio, the state of Hawaii. Right? She's like -- she's like a crazed person...And she didn't know too much about the plan because she's -- you know, she can't understand that plan. Which probably makes her smart, actually. Now, this is the senator from Hawaii, and they're saying to her, 'What do you think?' 'Well, I don't know how people are going to get to Hawaii, but I'm in favour of the plan.' I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. So she's in favour of the plan, but you won't be able to get to -- well, we can take boats, I guess. We'll go back to boats."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: When asked by a reporter, Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono said that trying to eliminate air travel would be "pretty hard for Hawaii," then laughed; the Green New Deal resolution Hirono endorsed does not call for the elimination of air travel. Rather, it calls for "overhauling transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing; clean, affordable, and accessible public transit; and high-speed rail." When Trump first made a version of this claim in February, Hirono told HawaiiNewsNow: "As usual, climate change denier Donald Trump makes things up and doesn't know what he's talking about. While the Green New Deal is an ambitious plan to combat climate change, it does not call for the elimination of air travel. I will continue to fight against this president's lies." Trump did not make up this claim out of thin air: a "FAQ" page posted by a leading Green New Deal proponent, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calls for the government to "build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary." But other Democrats did not endorse the FAQ, just the official resolution, and Ocasio-Cortez's office quickly deleted it.
"Their (Green New Deal) plan would remove every gas-powered car from American roads. Oh, that's not so bad. They want you to have one car instead of two, and it should be electric, okay? So tell people, no more cars. No more cars. I think the auto industry is not going to do too well under this plan."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The Green New Deal some Democrats have endorsed -- which at the time existed only in the form of a vague resolution -- would not remove every gas-powered car from American roads, and it certainly would not require "no more cars." The resolution said the government would overhaul "transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing." Nothing in the resolution suggested the forced removal of gas-powered cars from the roads, and the "as much as is technologically feasible" clause acknowledged that it might not be possible to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions in transportation.
"And we're trying to speed up pipelines in Texas, which would have taken 15 years. We think we're almost very close to getting them approved. When that happens, we'll go probably another 30 to 40 per cent. We need pipeline approval. We're going to have it very quickly. It would have taken -- it was going to be a 14- to 15-year process. We should have it done."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: There is no evidence that this is a real case. When we asked John Stoody, vice-president of the Association of Oil Pipelines in Washington, if he was aware of any such case, he responded via email: "Not specifically, but we look forward to the President helping American consumers and workers harness the benefits of US energy production through timely federal approvals of pipeline projects." (The Texas Pipeline Association suggested we contact Stoody's organization.) We will amend this item if more information emerges.
"So what happened is I flew to Iraq...But I didn't have to go there. I didn't have to go there. Because I meet -- and I land in this airport, the most incredible thing. We must have spent $3 billion building it. It's one of the reasons I don't want to leave Iraq so fast. I said, 'Well, how do we leave this thing?'"
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The base Trump went to in Iraq, Al Asad, was not built by the U.S. at all but by the Iraqi government in the 1980s. The U.S. upgraded it during the Iraq War, but experts say the U.S. did not spend anywhere close to $3 billion on it. " It was massive when we arrived in 2003, designed to operate under nuclear war conditions. It no doubt cost Iraq the equivalent of a billion dollars overall in its lifetime," said Michael Knights, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "We augmented it to the tune of some tens of millions of dollars, cleaning up battle damage and fixing the airstrip , installing life support facilities and perimeter lighting and air traffic control." In 2006, for example, $30 million was budgeted for new "observation/guard towers, the restoration of the air traffic control tower, pavement lighting, air navigation/traffic aids, and pavement markings," $9 million to "upgrade transformer and switch gear, and install a new/upgraded electrical distribution network," and $7 million to "construct a new identification badge issue building and to install pop-up bollards in all lanes in and out, automatic sliding gates, security fencing, guard tower, new inspection lanes with turn around at access control points, and other related infrastructure."In 2016, the U.S. government said it would install a new system to allow pilots to land at night or in bad weather.
"And I said, think of this: We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East and we can't land with the lights on -- 20 years later. How bad is it? No, seriously, how bad is it? How bad is it? Seven trillion dollars and we have to fly in with no lights."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: There is no basis for the "$7 trillion" figure. During the 2016 campaign, Trump cited a $6 trillion estimate that appeared to be taken from a 2013 report from Brown University's Costs of War Project. (That report estimated $2 trillion in costs up to that point but said the total could rise an additional $4 trillion by 2053.) Trump, however, used the $6 trillion as if it was a current 2016 figure. He later explained that since additional time has elapsed since the campaign, he believes the total is now $7 trillion. That is incorrect. The latest Brown report, issued in November 2018, put the current total at $4.9 trillion, and the current total including estimated future health care obligations at $5.9 trillion.
"I told people, 'I'm in this mess' -- you know, people don't know how big the White House. First of all, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. It's really -- I made a lot of money with luxury. This building is -- 1799 -- which, of course, when President Xi comes, I say '1799,' like it's old. To him, that's like a brand-new house in China. In China, they go back -- they go back 8,000 years. So that's -- that's like a new -- that's like a new residence."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Chinese officials claim that China has 5,000 years of history, not 8,000 years.
"And then I flew to Iraq; first time I left the White House -- because I stayed in the White House for months and months because I wanted the Democrats to get back from their vacations from Hawaii and these other places. And I figured it would look good if I stayed in the White House so that you people all love me and vote for me, okay? I figured it would look good. I figured it would look good. So I stayed in the White House...I stayed for Thanksgiving. I said -- I mean, I was in the White House for a long time. Months. Months. I had cabin fever in the White House. But if you've got to have cabin fever, that's the place to do it, okay? But I was there, I don't know, for a number of months, through Christmas." And: "But I sat in the White House for months and months, except I took a day off."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Trump did not remain in the White House for "months" before his trip to Iraq in December 2018, as CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, known for his meticulous record-keeping about presidential activities, confirmed in an email. Earlier in December, he gave a speech in Kansas City, Missouri and went to Philadelphia for the Army-Navy football game. He was in Argentina on November 30 and December 1 for a G20 summit in Argentina. Also in late November, he held two campaign rallies in Mississippi. Earlier in November, he spent nearly a week at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. Just before that, he visited California in response to wildfires there. He traversed the country in October and early November to campaign in the midterm election.
"We want to bring our people back home. It's time. Been in these wars. We were going to be in Syria for four months. We ended up five years."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Steven Heydemann, director of the Middle East Studies program at Smith College, said Trump is "clearly wrong" that the U.S. military presence in Syria was originally supposed to last four months: "There has never been a timetable attached to the U.S. presence." While both the Obama and Trump administrations claimed the mission was limited in duration, tied to the defeat of ISIS, "it was never defined as limited to a period of a few months."
"That we've taken care of our military with -- $1.7 billion. Think of that. Think of what we did. Think of what we did with our military. Think of the numbers that we have for our military. We have numbers -- nobody has ever heard of these numbers before. And you know, part of the problem that we have -- because I'm a cost cutter. But -- and you are all cost cutters. But we have to take care of our military. We have to. Seven hundred billions dollars we spent. And that was the first year. And then the second year, $716 billion. Now, I have no choice."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: It is very much unclear how Trump added up $700 billion and $716 billion to get "$1.7 billion," but regardless, it is not true that "nobody has ever heard of these numbers before." Obama signed a $725 billion version of the annual defence spending bill in 2011, topping both of Trump's versions to date.
"That we've got the best economy maybe in our history. That we've got the best employment numbers and unemployment numbers in our history."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Trump was mixing up two different kinds of statistics. He was correct, by one extremely basic measure, that the U.S. has its "best employment numbers": there were more Americans working than ever before, 157 million. But this raw employment number did not mean that the U.S. also had its best "unemployment numbers," since the population was also growing. The unemployment rate is a much better measure of unemployment than the total number of people working; the unemployment rate at the time Trump spoke was 4.0 per cent, well off the record 2.5 per cent in 1953.
"...Look, let's face it: Whether you like me or not -- if my name is Smith instead of Trump, and if you told him I put in over 100 federal judges -- it'll soon be 145 federal judges and 2 Supreme Court judges. And 17 appellate division judges."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Russell Wheeler, an expert on judicial appointments at the Brookings Institution who keeps track of appointments by president, said that, as of three business days prior, Trump had appointed 86 judges: 84 judges to courts of appeal and district courts, plus two Supreme Court justices. He added, "He's appointed 7 judges to executive branch courts -- 2 to the Tax Court, 4 to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, and 1 the Court of Appeals for Armed Forces. (These are usually not considered "federal judges" in the normal context and anyway they don't total the 14 needed to close the gap between 86 and 100, much less 'over 100.')"
"You saw what I'm doing in California, right? They have a fast train. The fast train goes from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It's over budget by hundreds of billions of dollars."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: "Hundreds of billions of dollars" is an exaggeration, though the estimated price of the high-speed rail project had indeed spiked dramatically. Cost estimates had ballooned to more than $77 billion, with a high-end estimate of $98 billion. That was up from an initial estimate of $33 billion.
"And African-American income has reached an all-time high."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Median African-American household income was $40,258 in 2017, according to the Census Bureau, down slightly from $40,339 in 2016, the last year of the Obama era and well down from the 2000 peak of (an inflation-adjusted) $42,348, according to the Associated Press.
"And African-American -- and you've heard me say this many times -- Hispanic American, Asian-American unemployment rates are at their all-time historic lows."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The African-American unemployment rate remained at an all-time low, but the Hispanic and Asian unemployment rates did not. Hispanic American unemployment rate dropped to a record low of 4.4 per cent in October 2018 and December 2018. But the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for January 2019, was 4.9 per cent, higher than the 4.8 per cent of December 2000. The Asian-American unemployment rate briefly dropped to a low, 2.0 per cent, in May 2018 -- a low, at least, since the government began issuing Asian-American data in 2000 -- but the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for January 2019, was 3.2 per cent. This was higher than the rate in Obama's last full month in office, 2.6 per cent.
"The unemployment rate has reached the lowest in over 51 years."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The unemployment rate hit a 49-year low in September 2018, but then it rose. The rate for January 2019 was 4.0 per cent, lowest since 2000, or 18 years prior, if you don't count earlier periods of Trump's presidency.
"Since the election, we've created a number that if I would have said during the campaign, the fake news just back there would have said this is crazy. 5.3 million new jobs, including over, now, 600,000 beautiful, brand-new manufacturing jobs that were never going to come back to our country. These are jobs that were never coming back to our country. Remember? Not to talk badly about the other administration, but if that theory went forward with Crooked Hillary winning the election, instead of being up almost 50 per cent with the stock market, you would have been down 50 per cent. It was heading down. It was going to be a disaster."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: There was no apparent basis for Trump's claim that a Clinton election would have resulted in a stock market crash, but we cannot fact-check a prediction. What is objectively false is his claim -- a vaguer claim than usual -- that the Obama administration put forward a theory that manufacturing jobs were never coming back to the country. The administration never did. Rather, at a televised PBS town hall in Elkhart, Indiana in 2016, Obama said that certain manufacturing jobs "are just not going to come back" -- but also boasted that some manufacturers are indeed "coming back to the United States." He also said that "we've seen more manufacturing jobs created since I've been president than any time since the 1990s," and that "we actually make more stuff, have a bigger manufacturing base today, than we've had in most of our history." Obama did mock Trump for Trump's campaign claims that he was going to bring back manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced to Mexico, saying: "And when somebody says -- like the person you just mentioned who I'm not going to advertise for -- that he's going to bring all these jobs back, well, how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There's no answer to it. He just says, 'Well, I'm going to negotiate a better deal.' Well, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is he doesn't have an answer." But, again, Obama made clear that he was talking about a certain segment of manufacturing jobs, not all of them.
"Since the election, we've created a number that if I would have said during the campaign, the fake news just back there would have said this is crazy. 5.3 million new jobs, including over, now, 600,000 beautiful, brand-new manufacturing jobs that were never going to come back to our country."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The "600,000" figure is not correct even if you go back to Trump's election, which allows him to count jobs created in the final three months of Obama's term. There were 12,341,000 manufacturing jobs in November 2016, the month of the election, and 12,822,000 in January 2019, the most recent month for which there was data. That was a gain of 481,000.
"So I say, India is a very high-tariff nation. They charge us a lot. When we send a motorcycle to India, it's 100 per cent tariff. They charge 100 per cent. When India sends a motorcycle to us, we brilliantly charge them nothing. So I want a reciprocal tax, or at least I want to charge a tax. It's called a mirror tax, but it's a reciprocal tax."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: In response to Trump's complaints, India lowered its motorcycle tariff to 50 per cent in 2018 -- and Trump had bragged about this in January 2019, less than two months before this "100 per cent" claim, saying, "Look at motorcycles, as an example. India -- 50 per cent. It was 100 per cent. I got them down to 50 per cent just by talking for about two minutes." The tariff was at 75 per cent, not 100 per cent, before the reduction.
"Last year, we lost eight hundred -- this for many years -- almost $800 billion on trade. It's not sustainable. You can't do that."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The U.S. trade deficit was $566 billion in 2017 and had never previously been $800 billion for a year. (Trump habitually ignores trade in services when he talks about trade deficits, choosing the number that refers only to trade in goods. The U.S. had a goods-trade deficit of $810 billion in 2017.)
"But -- and there will be some people in the room that don't like this. We're down to 3.7 per cent unemployment -- the lowest number in a long time."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The unemployment rate at the time Trump spoke, for January 2019, was 4.0 per cent.
"Because, you know, if you're building a great country, you have the best employment and unemployment numbers we've ever had. More people are working today in the United States than ever before in the history of our country."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Trump was mixing up two different kinds of statistics. He was correct that there were more Americans working than ever before, 157 million. But this raw employment number did not mean that the U.S. also had "the best unemployment numbers we've ever had," since the population was also growing. The unemployment rate is a much better measure of unemployment than the total number of people working; the unemployment rate at the time Trump spoke was 4.0 per cent, well off the record 2.5 per cent in 1953.
"You know, somebody said, 'Oh, the speech you made, sir, the State of the Union speech was incredible.' They said it was incredible. They said that was so great. And I said -- I said -- I did; I got great reviews, even from some of the really bad ones out there. Of course, by the following morning, they had to change because the head people called up, 'What are you doing?' A lot of it is not the people on television, you know. A lot of it is their bosses."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: There is no evidence that any television "boss" demanded that any on-air personality change their assessment of Trump's State of the Union -- nor even that any personality actually changed their assessment the next morning; Trump did not name anyone. We will update this item if any evidence emerges.
"And the Washington Post had to do -- and this particular writer -- had to do a -- I thought he was going to get fired. I mean, if that were a conservative, he would've been fired on the spot. He would've been humiliated for what he did. Because it was fake news. Nobody was in the arena. There were thousands outside but they hadn't opened the gates yet. They did the same thing at our big inauguration speech. You take a look at those crowds. And I watched one of the evening shows that are ridiculous, how horrible they are, how mean -- how horrible. And I watched it by mistake. And they showed -- they showed from the White House all the way down. They showed from the Cap -- they showed -- there were people. Nobody has ever seen it. The Capitol down to the Washington Monument -- people. But I saw pictures that there were no people. Those pictures were taken hours before. Right?"
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Trump was trying to use a case in which a journalist actually made an error about the size of one of his crowds, at a rally in late 2017, to try to bolster his false claim that journalists' reports about the size of his inauguration crowd were incorrect. The inauguration crowd did not come close to reaching the Washington Monument even as Trump was delivering his speech.
"Of course, the Washington Post -- a guy named David Weigel -- he wrote an article, some arena -- no, listen to this. He wrote an article. He got there four hours early. He took pictures of an empty arena. He then put out a note -- something to the effect, 'Not very good crowd size, Mr. President.' And I never saw it because I don't follow the guy. But thousands of people that were in that arena that was packed, with 25,000 people outside that couldn't get in..."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: There were not 25,000 people stuck outside Trump's Pensacola, Florida rally in December 2017. (Trump regularly makes wild claims about the number of people stuck outside.) Andy Marlette, an editorial cartoonist and columnist at the Pensacola News Journal, said in an email that he was one of the people stuck outside: "I actually waited in line to get into the event and was turned away when the Pensacola Bay Center filled up. I was about 10 people away from the entry when admissions were cut off. There were nowhere close to 25,000 people waiting outside at that point. My best estimate would be a few hundred people who were turned away, perhaps 1,000 at the very most." Marlette added: "In full disclosure, I am an editorial cartoonist who regularly illustrates opinions that are critical of the president. That being said, even a cartoonist would have a hard time exaggerating so absurdly as to claim 25,000 people had overflowed into the quaint streets of downtown Pensacola." He noted that an annual charity run in Pensacola, which reported 12,000 attendees last year, "shuts down nearby traffic for half a day and fills every inch of the surrounding roads with human bodies. The crowd outside the Trump rally was nothing close."
"Of course, the Washington Post -- a guy named David Weigel -- he wrote an article, some arena -- no, listen to this. He wrote an article. He got there four hours early. He took pictures of an empty arena. He then put out a note -- something to the effect, 'Not very good crowd size, Mr. President.' And I never saw it because I don't follow the guy. But thousands of people that were in that arena that was packed, with 25,000 people outside that couldn't get in -- he got there four or five hours early because he doesn't fly private...But he got there hours early. And, you know, the place hadn't started taking in people. They weren't going to take them in. So there were virtually nobody. And, you know, whatever it was -- 18,000 -- when you have nobody, it's a little scary-looking. So he took pictures. And you know who really got even? Our people. Because they were incensed. We had people sitting on the stairwells. We had people sitting in every seat. I don't think we've had an empty seat since we announced."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: This is an inaccurate account of Weigel's error. Weigel did not attend this 2017 rally in Pensacola, Florida, and he did not write an article. What happened: the day after the rally, Weigel tweeted someone else's photo that showed a sparse crowd, and he wrongly suggested that the photo disproved Trump's claim that the hall was "packed to the rafters." Weigel was then told that the photo was taken well before Trump began speaking, at which point he deleted the tweet and apologized. In short: Weigel did not get to the rally "four or five hours early," did not take or tweet his own early photos, and did not write anything published in the Post itself.
"When you're doing rallies with 25-, 30,000 people -- in Texas, we had 109,000 people sign up. We used the Houston Rockets arena; it holds 22,000. Tens of thousands were outside."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Houston's Toyota Center has a capacity of 19,000 for basketball games; Trump had a capacity crowd. There were not "tens of thousands" of people outside: Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said there were about 3,000 people watching the rally on nearby screens.
"And you know what? We never had an empty seat. We went out and helped Ted Cruz. We went out and helped so many people. And I'll tell you what: If we didn't do those 32 rallies -- and it wasn't easy. When you're doing rallies with 25-, 30,000 people -- in Texas, we had 109,000 people sign up. We used the Houston Rockets arena; it holds 22,000. Tens of thousands were outside. We were sending notices, 'Please don't come.' That's a little different. Usually, people are begging. 'Well, yeah, like can somebody come?' We never had an empty seat." And: "I don't think we've had an empty seat since we announced. And from the day we came down the escalator, I really don't believe we've had an empty seat at any arena, at any stadium."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: There have been empty seats at multiple Trump rallies -- including at the October 2018 Ted Cruz rally Trump was specifically referring to here. The Dallas News reported then: "Many hundreds of seats were empty, including all of the boxes on both tiers of the mezzanine." When Trump had a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in April 2017, Philadelphia Inquirer journalist Jonathan Tamari tweeted a photo of rows of empty seats in the upper deck; he wrote, "Trump says 'we have a lot of ppl standing outside' and he 'broke the all time record' in this arena. There are rows of empty seats here." Reporting on Trump's May 2018 rally in Nashville, the Tennessean newspaper reported that Trump was "speaking to a crowd of thousands at Municipal Auditorium, which also had hundreds of empty seats." In April 2016, the Associated Press reported, "Donald Trump's final rally on the eve of Wisconsin's primary attracted a smaller than usual crowd, with several hundred seats still empty as he stepped on stage."
"So the Attorney General is weak and ineffective, and he doesn't do what he should've done. Somebody that never got a vote writes a powerful letter -- horrible -- about Comey. Every single Democrat said Comey should be fired, or worse, if possible. (Laughter.) Every Republican said -- everybody...So we fire Comey. And Schumer -- who called for his resignation many times -- Podesta, I believe that day -- because he still hasn't gotten over getting his ass kicked, okay? I believe that day called for his resignation. That day. Podesta, the great genius of campaigns. He called for the Comey resignation. Others -- almost every, I would say. Mark, would you say virtually every Democrat, virtually every -- I can't think of anybody that said he's doing a good job. So I said to Melania, 'Melania, the good news, this will be a popular thing.' And I fire a bad cop. I fire a dirty cop. And all of a sudden, the Democrats say, 'How dare he fire him. How dare he do this.' And that's where we are, folks. That's where we are. We're in this swamp of Washington, D.C."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta had not called for for Comey's resignation "that day" or at any other time. The day of the firing, before Trump made the announcement, Podesta tweeted out an article about Comey and added the words, "The American public is getting mildly nauseous listening to Jim Comey." That was all; he too did not say Comey should go. Podesta told Politico later in the month: "I've been highly critical of him, and I think that was criticism that was shared on a bipartisan basis. That's different, though, than taking the action that the president took, which was in the middle of an investigation that he was leading, to go ahead and fire him. I think that was inappropriate...I still think what Jim Comey did last fall was wrong, but he shouldn't have been fired, given the circumstances that he was leading this investigation."
"So the Attorney General is weak and ineffective, and he doesn't do what he should've done. Somebody that never got a vote writes a powerful letter -- horrible -- about Comey. Every single Democrat said Comey should be fired, or worse, if possible. (Laughter.) Every Republican said -- everybody...So we fire Comey. And Schumer -- who called for his resignation many times...Others -- almost every, I would say. Mark, would you say virtually every Democrat, virtually every -- I can't think of anybody that said he's doing a good job. So I said to Melania, 'Melania, the good news, this will be a popular thing.' And I fire a bad cop. I fire a dirty cop. And all of a sudden, the Democrats say, 'How dare he fire him. How dare he do this.' And that's where we are, folks. That's where we are. We're in this swamp of Washington, D.C."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: It is not true that "every single Democrat said Comey should be fired," and it is not true that Sen. Chuck Schumer called for Comey's resignation "that day." Before Trump's victory in 2016, Schumer expressed strong displeasure with Comey but stopped short of saying he should be dismissed: "I do not have confidence in him any longer...To restore my faith, I am going to have to sit down and talk to him and get an explanation for why he did this." He went no further after Trump took office.
"But we have conflicts. I had a nasty business transaction with Robert Mueller a number of years ago. I said, why isn't that mentioned? He wanted the job as FBI director. I mean, these are things that are out there; they know it. Why isn't that -- and I didn't give it to him. Why isn't that mentioned? Jim Comey -- Lyin' James Comey is his best friend. James Comey is his best friend. And those are a few of the conflicts."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: There is no evidence that the two former FBI directors are "best friends." Though they do know and like each other, and though it is fair for Trump to argue that it is inappropriate for Mueller to conduct an investigation involving Comey, nobody has produced any kind of proof that they were more than professional associates when both were at the FBI. Comey's lawyer has said: "Jim and Bob are friends in the sense that co-workers are friends. They don't really have a personal relationship. Jim has never been to Bob's house and Bob has never been to Jim's house." Also, Mueller has denied that he had a "nasty business transaction' with Trump, an apparent Trump reference to Mueller's departure from Trump's golf club in Virginia. "Mr. Mueller left the club in October 2011 without dispute," a Mueller spokesperson told the Daily Mail.
"But the person that appointed Robert Mueller never received a vote. Robert Mueller put 13 of the angriest Democrats in the history of our country on the commission. Now, how do you do that? These are angry, angry people. You take a look at them. One of them was involved with the Hillary Clinton Foundation, running it."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: One lawyer on Mueller's team, Jeannie Rhee, represented the Clinton Foundation, as an outside counsel, in its defence against a 2015 lawsuit. She was not involved in "running" the foundation. If Trump had simply said "one of them was involved with the Hillary Clinton Foundation," without adding "running it," his claim would have been accurate.
"And here's the beauty: We've lost so much money with China -- $500 billion a year. And on trade, it's such a disaster; it's $507 billion a year. China -- just one country. We lose with everybody, almost."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The U.S. does not have a trade deficit with "everybody." While the U.S. has a substantial overall trade deficit -- $566 billion in 2017 -- it had surpluses in 2017 with more than half of its trading partners, according to data from the U.S. government's own International Trade Commission, including Hong Kong, Brazil, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, Chile, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Kuwait and dozens more countries and territories. And while Trump is free to claim his actions will eventually reduce deficits, they have not done so yet: the overall 2017 deficit was the largest for any year since 2008.
"And here's the beauty: We've lost so much money with China -- $500 billion a year. And on trade, it's such a disaster; it's $507 billion a year. China -- just one country. We lose with everybody, almost. But China is one country. $507 billion, for many years."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China, according to U.S. government data. The deficit was $337 billion in 2017, $375 billion if you only count trade in goods and exclude trade in services.
"Because with the fake news, if you tell a joke, if you're sarcastic, if you're having fun with the audience, if you're on live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena, and if you say something like, 'Russia, please, if you can, get us Hillary Clinton's emails. Please, Russia, please. Please get us the emails. Please!'" (Crowd chants "Lock her up!") "So everybody is having a good time. I'm laughin', we're all havin' fun. And then that fake CNN and others say, 'He asked Russia to go get the emails. Horrible.' I mean, I saw it -- like, two weeks ago, I'm watching and they're talking about one of the points. 'He asked Russia for the emails.' These people are sick. And I'm telling you, they know the game. They know the game, and they play it dirty, dirtier than anybody has ever played the game. Dirtier than it's ever been played."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Trump inaccurately described the 2016 event at which he asked for Russia's help obtaining Clinton emails. It was a press conference, not a rally with "25,000 people in an arena," and Trump was not laughing or giving any other indication that he was joking. He said of Vladimir Putin, to dead silence: "He doesn't respect our president. And if it is Russia -- which it's probably not, nobody knows who it is - but it if is Russia, it's really bad for a different reason. Because it shows how little respect they have for our country when they would hack into a major party and get everything. But it would be interesting to see -- I will tell you this: Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens. That'll be next."
"Democrat lawmakers are now embracing socialism. They want to replace individual rights with total government domination."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: This is an obvious exaggeration. Some Democratic lawmakers and candidates are embracing policies that can best be described as social democratic or "democratic socialist." They are not proposing "total government domination."
"So the Great Tariff Debate of 1888 -- and then we had so much money we could do whatever we wanted. We built forces up that were incredible. Then, in 1913, they ended tariffs, okay? They ended tariffs. Somebody got stupid and they ended tariffs. They said, 'Oh, it's okay for other nations to come in.'"
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Tariffs were not "ended" in 1913. Douglas Irwin, a Dartmouth College expert on U.S. economic history and author of "Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy," among other books, said in an email: "Tariffs were reduced in 1913, but not 'ended,' although the income tax was also introduced so the share of revenue coming from the tariff fell quite a bit." The New York Times reported: "Tariffs still accounted for nearly one-third of federal revenue in 1915."
"But, you know, they had a debate in -- it was really a tough time in our country because we had so much money we didn't know what the hell to do with it. Tough, tough, tough. It was called the Great Tariff Debate. Mark Levin will look this up. And the problem is, with Mark, if I make a little mistake, he'll let us know on Sunday night. I got to be very careful when I talk about this. But it was the Great Tariff Debate of 1888. And the debate was: we didn't know what to do with all of the money we were making. We were so rich."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Trump was not quite right about the 1888 tariff debate. Douglas Irwin, a Dartmouth College expert on U.S. economic history and author of the Journal of Economic History paper "Higher Tariffs, Lower Revenues? Analyzing the Fiscal Aspects of 'The Great Tariff Debate of 1888,' explained that the debate was about how to deal with the big budget surplus, which was viewed as a problem. In the paper, he wrote, "The Democrats proposed lower tariffs to reduce customs revenue. The Republicans proposed higher tariffs to reduce imports and customs revenues." In other words, the debate was less about how to spend all the money coming into federal coffers than how to reduce the amount of money in the first place.
"But I found some very old laws from when our country was rich -- really rich. The old tariff laws -- we had to dust them off; you could hardly see, they were so dusty. But, fortunately, they weren't terminated. We started getting politically correct, even back then. But I said, when we were doing the great things, what happened to those laws? And I checked, and I found 301 and 382. I found one, 1938, where we can do what we have to do."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Trump has used Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose tariffs on China, but he did not appear to be talking about any real legislative provision when he referred to "382" and "1938"; he has also used Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. (There is a Section 382 of tax law he might have been thinking of here.) Douglas Irwin, a Dartmouth College expert on U.S. economic history and author of "Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy," among other books, said in an email, "Perhaps he was thinking 1934, the year of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, because nothing really happened in 1938."
"But now things are different. Now we're negotiating with China. They wouldn't negotiate with previous administrations."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: "We have been in trade negotiations with China effectively continuously since at least the Clinton Administration. His claim is laughable," said Marcus Noland, executive vice-president at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who has studied U.S. trade relations with China. Derek Scissors, an expert on U.S. economic relations with Asia at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, said, "Of course that's not correct"; he pointed to the official "economic dialogue" discussions conducted under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Scissors said, "What the President means is they wouldn't negotiate over the issues he is currently negotiating over, chiefly buying much more American goods."
"When they charge 40 per cent tariffs on our cars going into China, and we charge them nothing coming into our country; when they raise their tariff from 10 per cent to 25 per cent and then to 40 per cent -- and they said to me, 'We expected that somebody would call and say you can't do that. Nobody called, so we just left it.' And I don't blame them. We should've been doing the same thing to them. But we didn't. True. Right? Hard to believe. It's hard to believe."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: This anecdote is inaccurate in two ways, confirmed Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labour and economics at the Center for Automotive Research. First, the U.S. charges a 2.5 per cent tariff on the small number of cars imported from China, and 25 per cent on light trucks. Trump could have fairly said the tariff on cars was "close to nothing," but a flat "nothing" is wrong. Second, contrary to Trump's suggestion, previous administrations did not fail to challenge a 40 per cent Chinese tariffs on U.S. cars: the tariff was not 40 per cent until 2018. The tariff was 25 per cent under Obama; it was reduced to 15 per cent in early 2018; it was hiked 40 per cent in July in retaliation for Trump's own tariffs on imports of Chinese products.
"How many times did you hear, for months and months, 'There is no way to 270'? You know what that means, right? 'There is no way to 270.' They couldn't get me there. We might as well have just given up. But there wasn't any way to 270....We didn't get 270; we got 306 to 223. 223-306."
Source: Speech to Conservative Political Action Conference
in fact: Hillary Clinton earned 232 electoral votes, not 223. This was not a one-time slip: it was the 20th time Trump said "223" as president.
"The brand new manuscript for a new book by failed lawyer Michael Cohen shows his testimony was a total lie! Pundits should only use it."
Source: Twitter
in fact: Cohen never submitted a manuscript for the Trump book he had been discussing in early 2018, which his initial proposal suggested would be at least mildly positive. Center Street, the conservative imprint that had initially planned to publish the book, told Politico: "We never saw a manuscript from Mr. Cohen," Center Street publisher Rolf Zettersten said. The Daily Beast reported in May 2018 that the book deal had been "called off amid Cohen's legal woes." Politico reported: "Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, added in a statement: 'Sometime in early 2018, Mr. Cohen was offered a substantial advance for a proposal regarding a book on understanding Donald Trump. Mr. Cohen ultimately elected not to proceed. In other words, POTUS has yet lied again.'"
"Virtually everything failed lawyer Michael Cohen said in his sworn testimony last week is totally contradicted in his just released manuscript for a book about me. It's a total new love letter to 'Trump' and the pols must now use it rather than his lies for sentence reduction!"
Source: Twitter
in fact: Cohen never submitted a manuscript for the Trump book he had been discussing in early 2018, which his initial proposal suggested would be at least mildly positive. Center Street, the conservative imprint that had initially planned to publish the book, told Politico: "We never saw a manuscript from Mr. Cohen," Center Street publisher Rolf Zettersten said. The Daily Beast reported in May 2018 that the book deal had been "called off amid Cohen's legal woes." Politico reported: "Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, added in a statement: 'Sometime in early 2018, Mr. Cohen was offered a substantial advance for a proposal regarding a book on understanding Donald Trump. Mr. Cohen ultimately elected not to proceed. In other words, POTUS has yet lied again.'"
Mar 1, 2019
"Michael Cohen's book manuscript shows that he committed perjury on a scale not seen before. He must have forgotten about his book when he testified."
Source: Twitter
in fact: Cohen never submitted a manuscript for the Trump book he had been discussing in early 2018, which his initial proposal suggested would be at least mildly positive. Center Street, the conservative imprint that had initially planned to publish the book, told Politico: "We never saw a manuscript from Mr. Cohen," Center Street publisher Rolf Zettersten said. The Daily Beast reported in May 2018 that the book deal had been "called off amid Cohen's legal woes." Politico reported: "Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, added in a statement: 'Sometime in early 2018, Mr. Cohen was offered a substantial advance for a proposal regarding a book on understanding Donald Trump. Mr. Cohen ultimately elected not to proceed. In other words, POTUS has yet lied again.'"
"...it's time to stop this corrupt and illegally brought Witch Hunt."
Source: Twitter
in fact: There is simply no evidence that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign's relationship with Russia is illegal. Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Republican appointed by Trump.
"Oh' I see! Now that the 2 year Russian Collusion case has fallen apart, there was no Collusion except bye Crooked Hillary and the Democrats, they say, 'gee, I have an idea, let's look at Trump's finances and every deal he has ever done."
Source: Twitter
in fact: The claim that the Democrats colluded with Russia is simple nonsense; the word "collusion" -- in common language, a "secret agreement or co-operation especially for an illegal or deceitful purpose" -- just does not apply to Democrats' Russia-related activities. The accusation is based on the fact that the British ex-spy who produced a research dossier on the Trump campaign's alleged links to Russia, which was funded in part by Clinton's campaign, used Russian sources in compiling his information. That does not come close to meeting the definition of "collusion."
"Congress must demand the transcript of Michael Cohen's new book, given to publishers a short time ago. Your heads will spin when you see the lies, misrepresentations and contradictions against his Thursday testimony. Like a different person! He is totally discredited!"
Source: Twitter
in fact: Cohen never submitted a manuscript for the Trump book he had been discussing in early 2018, which his initial proposal suggested would be at least mildly positive. Center Street, the conservative imprint that had initially planned to publish the book, told Politico: "We never saw a manuscript from Mr. Cohen," Center Street publisher Rolf Zettersten said. The Daily Beast reported in May 2018 that the book deal had been "called off amid Cohen's legal woes." Politico reported: "Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, added in a statement: 'Sometime in early 2018, Mr. Cohen was offered a substantial advance for a proposal regarding a book on understanding Donald Trump. Mr. Cohen ultimately elected not to proceed. In other words, POTUS has yet lied again.'"
Mar 1, 0109
"Wow, just revealed that Michael Cohen wrote a 'love letter to Trump' manuscript for a new book that he was pushing. Written and submitted long after Charlottesville and Helsinki, his phony reasons for going rogue. Book is exact opposite of his fake testimony, which now is a lie!"
Source: Twitter
in fact: Cohen never submitted a manuscript for the Trump book he had been discussing in early 2018, which his initial proposal suggested would be at least mildly positive. Center Street, the conservative imprint that had initially planned to publish the book, told Politico: "We never saw a manuscript from Mr. Cohen," Center Street publisher Rolf Zettersten said. The Daily Beast reported in May 2018 that the book deal had been "called off amid Cohen's legal woes." Politico reported: "Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, added in a statement: 'Sometime in early 2018, Mr. Cohen was offered a substantial advance for a proposal regarding a book on understanding Donald Trump. Mr. Cohen ultimately elected not to proceed. In other words, POTUS has yet lied again.'"
Feb 28, 2019
"Asian unemployment -- lowest in history, history of our country."
Source: Speech to troops at Alaska's Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson
in fact: The Asian-American unemployment rate briefly dropped to a low, 2.0 per cent, in May 2018 -- a low, at least, since the government began issuing Asian-American data in 2000 -- but the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for January 2019, was 3.2 per cent. This was higher than the rate in Obama's last full month in office, 2.6 per cent.
"Hispanic unemployment -- lowest levels in the history of our country. Lowest levels. Best they've ever been. Women -- lowest in 61 years. Sixty-one years."
Source: Speech to troops at Alaska's Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson
in fact: The women's unemployment rate in May 2018 and September 2018, 3.6 per cent, was the lowest since late 1953. By the time Trump spoke here, however, the rate had increased to 3.9 per cent, higher than the 3.8 per cent of December 2000, just 18 years prior.
"Hispanic unemployment -- lowest levels in the history of our country. Lowest levels. Best they've ever been."
Source: Speech to troops at Alaska's Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson
in fact: Hispanic unemployment rate dropped to a record low of 4.4 per cent in October 2018 and December 2018. But the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for January 2019, was 4.9 per cent, higher than the 4.8 per cent of December 2000.
"When I got in here, you were having jet fighters that were so old -- you know, you heard the story -- the grandfather flew some of the planes -- some of the bombers. The grandfather, then the son, then the grandchild is here with us now. And I don't like that. I don't like that. So we've ordered massive numbers of new planes and new everything."
Source: Speech to troops at Alaska's Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson
in fact: Trump was correct that some planes, B-52 Stratofortress bombers, have been in service so long -- since the early 1960s -- that they could have been flown by both grandfather and grandson. But as the Washington Post reported, Trump is not replacing them with new planes. Obama approved the creation of the new B-21 bomber, but that plane will complement the B-52, not replace it. (The B-52 has been extensively modified since its debut.)
"We just took over -- you know, you kept hearing it was 90 per cent, 92 per cent -- the caliphate in Syria. Now it's 100 per cent. We just took over. A hundred per cent caliphate. That means the area of the land. We just have 100 per cent, so that's good. We did that in a much shorter period of time than it was supposed to be...And you saw what happened. Right? Everybody saw. We have the whole thing."
Source: Speech to troops at Alaska's Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson
in fact: The U.S. had not taken over 100 per cent of ISIS's former "caliphate" land at the time Trump spoke, the New York Times, CNN and others confirmed. Trump appeared to implicitly acknowledge two days later that he had been inaccurate, saying in a speech to a conservative conference: "And, by the way, as of probably today or tomorrow, we will actually have 100 per cent of the caliphate in Syria."The Times reported after his Thursday claim: "The battle was continuing on Thursday when officials with the Syrian Democratic Forces, an American-backed militia of Kurdish and Arab fighters, were told of Mr. Trump's announcement. 'It's 100 percent not true,' one senior official with the group said on Thursday afternoon. 'The fighting continues.' Separately, a second official said, 'The battle is still going, and there is no truth in that statement.' Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their commanders to talk to the press." CNN's Ben Wedeman tweeted: ""I've been in #Syria for the last 28 days covering the offensive and I can assure @realdonaldtrump that is NOT the case."
"They recently returned from the Brigade's third deployment to Afghanistan. And they've seen a lot. I've actually spoken to a couple, and I know how they feel. It's going on for 19 years. Made a lot of progress, but 19 years."
Source: Speech to troops at Alaska's Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson
in fact: The war in Afghanistan had lasted 17 years and 5 months at the time Trump spoke.
Trump: "But if we had a wall, we wouldn't have to apprehend. People wouldn't come into our country. Drugs wouldn't come into our country. The human trafficking is incredible, the number of people brought into our country." Question: "Sex -- you have girls -- sex trafficking." Trump: "And they don't come through the points of entry. They come through in the middle of the desert where you have open space. So, I think that really, it's a very dangerous thing for people to be voting against border security -- for anybody, including Republicans."
Source: Interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity
in fact: Experts say many human trafficking victims do enter the U.S. through legal ports of entry, on visas, after being deceived into thinking they are coming to a good job or loving relationship in the U.S. "It is far easier to lure victims with false promises of a better life in the United States," said Martina Vandenberg, president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center. "Why kidnap someone when you can convince them to travel willingly?" FactCheck.org reported: "The United Nations' International Organization on Migration has found that 'nearly 80% of international human trafficking journeys cross through official border points, such as airports and land border control points,' based on 10 years' worth of cases on which the IOM has assisted."
"It's so ridiculous (the Green New Deal). No planes, let's not fly anymore. It is crazy. But personally, they should go for it. I love it."
Source: Interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity
in fact: The Green New Deal, a Democratic resolution that proposes to combat climate change by making major changes to reduce carbon emissions, does not call for the elimination of air travel. Trump did not make up this claim out of thin air: a "FAQ" page posted and quickly deleted by a leading Green New Deal proponent, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calls for the government to "build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary." But the other Democrats who have endorsed the Green New Deal never endorsed the FAQ, just the official resolution, which calls only for "overhauling transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing; clean, affordable, and accessible public transit; and high-speed rail."
"Well, you know, the military exercises, I gave that up quite a while ago because it costs us $100 million every time we do it...But we would spend -- I mean, we spent hundreds of millions of dollars on those exercises, and I hated to see it. I thought it was unfair." And: "But when they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on those exercises and we don't get reimbursed -- we're spending a tremendous amount of money on many countries, protecting countries that are very rich that can certainly afford to pay us and then some."
Source: Press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam after second summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: A Pentagon analysis in 2018, which studied an exercise Trump cancelled that year, would have cost $14 million, the Wall Street Journal and other U.S. media outlets reported. There is no available evidence that suggests any U.S. exercise with South Korea would cost $100 million. We will update this item if more information comes available.
"But we've been losing anywhere from $300 to $500 billion a year with China for many, many years."
Source: Press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam after second summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China, according to U.S. government data. The deficit was $337 billion in 2017, $375 billion if you only count trade in goods and exclude trade in services.
"And with China, they're having some difficulty, as you know. But I think that a lot of the difficulty is because of the tariffs that they're having. And in addition to that, we're putting a tremendous amount of money; you saw trade deficits went down last month. Everybody was trying to find out why. Well, we're taking in a lot of tariff money, and it's going right to the bottom line and it has reduced the trade deficits."
Source: Press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam after second summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: Tariffs can result in a decline in imports, which decreases a trade deficit, but tariff revenue does not "go right to the bottom line" to reduce trade deficits; deficits are the value of imports minus the value of exports, and tariff revenue is not included in the calculation. Also, the U.S. trade deficit is not declining: it has increased in 2017 and 2018. Though it declined in one 2018 month Trump appeared to be referring to here, from October to November, that was a decline from a record high -- and it then jumped in December again, to a 10-year high."
"Our unemployment numbers are among the best we've ever had in our history. Individual groups like African-American, women -- you just take a look at any group; Hispanic, you saw that just came out -- the best in history."
Source: Press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam after second summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: At the time Trump spoke, the U.S. had its best-ever unemployment rate for African-Americans. But it did not have its best-ever unemployment numbers overall, for women or for Hispanics. The overall rate for January 2019 was 4.0 per cent, well above the all-time low of 2.5 per cent in 1953. For women, the January 2019 rate was 3.9 per cent, higher than the 3.8 per cent of December 2000, just 18 years prior. For Hispanics, the was 4.9 per cent, higher than the 4.8 per cent of December 2000.
"But having it (Michael Cohen's testimony) during this very important summit is sort of incredible. And he lied a lot, but it was very interesting because he didn't lie about one thing. He said no collusion with the Russian hoax. And I said, 'I wonder why he didn't just lie about that, too, like he did about everything else?' I mean, he lied about so many different things, and I was actually impressed that he didn't say, 'Well, I think there was collusion for this reason or that.' He didn't say that. He said, 'No collusion.' And I was, you know, a little impressed by that, frankly. Could've -- he could've gone all out. He only went about 95 per cent instead of 100 per cent."
Source: Press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam after second summit with Kim Jong Un
in fact: Trump twisted Cohen's words. Cohen did not flatly declare that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia, as Trump strongly suggested. Cohen said in his opening statement to Congress: "The questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not, and I want to be clear. But I have my suspicions." He said later: "So, as I stated in my testimony, I wouldn't use the word 'colluding.' Was there something odd about the back-and-forth praise with President Putin? Yes, but I'm not really sure that I can answer that question in terms of collusion. I was not part of the campaign. I don't know the other conversations that Mr. Trump had with other individuals. There is just so many dots that all seem to lead to the same direction."
Feb 26, 2019
"I have now spent more time in Vietnam than Da Nang Dick Blumenthal, the third rate Senator from Connecticut (how is Connecticut doing?). His war stories of his heroism in Vietnam were a total fraud - he was never even there. We talked about it today with Vietnamese leaders!"
Source: Twitter
in fact: Trump was correct that Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal lied about having served in Vietnam. But Trump was also lying: Blumenthal never told "war stories of his heroism in Vietnam." Rather, he simply to have served in Vietnam during the war when he actually served in the Marine Corps Reserve in the U.S.
Feb 25, 2019
"We're very proud of it. And we have tremendous potential when we fix these trade deals, because we're being ripped by everybody. We are just being ripped, because we lose $800 billion a year on trade. Think of it. It's incon- -- $800 billion."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: The U.S. trade deficit was $566 billion in 2017 and had never previously been $800 billion for a year. (Trump habitually ignores trade in services when he talks about trade deficits, choosing the number that refers only to trade in goods. The U.S. had a goods-trade deficit of $810 billion in 2017.)
"And, by the way, we pay for their (the European Union's) military. Because we pay almost, getting close to 100 per cent for their military. I've gotten them to put up over $100 billion toward NATO, which has made a big impact. But -- so they have to treat us fairly. We want to have a great relationship. I have a great relationship with the leaders. But we have to be treated fairly."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: European countries pay for their own military spending. Trump was likely referring to the U.S. percentage of NATO expenditures, but even this number is not "close to 100 per cent." According to NATO's 2018 annual report, U.S. defence spending -- on everything, not just protecting Europe -- represented 72 per cent of alliance members' total defence spending in 2017. Of NATO's own organizational budget, the U.S. contributes a much smaller agreed-upon percentage: 22 per cent.
"But we lost last year with the European Union $151 billion. This has been going on for many years. Think of it -- $151 billion. We take their product; they don't take ours. We don't charge them tariffs; they charge us tariffs."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: The U.S. has numerous tariffs on the European Union, with which it does not have a free trade agreement.
"But we lost last year with the European Union $151 billion. This has been going on for many years. Think of it -- $151 billion. We take their product; they don't take ours."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: It is not true that the European Union simply doesn't accept American products. According to the Census Bureau, the U.S. had exported $293 billion in goods to the EU from January 2018 through November 2018. Exports were $283 billion for the whole of 2017.
"But we lost last year with the European Union $151 billion. This has been going on for many years. Think of it -- $151 billion."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: Including all kinds of trade, the U.S. had a $102 billion trade deficit with the European Union in 2017, according to U.S. government statistics. The $151 billion figure counts only trade in goods and ignores trade in services, in which the U.S. has a significant surplus.
"The European Union is very, very tough. Very, very tough...So we're taking care of it. I mean, we've informed them that, 'Look, if you don't -- if you're not going play ball...' President Obama, in eight years, couldn't do a thing. They wouldn't even meet with him. They said, 'We have no intention of meeting.' They wouldn't even meet with President Obama...EU is one of the toughest -- maybe the toughest. Maybe, in certain ways, tougher than China, just smaller, from our standpoint."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: It is false that the European Union refused to talk to Obama about trade. In fact, during the Obama presidency, the U.S. and European Union engaged in three years of extensive negotiations on a possible free trade agreement, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Talks stalled in late 2016, with the U.S. election approaching, amid opposition from factions in key European countries like France and Germany.
"The European Union is very, very tough. Very, very tough. They don't allow our products in. They don't allow our farming goods in. You people know. Many of you represent farm states. They won't -- you know that better than anybody. They won't allow our farm products in. They don't take any. They have these non-, you know, monetary barriers that are brutal. They're worse than the -- you know, than others."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: While U.S. farmers do face some trade barriers in selling into the European Union, it is a gross exaggeration to say the Europeans simply "don't allow our farming goods in." According to the website of Trump's own Department of Agriculture, the U.S. exported $11.6 billion in agricultural items to the European Union in 2016 and $11.5 billion in 2017. The EU ranked fourth for U.S. agricultural exports in 2016 and fifth in 2017.
"And in China, they have a very, very tough penalty for drugs. It's called the death penalty. And I said to President Xi, 'You don't have much of a drug problem. Do you have a drug problem?" 'No. No drug problem.' I said, 'So you have 1.4 billion people, and you don't have a drug problem?' 'That's right. No drug problem.' I said, 'What do you attribute that to?' 'Death penalty. Quick trial.' They don't have trials that last 19 years. At the end of a -- the judge dies. Everybody dies. The only one living is the one that did the damage. No, they have what's called a 'quick trial.' It goes quick. It doesn't take a lot of time. And if you're a drug dealer, you'll say, 'You know what -- maybe I'll just sort of stay out of China.' Singapore, the same thing."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: We could find no examples of a U.S. drug trial that lasted 19 years, or anywhere close. The sprawling trial of Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, which concluded the same month Trump spoke, lasted three months. (Also, while we cannot know what Xi said to Trump, China does indeed have a drug addiction problem. As Time magazine reported: "A 2017 report from China's National Narcotics Control Commission said there were 2.51 million drug users in China as of late 2016, a year-over-year increase of nearly 7%. A report from the Brookings Institution also noted that the number of officially registered drug users in the country increased every year between 1998 and 2016." Time quoted Ann Fordham, executive director of the International Drug Policy Consortium, as saying: "It is incredibly disturbing that President Trump would claim there is not a drug problem in China because they use the death penalty. I don't know how it's possible to claim that. The administration should check its facts, especially when advocating use of the death penalty for drug offences." Fordham said the true number of drug users in China is probably "much higher" than the official figure.)
"And I said to President Xi -- I said, 'President, you have to do me a favor. As part of our trade deal...' -- it has nothing to do with trade, or certainly very little -- but we're having shipped over here, from China, fentanyl. It's killing 88,000 people a year, and probably more. That's just the ones we know about. It's deadly. A little tiny spoonful can wipe out a state, it's hard to believe. It can wipe out an entire state, a spoonful of this stuff."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: As the Associated Press noted, Trump was exaggerating; a "tiny spoonful" cannot "wipe out a state." The AP explained: "The Drug Enforcement Administration cited evidence in a case last year that 1 gram of fentanyl can kill 300 to 500 people. The case involved a Belleville, Illinois, man convicted in Texas of trafficking nearly 12 kilograms (26 pounds) of the drug, which the agency says is enough to kill up to 5.8 million people. A teaspoon generally holds 4 to 6 grams, depending on the dry substance, equating to a theoretical death toll from fentanyl of 1,200 to 3,000, far from Trump's claim that an amount that small can wipe out 'an entire state.'"
"And I said to President Xi -- I said, 'President, you have to do me a favor. As part of our trade deal...it has nothing to do with trade, or certainly very little -- but we're having shipped over here, from China, fentanyl. It's killing 88,000 people a year, and probably more. That's just the ones we know about."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: Trump's "88,000" figure is a major exaggeration. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, fentanyl was involved in 18,335 overdose deaths in 2016, the highest on record. The numbers for 2017 and 2018 may well be higher, but they are nowhere near 80,000. The CDC issued a preliminary estimate of 72,000 total overdose deaths in 2017, and about 29,000 of them were estimated to be connected to synthetic opiates, including fentanyl.
"Now, China is paying us, right now, billions and billions of dollars of tariffs a month. Every month, billions of dollars. I love it. Personally, I love it. But they're paying billions of dollars. And it's hurting them; it's not good for them."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: We do not have exact figures on how much revenue Trump's tariffs on imported Chinese goods generate per month. Regardless, China does not pay the tariffs. While some Chinese manufacturers eat a portion of the cost, the U.S. importers pay the tariffs, and they often pass on a substantial portion of the cost to consumers in the form of higher prices.
"One of the things that Ambassador Lighthizer and Steve, and all of the people that are working with China -- the fentanyl is a tremendous problem. It seems to be made 100 per cent in China. A hundred per cent."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: It is not true that all fentanyl is made in China; some of it is made in Mexico, and some of it, intended for legal use, is made in the U.S. The Drug Enforcement Agency included detailed information on "Mexico-sourced fentanyl" in its 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment. It said in the report: "Clandestinely produced fentanyl is trafficked into the United States primarily from China and Mexico, and is responsible for the ongoing fentanyl epidemic. In contrast, the diversion of pharmaceutical fentanyl in the United States occurs on a small scale, with the diverted fentanyl products being intended for personal use and street sales."The report continued: "DEA and CBP reporting indicate the fentanyl shipped directly from China is typically seized in smaller quantities but with purities commonly testing above 90 per cent. By comparison, fentanyl trafficked overland into the United States from Mexico is typically seized in larger, bulk quantities but with much lower purity, with exhibits on average testing at less than 10 per cent pure."
"But these people, they have the traffickers. They're vicious, they're smart -- the coyotes. How about the name 'coyote'? They have people tied up, put in the back of trucks and vans. They can't go through checkpoints. They have to go through open areas. Can't walk through. You can't go through it. Because even if they don't do much of an inspection of your truck or your car, they do open the back door, or they do look through a window. You can't have women sitting there that are tied up.So when I hear the other side say -- and we have some of the other side here. But when I hear the other side say, 'Oh, no, everything goes through the checkpoint,' that's absolutely false. You have areas where you literally have roads that are carved in the sand that it's used so much."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: Experts say many human trafficking victims do enter the U.S. through legal ports of entry, on visas, after being deceived into thinking they are coming to a good job or loving relationship in the U.S. "It is far easier to lure victims with false promises of a better life in the United States," said Martina Vandenberg, president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center. "Why kidnap someone when you can convince them to travel willingly?" FactCheck.org reported: "The United Nations' International Organization on Migration has found that 'nearly 80% of international human trafficking journeys cross through official border points, such as airports and land border control points,' based on 10 years' worth of cases on which the IOM has assisted." Five experts told the Star that they have not encountered any cases in which women were transported to the U.S. in the bound-and-gagged manner Trump has regularly described, though they said it is possible this has happened on occasion. "Either he's watching action films or he's watching some other type of movie that involves handcuffs and tape over people's mouths. But in neither case is it based in any reality of what individuals helping trafficking victims see," said Lori Cohen, director of the Anti-Trafficking initiative at Sanctuary for Families, a New York advocate and service provider for sex trafficking victims. "His depiction of human trafficking is practically unrecognizable to those of us who have spent decades in the trenches combating these abuses," said Vandenberg.
"We just started a 47-mile patch. We have different patches. We bid it out tough. We have a much better prototype. It's actually a beautiful wall. It's a beautiful-looking -- actually -- you know, I've always said part of the wall was that previous administrations, when they did little walls, they built them so badly. So badly. It's so unattractive. So -- I wouldn't want them in my backyard. And the new one is incredible looking. It's a piece of art, in a sense. It's still -- and it's, by the way, more effective. I mean, it's more effective. So we are doing a job. We're getting it up. We have beautiful prototypes. We're working with the Army Corps of Engineers. We're total pros. And I don't know if you saw what I put on Twitter, but I put on Twitter a piece of it. That's not the new prototype; the new prototype has started in different locations. But we're going to be, pretty soon, having well over a couple of hundred miles of wall up."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: Construction on Trump's border wall had not started. Construction on new wall in a segment in Texas's Rio Grande Valley was close to beginning, but it had not happened yet, and all that had been built on other parts of the border was replacement fencing, an image of which Trump had "put on Twitter." In addition, the funding deal passed by Congress and signed by Trump explicitly prohibited Trump from building any wall based on the new prototypes. All new barriers funded by the $1.4 billion in the 2019 bill must be based on pre-existing barrier designs.
"And I told Guatemala and I told Honduras, and I told El Salvador -- three places where they send us tremendous numbers of people -- and they're rough people. They're not sending us their finest. It doesn't make sense. Why would they send their finest? They're sending us some very -- as I would sometimes say -- rough hombres. These are rough, rough, tough people. Many criminal people."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: There is no evidence for this conspiracy theory. (It is nearly identical to Trump's baseless conspiracy theory about the diversity visa lottery program: he has repeatedly and falsely claimed that foreign governments put their unwanted citizens into the lottery to dump them on the United States.) Migrants in Latin American caravans have decided on their own to leave their home countries. They have not been dumped into caravans by governments looking to get rid of them.
"Ninety per cent of the drugs don't come through the port of entry. Ninety per cent of the drugs and the big stuff goes out to the desert, makes a left, and goes where you don't have any wall."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: Trump was reversing the actual data. As USA Today noted: "According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, 90 per cent of heroin seized along the border, 88 per cent of cocaine, 87 per cent of methamphetamine, and 80 per cent of fentanyl in the first 11 months of the 2018 fiscal year was caught trying to be smuggled in at legal crossing points." Trump's own Drug Enforcement Administration, which says that most drugs smuggled in from Mexico come through legal ports of entry. In its 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment, the DEA said only "a small percentage of all heroin seized by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) along the land border was between Ports of Entry."
"So, finally, to protect our communities, we must secure the border against human trafficking, drug smuggling, and crime of all types. The human trafficking is a tremendous problem where, mostly women, and they're tied up and they're taped up, and they're put in the back of cars, and the car does not come through the port of entry."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: Experts say many human trafficking victims do enter the U.S. through legal ports of entry, on visas, after being deceived into thinking they are coming to a good job or loving relationship in the U.S. "It is far easier to lure victims with false promises of a better life in the United States," said Martina Vandenberg, president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center. "Why kidnap someone when you can convince them to travel willingly?" FactCheck.org reported: "The United Nations' International Organization on Migration has found that 'nearly 80% of international human trafficking journeys cross through official border points, such as airports and land border control points,' based on 10 years' worth of cases on which the IOM has assisted." Five experts told the Star that they have not encountered any cases in which women were transported to the U.S. in the bound-and-gagged manner Trump has regularly described, though they said it is possible this has happened on occasion. "Either he's watching action films or he's watching some other type of movie that involves handcuffs and tape over people's mouths. But in neither case is it based in any reality of what individuals helping trafficking victims see," said Lori Cohen, director of the Anti-Trafficking initiative at Sanctuary for Families, a New York advocate and service provider for sex trafficking victims. "His depiction of human trafficking is practically unrecognizable to those of us who have spent decades in the trenches combating these abuses," said Vandenberg.
"So America now has, really, the hottest economy on Earth."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: Hottest is subjective, but there does not appear to be an objective basis for this hyperbole. The New York Times reported: "The American economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2018. Growth in Latvia and Poland was almost twice as fast. Same for China and India. Even the troubled Greek economy posted stronger growth. And a wide range of economic analysts estimate that the growth of the American economy slowed in the fourth quarter."
"We're opening it up to farmers. We're opening Canada, as an example -- and Mexico -- to farmers. They were closed. It was a closed shop. They had all sorts of non-monetary trade barriers. And they had monetary trade barriers. They were charging, for certain agricultural products, an almost 300 per cent tariff. Nobody ever talked about it."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: Canada and Mexico are not "closed" to U.S. farm exports under NAFTA. In fact, according to Trump's own Department of Agriculture, Canada was the number-one market for 2.S. agricultural exports in 2017, with $20.5 billion in purchases, and Mexico was third, with $18.6 billion. Though Canada does indeed have major trade barriers protecting its dairy and poultry industries from U.S. products, its "supply management" of those industries is not representative of how it treats agriculture as a whole. American farm groups were overwhelmingly supportive of NAFTA; the American Farm Bureau said on its website: "Implemented in 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement has removed barriers to agricultural trade between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Agricultural exports from the U.S. to Canada and Mexico have increased from $8.9 billion in 1993 to $38.1 billion in 2016."
"I also want to thank every governor here today who is supporting our new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement -- the USMCA. I've long said that NAFTA is the worst trade deal that any country has ever signed. It emptied us out. We had a surplus with Mexico and Canada, and we went to $130 billion trade deficit with the combination of Mexico and Canada. And this deal will bring it back."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: The U.S. did not have even close to a $130 billion combined trade deficit with Mexico and Canada. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. had a $69 billion deficit in goods and services trade with Mexico and a $2.8 billion surplus with Canada in 2017. (By another measure, used by the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. had a $63.6 billion deficit with Mexico and a $8.4 billion surplus with Canada and.)
"In a few moments, our first session on vocational training and workforce development will begin. We want every citizen to gain the cutting-edge skills they need to enjoy a rewarding, lifelong career. Many of the governors here today have identified this as a very top priority. My daughter, Ivanka, who is going to be speaking later, is -- she has been so much involved. So incredibly involved. Where is Ivanka? Ivanka, keep -- keep going. Created -- my daughter has created millions of jobs. I don't know if anyone knows that, but she's created millions of jobs...Last year, my administration created the Council for American Worker and launched the Pledge of America's Workers, where we've gained commitments from private sector leaders to hire and train more than 6.5 million Americans. Think of it: 6.5 million. And these are jobs that, for the most part, would not have happened."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: It is a wild exaggeration to say Ivanka Trump has "created millions of jobs." The "6.5 million" figure refers to 6.5 million training opportunities pledged by American companies over five years as part of the initiative Ivanka Trump helped to lead. They are not "jobs," and many of them are to be offered to current employees, not new hires. Further, many of them have not actually occurred yet, and some of them were in the companies' plans before the Trump administration announced the initiative.
"The unemployment rates for African Americans -- and you've heard this many times -- Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans have all reached their lowest levels ever recorded. And with women, it's now 64 years. Lowest in 64 years."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: The women's unemployment rate in May 2018 and September 2018, 3.6 per cent, was the lowest since late 1953, 65 years prior. By the time Trump spoke here, however, the rate had increased to 3.9 per cent, higher than the 3.8 per cent of December 2000, just 18 years prior.
"The unemployment rates for African-Americans -- and you've heard this many times -- Hispanic Americans, and Asian-Americans have all reached their lowest levels ever recorded."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: The African-American unemployment rate remained at an all-time low, but the Hispanic and Asian unemployment rates did not. Hispanic American unemployment rate dropped to a record low of 4.4 per cent in October 2018 and December 2018. But the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for January 2019, was 4.9 per cent, higher than the 4.8 per cent of December 2000. The Asian-American unemployment rate briefly dropped to a low, 2.0 per cent, in May 2018 -- a low, at least, since the government began issuing Asian-American data in 2000 -- but the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for January 2019, was 3.2 per cent. This was higher than the rate in Obama's last full month in office, 2.6 per cent.
"We were just discussing -- our great new governor of Michigan -- last night, where you have some good news coming up very soon. And we have car companies opening up in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and so many other places. I was with Prime Minister Abe of Japan, and he was saying it could be seven different plants in a very short period of time, not to mention all of the plants that have already opened."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: There are no automotive assembly plants in Pennsylvania at all. (Also, it was unclear if Trump's claim about Abe was true. He claimed in 2017 that a foreign leader he did not name said their country would build five U.S. auto plants, which has not happened yet; he then said in 2018 that Abe agreed to have "all" Japanese auto companies build in the U.S., which has not happened. Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labour and economics at the Center for Automotive Research, said on Twitter: "There might be need for 1-2 (North American assembly) plants from Japanese producers, but there's no way that happens 'in a very short period of time' if 'that' means actually building plants and producing vehicles."replies206 retweets465 likes
"And we have companies opening up in the United States that we thought we lost, that would never be back, and some are coming back and some are brand new and they're big. And they're coming in and they're moving in, which is one of the reasons we need people to come in. They have to come in through a legal process. But with a 3.7 [per cent] unemployment, we need to have people coming in."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: The most recent unemployment rate at the time Trump spoke, for January 2019, was 4.0 per cent.
"...(cut) more regulations than any other administration in history, and that's very important. And we still have regulation. But you don't have 10 of identical regulations that you have to get approved and wiped out from different departments. So we've really cut it down. A highway that would take 17 or 18 year of approval now takes probably two. And we're trying to get it down to one. And it may be rejected on various grounds, including environmental. But we have it down to two, and we think we can get it down further. So it will be -- that will be something. You know. You have many highways and many roadways, and they're tied up for many years. And that won't be happening too much anymore."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: While some controversial and complicated infrastructure projects may have taken 17 or 18 years to get approved, there is no basis for Trump's suggestion that this time frame was standard. The Treasury Department reported under Obama: "Studies conducted for the Federal Highway Administration concluded that the average time to complete a NEPA (environmental) study increased from 2.2 years in the 1970s, to 4.4 years in the 1980s, to 5.1 years in the 1995 to 2001 period, to 6.6 years in 2011." After a change of methodology, it was 3 years and 9 months in 2015, 3 years and 8 months in 2016. Further, there is no current evidence that Trump has already succeeded in reducing the standard approval time frame to two years, although he says this is his intention. His Department of Transportation reported a median approval time of 3 years, 10 months in 2017.
"Ambassador Lighthizer, Steve Mnuchin, a lot of folks in the room have been helping and that's been great. And I just see our great Secretary sitting there. On drug prices, first time in 54 years that drug prices have actually gone down this year. So, Mr. Secretary, thank you very much. That's a great, great deal." And: "Reducing the price of health-care and prescription drugs -- and we've made a lot of progress, as I said. First year in 54 years that prescription prices have gone down, which is a big statement. But we can get them a lot lower."
Source: Speech to governors
in fact: Prescription drug prices declined in 2018 for the first time in 46 years, according to the Consumer Price Index, not "54 years," as Politico health reporter Dan Diamond noted on Twitter.
"Former Senator Harry Reid (he got thrown out) is working hard to put a good spin on his failed career. He led through lies and deception, only to be replaced by another beauty, Cryin' Chuck Schumer. Some things just never change!"
Source: Twitter
in fact: Reid retired from the Senate. He did not get "thrown out."
"I hope our great Republican Senators don't get led down the path of weak and ineffective Border Security. Without strong Borders, we don't have a Country - and the voters are on board with us. Be strong and smart, don't fall into the Democrats 'trap' of Open Borders and Crime!"
Source: Twitter
in fact: Democrats do not support "open borders." They endorse various border security measures, just not Trump's border wall.
Fact check: Trump delivers wildly dishonest speech at CPAC
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Updated 9:06 PM EST, Sun March 5, 2023
Washington CNN — As president, Donald Trump made some of his most thoroughly dishonest speeches at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
As he embarks on another campaign for the presidency, Trump delivered another CPAC doozy Saturday night.
Trump’s lengthy address to the right-wing gathering in Maryland was filled with wildly inaccurate claims about his own presidency, Joe Biden’s presidency, foreign affairs, crime, elections and other subjects.
Here is a fact check of 23 of the false claims Trump made. (And that’s far from the total.)
SEE LINK FOR DETAILS...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/05/politics/fact-check-trump-cpac/index.html
It's great to see that you're progressing with your recovery.
Thousands of Presidential Fact Checkers Laid Off in Biden’s First Hundred Days
By Andy Borowitz May 3, 2021
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an employment trend that industry leaders are calling “dire,” thousands of Presidential fact checkers have been laid off during Joe Biden’s first hundred days in office.
Harland Dorrinson, the executive director of the American Society of Presidential Fact Checkers, said that Biden has single-handedly destroyed the employment picture for many of the group’s members.
“Over the past three months, America’s Presidential-falsehood infrastructure has all but collapsed,” Dorrinson said. “We have not experienced such a devastating downturn since Richard M. Nixon left office, in 1974.”
Dorrinson acknowledged that many in the Presidential-fact-checking profession had got complacent during the four years prior to Biden’s Inauguration. “Those were boom times for our industry,” he said. “We should have realized that they were too good to last.”
He said that his group’s members were hoping that the 2024 Presidential election would bring a much-needed recovery, and were “keeping their fingers crossed” that figures such as Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Marjorie Taylor Greene would run.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/thousands-of-presidential-fact-checkers-laid-off-in-bidens-first-hundred-days