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OKTOBERFEST 2024 | 6 Million Guests Join the World's GREATEST
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Welcome to the Oktoberfest 2024
The festival of the City of Munich. In 2024, the 189th Oktoberfest will take place from September 21 to October 6 on the Theresienwiese.
All information about the largest folk festival in the world
https://www.oktoberfest.de/en
Trump rejects Harris' challenge to debate again on CNN
By Reuters
September 21, 2024 2:56 PM CDT, Updated 3 hours ago
WASHINGTON, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Donald Trump on Saturday rejected another debate with Vice President Kamala Harris before the U.S. presidential election, hours after the Democratic candidate's campaign said she had agreed to an Oct. 23 matchup with her Republican rival on CNN.
"Vice President Harris is ready for another opportunity to share a stage with Donald Trump, and she has accepted CNN's invitation to a debate on October 23. Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate," Jen O'Malley Dillon, the chair of the Harris campaign, said in a statement.
Trump stuck to his previous position that there would not be another debate before voters go to the polls in the Nov. 5 election.
"The problem with another debate is that it's just too late. Voting has already started," the former U.S. president told supporters at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Harris and Trump debated each other for the first time on Sept. 10, in a contest that polls showed she won.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harris-accepts-cnn-invitation-second-debate-urges-trump-join-2024-09-21/
President Trump’s legacy of corruption, four years and 3,700 conflicts of interest later
January 15, 2021
Updated April 14, 2021
Here’s what you need to know:
As president, Donald Trump has flouted all kinds of norms, starting with his decision not to divest from his business interests while in office. That set the stage for an administration marked by self-interest, profiteering at the highest levels and more than 3,700 conflicts of interest.
Next week marks the end of Donald Trump’s term as President. In his wake, he will leave behind a legacy of profound corruption and egregious conflicts of interest, the repercussions of which will echo for years after he is gone. In the last four years, Trump has flouted all kinds of norms set by previous presidents, starting with his decision not to divest from his business interests while in office, setting the stage for what became an administration marked by placing self-interest and profiteering at the highest levels above the public interest and culminated in a deadly insurrection that was rooted in the same self-serving ethos.
Trump ran as the “law and order” candidate who would “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. Instead he did the opposite, using his power as the President to boost his own profits through frequent visits to his hotels and golf courses, relentless promotion of his properties, and countless other interactions between the Trump Organization and the government. By keeping these properties, Trump provided corporate lobbyists, foreign actors, special interests and anyone else seeking political clout a way to gain access to his administration. Trump opened the presidency up for business, and for four years, influence was for sale.
Since Trump’s inauguration, CREW researchers meticulously tracked these conflicts of interest resulting from interactions between the Trump Organization and the government, or those trying to influence it. CREW’s tracking is rigorous but by no means comprehensive.
There are likely hundreds, perhaps even thousands more conflicts that we have no way of knowing about. Four years and more than 3,700 conflicts of interest later, there is absolutely no doubt that Trump tried at every turn to use the presidency to benefit his bottom line.
Visits to Trump properties
Source for all the graphics:
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/president-trump-legacy-corruption-3700-conflicts-interest/
Weeks after President Trump swore he’d have no involvement with his businesses as president, he decided to pay one a visit, traveling to Mar-a-Lago for the first weekend in February 2017. The ambassadors of Switzerland, Hungary, Afghanistan, Italy, Denmark, Peru, Colombia, and Sweden had the same idea that weekend.
That first visit was a harbinger of what would become near-constant practice over the next four years, where foreign officials, special interest groups, and others would gain access to the president and his administration through payments to businesses he still profited from in office.
After campaigning on the promise that he wouldn’t have time to leave the White House or play golf, President Trump visited his properties 547 times while in office, paying 145 visits to Mar-a-Lago, 328 visits to his golf courses, and 33 visits to the Trump hotel in Washington. He often brought other senior government officials along, sending a message to his administration and those who would like to curry favor with it that his properties are open to their business.
Trump promoted his properties by conducting official business there. He held a press conference at Trump Tower, signed four executive orders at his Bedminster resort, and hosted eight heads of state at Mar-a-Lago. When he couldn’t promote his businesses and run the government at the same time, he opted to promote his businesses over doing his job. In November, for example, he signed out of a G-20 summit to visit his Virginia golf course.
Trump wasn’t alone: 346 executive branch officials made 993 visits to Trump properties during Trump’s term, most often patronizing the president’s DC hotel. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner paid the greatest number of visits to Trump properties, 78 and 55, respectively. Vice President Pence visited Trump’s businesses 33 times while in office, including going to his DC hotel 22 times.
Trump administration officials often mingled with special interests and foreign officials at Trump properties, rewarding them with access for their patronage. Special interest groups likely spent more than $13 million at Trump properties, and 47 Trump officials attended at least one of these events at a Trump property, giving businesses access to power while enriching the president.
President Trump’s visits to his properties also sent a message to Republicans in Congress that paying their own visits to Trump properties was a way to ingratiate themselves with his administration. Many took the hint: 143 members of Congress made 361 visits to Trump businesses. Sen. Lindsey Graham made the greatest number of visits, with 28, followed by Rep. Matt Gaetz, who went to one 22 times, and Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who visited a Trump property 20 and eighteen times respectively.
Trump properties’ inextricable connection to the president made them a part of the Republican Party fundraising apparatus, with 69 members of Congress attending a political event at a Trump property over the last four years. Another 18 White House officials went to one or more, including President Trump, 32 times, and Vice President Pence on 16 occasions.
Foreign officials also patronized Trump properties: CREW tracked 150 officials from 77 foreign governments that visited a Trump property during Trump’s term — many of whom visited to attend an event hosted or sponsored by a foreign government or connected entity. Once again, Trump administration officials rewarded foreign interests for patronizing their boss. Twenty Trump officials attended a foreign government group’s event at a Trump property over the last four years.
Often, visits to Trump properties coincided with White House access. Most recently, seven Michigan state legislators visited the Trump hotel, where some toasted Dom Perignon after meeting with the president at the White House. During the Trump administration, 80 state officials visited Trump properties, including nineteen governors.
Special interests and foreign officials have also gotten White House access while patronizing Trump properties. Five special interest groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, have had White House meetings concurrent with a Trump hotel event. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis had breakfast at Trump’s hotel the day before meeting with the president for a news conference at the White House.
Political and special interest spending
In the past four years special interest groups, foreign governments, and political groups together held more than 250 events at 14 Trump properties, likely resulting in tens of millions of dollars of revenue for the Trump Organization. President Trump’s properties offer these groups unbridled access to the nation’s most powerful policy makers. Many of these events have been attended by high ranking government officials, and sometimes even the President himself. In all, special interest groups have hosted 142 events, political groups have hosted 100, and foreign governments or foreign government-sponsored groups have hosted another 13.
Trump properties have become hot spots for special interest groups to hold lavish events which have likely generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue for the Trump Organization. While these prices may seem astronomical, it is a small price for an industry to pay to get facetime with high-powered government officials, and the possibility to save billions thanks to favorable policies. At least 47 executive branch officials and 41 members of Congress have been to a special interest’s event at a Trump property, where they likely mingled with corporate executives and lobbyists.
Special interest spending
It’s clear that some special interests have received something they wanted from the Trump administration after spending massive amounts of money at Trump properties. According to research by CREW, as many as 30 special interests have received favorable policy outcomes from the Trump Administration around the time that they held an event at a Trump property.
Political committees also spent huge amounts of money for candidates, elected officials, and donors seeking to get into the good graces of Trump and his allies. The president’s own political operation, consisting of his campaign, a joint fundraising committee with the RNC, and the super PAC America First Action, together spent more than $7 million and held 32 events at Trump properties. Most recently, the joint fundraising group held a lavish election night party at Trump’s Washington, D.C. hotel where donors likely spent huge amounts of money for hotel rooms and event tables.
MUCH MORE:
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/president-trump-legacy-corruption-3700-conflicts-interest/
Corporate media keeps hiding the the truth about madman Donald Trump | Opinion
Opinion by D. Earl Stephens • 9h
We have a complete madman running for the President of the United States, and it would be about damn time our national media started reporting it this way.
We are just over seven weeks from a landmark election that will determine America’s standing in the world, and her ability to protect the rights, welfare and lives of her citizens.
With all of this on the line, we have bitterly learned that we can no longer count on the fourth estate.
It’s a terrible thing. They have catastrophically failed us like never before.
We have been forced to wait helplessly, and wonder if these incompetent, ponderous idiots will ever stop ignoring what is so clearly right in front of our tired eyes: a dangerous maniac backed by a massive propaganda network that disgracefully fills his dark, billowing sails, allowing him to rumble unchecked and uncovered across the American countryside, taking a blowtorch to the truth, dead aim on our vote and our election workers, and repeating insane, dangerous and racist conspiracy theories that assault our senses, and could well result in the death of our democracy and many of our citizens.
That run-on sentence has never needed writing more, because while I typed it, our media continued to massively underreport, and even disgracefully normalize its chilling message.
This is NOT OK, people.
We must demand that our collective media FINALLY removes their blinders and their heads from their asses and starts reporting on what WE KNOW they have been seeing and hearing from the 300-lb. sack of dirt, and his revolting followers in Congress who swoon at his fat, little feet to provide him cover.
Donald J. Trump means America harm, goddamnit, and he is getting sicker and crazier by the minute.
So tell me: At what point does this become the only thing worth leading every major media outlet in this country????
At its core, the mission of the working press is cut and dry and pretty easily executed: Reporters and news departments are assigned to cover various beats and report out to the American people about what is happening in their coverage areas. The press has the privilege of being where we too often can’t, so that they can tell us what has transpired on the football field, or the court room, or a theater of war, or the school board meeting, or on the election trail …
We depend on them to be our eyes and ears, to describe as vividly as possible what is happening where they are. We depend on them to provide this information to the editorial leaders in their respective newsrooms, who are tasked with processing it all and giving it the weight and “play” it deserves.
We depend on their news sense and professionalism to understand what is important and what isn't.
We depend on them to be accurate and credible, because without those two things, they are done, and we all suffer for it.
Again, it really isn’t that difficult a job to carry out, but man, is it monumentally important.
Well, right now our incompetent and potentially bought-off media is making a complete and utter mess of things, and only a damn fool would rate their coverage of this election as even remotely accurate and credible.
It’s an absolute disgrace is what it is.
The Republican candidate for president is a complete madman. A racist. Unhinged.
Even the slightest amount of fact-checking and casual observation would confirm this.
So WHY isn’t it being reported this way????
We are in the middle of a national emergency, and I am going to continue to use my small but sturdy platform built on years in the newspaper business to ask just one more time:
[...]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/corporate-media-keeps-hiding-the-the-truth-about-madman-donald-trump-opinion/ar-AA1qCo4l?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=9d6f43eb81dc47b5afc2c6d5897599ed&ei=13
LYIN' TRUMP has a record of lying....and more lying
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
German Foreign Office responds to Trump
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219453687
Thursday carTOONS
. . .
https://www.democraticunderground.com/119813648
Complete copy of: Fact-checking the 2024 Trump-Harris debate
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/11/fact-check-presidential-debate-harris-trump/
Trump, on the defensive, makes four times more suspect claims than Harris over 90 minutes.
Former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris at the debate Tuesday in Philadelphia. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Analysis by Glenn Kessler
September 11, 2024 at 2:43 a.m. EDT
In their first and perhaps only presidential debate in the 2024 election, a defensive former president Donald Trump relied on many of his favorite falsehoods to combat attacks from Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris stretched the truth on occasion, but she was no match in the falsehood department against Trump.
Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.
Here’s a roundup of 55 claims that caught our interest, in the order in which they were made. (In some cases we have grouped similar Trump statements together.) As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios when we do a roundup of facts in debates.
“Economists have said that that Trump sales tax would actually result, for middle-class families, in about $4,000 more a year.”
— Harris
This may be a high estimate. Trump suggested he wants to impose a 10 percent tax on every imported good entering the United States and a 60 percent tax on every imported good from China. The pro-trade Peterson Institute for International Economics has estimated that this would cost a typical U.S. household in the middle of the income distribution about $1,700 in after-tax income. That’s because tariffs are typically passed on to consumers by importers — a standard economic concept that Trump rejects.
But in one recent campaign rally, Trump mused that he would impose a 20 percent tariff. Peterson redid the numbers and estimated this would cost that typical household more than $2,600 a year.
Harris is relying on an estimate from the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund, which calculates the cost would be $3,900.
Follow Fact-checking politicians
But economist Kimberly Clausing, co-author of the Peterson study, says these studies are underestimates because they do not consider the increase in the price of goods that compete with imports. “We have every reason to think U.S. domestic prices would rise in those sectors that compete with imports,” and “that effect is very large,” she said in an email. “The true cost I’d guess is roughly twice as high as our number.”
“I have no sales tax. That’s an incorrect statement. She knows that we’re doing tariffs on other countries. Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we’ve done for the world, and the tariff will be substantial in some cases.”
— Trump
Trump is flat wrong to claim that the entire tariff is paid by a foreign country. There is no controversy among economists, who agree that tariffs — essentially a tax on domestic consumption — are paid by importers, such as U.S. companies, which in turn pass on most or all of the costs to consumers or producers who may use imported materials in their products. As a matter of demand and supply elasticities, overseas producers will pay part of the tax if there are fewer goods sold to the United States. Domestic producers in effect get a subsidy because they can raise their prices to the level imposed on importers.
Through the end of his presidency, Trump-imposed tariffs garnered about $75 billion on products from China. So, ultimately, Americans footed the bill for Trump’s tariffs, not the Chinese. Moreover, the China tariff revenue was reduced by $28 billion in payments the government made to farmers who lost business because China stopped buying U.S. soybeans, hogs, cotton and other products in response.
“I had tariffs, and yet I had no inflation. … I had no inflation, virtually no inflation. They had the highest inflation perhaps in the history of our country because I’ve never seen a worse period of time.”
“We have inflation like very few people have ever seen before, probably the worst in our nation's history.”
— Trump
Biden did not have the highest inflation in U.S. history. Inflation spiked to 9 percent in mid 2022, a 40-year-high, but is now below 3 percent. (For all of 2022, inflation was 6.5 percent.) Inflation was 12.5 percent in 1980, 13.3 percent in 1979 and 18.1 percent in 1946 — and many other years were higher than 6.5 percent.
Higher prices for goods and services would have happened no matter who was elected president in 2020. Inflation initially spiked because of pandemic-related shocks — increased consumer demand as the pandemic eased and an inability to meet this demand because of supply-chain problems, as companies reduced production when consumers hunkered down during the pandemic. Indeed, inflation rose around the world — with many peer countries doing worse than the United States — because of pandemic-related shocks that rippled across the globe.
“We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
— Trump
This is poppycock. Immigration experts know of no effort by other countries to empty their prisons and mental institutions. As someone who came to prominence in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Trump appears to be channeling Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s 1980 Mariel boatlift. About 125,000 Cubans were allowed to flee to the United States in 1,700 boats — but there was a backlash when it was discovered that hundreds of refugees had been released from jails and mental health facilities.
Helen Fair, research associate at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research in Britain, which tracks the world prison population (except for a handful of countries), says the numbers keep growing. In 2013, 10.2 million people were in prison globally — and that had grown to 10.77 million in 2021. A preliminary estimate for February 2024, not ready to be published, indicates the population has grown even more. “In short, I would disagree with Donald Trump’s assertion,” she said.
“You look at Springfield, Ohio, you look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently. … They’re at the highest level of criminality, and we have to get them out.”
“A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
— Trump
Trump is channeling right-wing social media sensations. On Springfield, Trump is referencing a ridiculous social media hoax, supposedly centered on Haitian immigrants eating cats and other animals, that has spawned thousands of memes across right-wing social media. There is no evidence that Haitians are doing this. As for Aurora, police in this Denver suburb say this claim is false — a Venezuelan gang has not taken over an apartment complex.
“I’m not saying that there’s not gang members that don’t live in this community, but what we’re learning out here is that gang members have not taken over this complex,” Heather Morris, the interim police chief in Aurora, said in a recent video taped outside the complex.
Some tenants held a news conference recently and also disputed the notion that the gang had taken over the complex. Instead, they said, the problem was that the apartment block had fallen into disrepair and was infested with bedbugs, cockroaches and rats.
“I created one of the greatest economies in the history of our country. … We had the greatest economy.”
— Trump
This is false. Before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered businesses and sent unemployment soaring, the president could certainly brag about the state of the economy in his first three years. But he ran into trouble when he made a play for the history books to say it was the best economy in U.S. history. By just about any important measure, the economy under Trump did not do as well as it did under Presidents Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton.
The gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in 2019, slipping from 2.9 percent in 2018 and 2.4 percent in 2017. But in 1997, 1998 and 1999, GDP grew 4.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Yet even that period paled in comparison with the 1950s and 60s. Growth between 1962 and 1966 ranged from 4.4 percent to 6.6 percent. In postwar 1950 and 1951, it was 8.7 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate reached a low of 3.5 percent under Trump, but it dipped as low as 2.5 percent in 1953.
“What you’re going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025, that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected.”
— Harris
“I have nothing to do as you know, and as she knows better than anyone, I have nothing to do with Project 2025 that’s out there.”
— Trump
Project 2025 is not an official campaign document, and we’ve called out Democrats for sometimes falsely suggesting policies that are not in it, such as on Social Security and the definition of family. But there are definitely Trump connections.
A CNN review found that 140 people who worked in the Trump administration contributed to the report. In April, at an event for the Heritage Foundation, which produced the document, Trump praised Kevin Roberts, its president, and appeared to endorse Project 2025. “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America,” he said.
“We handed them over a country where the economy and where the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came in.”
— Trump
Trump is right on stock, wrong on economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 29,440 on Feb. 14, 2020, before markets swooned over the pandemic, and had risen to 31,198 by the day President Joe Biden took office. But the unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in February 2020 — and 6.4 percent in January 2021.
“What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump’s plan would make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy. What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump’s plan would actually explode the deficit. Sixteen Nobel laureates have described his economic plan as something that would increase inflation and, by the middle of next year, would invite a recession.”
— Harris
Harris’s citations are correct. Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs issued a report saying the economy would shrink because of Trump’s trade and immigration policies. The Penn Wharton Budget Model concluded that Trump’s policies would add $5.8 trillion in deficits over 10 years. (Harris did not mention that Penn Wharton says her policies would add $1.2 trillion to the deficit.) Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists wrote in June, before Biden dropped out of the race, that Trump’s plans could “reignite this inflation.”
“I went to the Wharton School of finance, and many of those professors, the top professors, think my plan is a brilliant plan.”
— Trump
We couldn’t identify any. One Wharton professor posted on X during the debate: “Hi! @wharton Prof here. Show me the many colleagues who say Trump’s plan is any good? I count 0!” (The post was later deleted.) The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for names.
“She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics, and he taught her well.”
— Trump
This is a ridiculous slur. There is no evidence Harris is a Marxist; her economic proposals are generally middle-of-the-road Democratic ideas. She’s been endorsed by more than 90 current and former chief executives of major companies.
There is an element of truth about her father’s academic interests. Donald J. Harris, a professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University, was the first Black person to receive tenure in Stanford’s economics department and was regarded as a prominent critic of mainstream economic theory from the left.
The Stanford Daily, in 1976, described him as a “Marxist economist” who “taught ‘bad’ courses too well.” The newspaper said there had been opposition to granting him tenure because he was “too charismatic, a pied piper leading students astray from neo-Classical economics.”
But there’s no indication that Harris’s father’s research interest has had any impact on her thinking. Harris’s parents divorced when she was a child, and she has had a strained relationship with her father.
“When you look at these millions and millions of people that are pouring into our country monthly, where it’s, I believe, 21 million people, not the 15 that people say, and I think it’s a lot higher than the 21 that’s bigger than New York State pouring in.”
— Trump
This is false. Here, he manages to take a real number — about 5 million migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency — and increase it fourfold. Then he offers a prediction to make it sound even larger.
Here’s the reality: Customs and Border Protection recorded about 10 million “encounters” between February 2021, after Biden took office, through July. But that does not mean all those people entered the country illegally. Some people were “encountered” numerous times as they tried to enter the country — and others (more than 4 million of the total) were expelled, mostly because of covid-related rules that have since ended.
CBP has released more than 3.2 million migrants into the United States at the southern border under the Biden administration through April, the Department of Homeland Security said. These numbers, however, do not include “gotaways”— which occur when cameras or sensors detect migrants crossing the border but no one is found or no agents are available to respond. That figure could add an additional 2 million, bringing the total number of migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency to around 5 million.
That’s a big number, but apparently not big enough for Trump.
“And you can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia, not the current governor, is doing an excellent job. But the governor before he said, the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, will execute the baby. And that’s why I did that, because that predominates, because they’re radical.”
“Just look at the governor, former governor of Virginia, the governor of Virginia said, we put the baby aside and then we determine what we want to do with the baby.”
— Trump
This is false. Trump once again grossly mischaracterizes remarks by former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D), a physician. Earlier in the debate, he mistakenly called him the governor of West Virginia but then correctly identified him later in the debate.
Northam told a radio show in 2019 that late-term abortion procedures are “done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, 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.” Critics suggested the governor was endorsing infanticide. His office later said Northam was referring to medical treatment, not ending the life of a baby.
“Her vice-presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says, ‘execution after birth’ — execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born — is okay.”
— Trump
This is false. Walz has not said this, and “execution after birth” is illegal in all states.
This is a common Republican talking point — that Democrats support nationwide abortion on demand up until the moment of birth. The implication is that late-term abortions are common — and that they are routinely accepted by Democrats.
The reality, according to federal and state data, is that abortions past the point of viability are extremely rare. When they do happen, they often involve painful emotional and even moral decisions.
About two-thirds of abortions occur at eight weeks of pregnancy or earlier, and nearly 90 percent take place in the first 12 weeks, or within most definitions of the first trimester, according to estimates by the Guttmacher Institute, which favors abortion rights. About 5.5 percent of abortions take place after 15 weeks, with just 1.3 percent at 21 weeks or longer.
“Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue [abortion] to be brought back to the states where the people could vote.”
— Trump
This is absurd. The docket for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case in which the right to abortion was overturned, is filled with briefs from legal scholars saying it would be a mistake to overturn decades of legal precedent.
“I have been a leader on fertilization, IVF [in vitro fertilization].”
— Trump
This is in conflict. The Republican Party platform, which Trump points to as his true policy document instead of Project 2025, supports states establishing fetal personhood through the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Fetal personhood bestows the same rights currently reserved for people to embryos from the moment of fertilization, which in effect would make IVF illegal.
“Understanding his Project 2025, there would be a national abortion, a monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages.”
— Harris
That’s not exactly what Project 2025 says. Claiming that liberal states have become “sanctuaries for abortion tourism,” the report says the Department of Health and Human Services “should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method. It should also ensure that statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion. In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion.”
“They allowed terrorists. They allowed common street criminals. They allowed people to come in, drug dealers to come into our country. And they’re now in the United States and told by their countries like Venezuela, don’t ever come back, or we’re going to kill you. Do you know that crime in Venezuela and crime in countries all over the world is way down?”
— Trump
This is false. There is no reliable data on crime in Venezuela — the government stopped publishing official data in 2015 — but at campaign rallies, Trump says crime has dropped “a staggering 67 percent” in Venezuela, while at other times he has put the drop in crime at “72 percent in a year.” It’s unclear where Trump gets these numbers. But they’re higher than what even the government says. In May, Venezuelan security officials announced that crime indicators had fallen by 25.1 percent compared with 2023, claiming that security forces had been successful in large-scale operations against criminal groups. Some experts say the impossible-to-verify numbers are intended to boost the sagging popularity of Nicolás Maduro’s government.
“Crime is down all over the world except here. Crime here is up and through the roof. Despite their fraudulent statements that they made. Crime in this country is through the roof. And we have a new form of crime.”
— Trump
“The FBI defraud. They were defrauding statements. They, they didn’t include the worst cities. They didn’t include the cities with the worst crime.”
— Trump
This is false. Violent crime rates, especially for homicide in large cities, have fallen sharply during Biden’s presidency, after a surge during the pandemic. The violent crime rate is believed to be near its lowest level in 50 years.
Trump has a point that the quarterly data released in June by the FBI is incomplete — not every law enforcement agency reports its data on time or accurately for the report — but he’s wrong to suggest crime is worse today than at any time in American history. Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and consultant, maintained a dashboard that compiles crime statistics, and it shows the murder rate declining significantly, year over year, in many major cities. Overall, there have been nearly 18 percent fewer murders in 277 cities, according to Asher.
The Council on Criminal Justice examines monthly crime rates for 12 violent, property and drug offenses in 39 American cities that have consistently reported monthly data over the past six years. In July, it reported steep declines in homicide and most other violent crimes back to levels that predated the pandemic.
To back up Trump’s claims of rising crime, his campaign likes to point to the 2022 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), a household survey of respondents age 12 and older. For the period of July 2021 to November 2022, it showed a sharp increase in violent crime and an unusual discrepancy with the FBI reports, which are crimes reported to 80 percent of the nation’s law enforcement agencies by the public. As a household survey, the NCVS is incomplete. It does not include people who are homeless or in institutions such as prisons, jails and nursing homes; it also does not include crimes against people younger than 12. The victimization survey also excludes murders.
Moreover, crime trends of a single year are almost meaningless. Both the NCVS and the FBI show violent crime has dropped significantly since the early 1990s.
“It [the crime data] was a fraud. Just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created turned out to be a fraud.”
— Trump
This is false. Trump can offer no evidence for this claim. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a nonpartisan agency — only the commissioner is a political appointee — that is responsible for data that depicts the health of the economy and labor markets. It collects data from a variety of sources and routinely updates statistics as more data is received. In August, the BLS announced a preliminary estimate that the number of jobs created over the 12 months ending in March would probably be adjusted downward — 818,000 lower than the original estimate of 2.9 million jobs. A final estimate will be released in February.
This was an unusually large adjustment of minus-0.5 percent, which the BLS acknowledged. But there was a similar adjustment in Trump’s presidency (minus-0.3 percent, or 514,000 jobs, in March 2019) and in Barack Obama’s presidency (minus-0.7 percent, or 902,000 jobs, in March 2009). The BLS relies on a survey of about 119,000 employers to produce its monthly estimates of job creation but adjusts the figures every year after examining annual state unemployment insurance tax filings.
“The former vice president [sic] called for defunding federal law enforcement. 45,000 agents, get this, on the day after he was arraigned on 34 felony counts.”
— Harris
This is correct. In a post on Truth Social on April 5, Trump said (in all caps): “Republicans in Congress should defund the DOJ and FBI until they come to their sense.”
“They weaponized the Justice Department. … They used it to try and win an election. … They have fake cases.”
— Trump
False. “Weaponized” is Trump’s code for the Biden administration supposedly using the resources of the U.S. government to target his political opponent. There is no evidence that Biden or Harris directed the Justice Department or local prosecutors to pursue prosecutions of Trump.
“Joe Biden was found essentially guilty on the documents case.”
— Trump
This is false. Trump faced a criminal trial (now on hold) for hoarding classified documents after he left office and refusing to return them. But Biden also discovered that he had retained classified documents at his home and office. He returned them, but a special counsel was appointed to see whether he, too, should face criminal charges. The special counsel, Robert K. Hur, concluded that it would be tough to win a case — because Biden had reasonable defenses, the facts were occasionally murky and Biden (unlike Trump) had cooperated fully with the investigation.
Hur made the point that, if a case were brought to trial, Biden could make a credible case that he had not willfully retained the documents, especially because he cooperated. In many cases, the special counsel decided that the documents were mishandled by mistake — or were not especially important anymore, despite the classification level.
“Let’s talk about fracking because we’re here in Pennsylvania. I made that very clear in 2020, I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as vice president of United States. And in fact, I was the tiebreaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking.”
— Harris
This is spin. What Harris said in the vice-presidential debate in 2020, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking. He has been very clear about that.” Later in the debate, she reiterated that “the American people know that Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact. That is a fact.”
In other words, Harris was stating Biden’s position — but not making clear her own. When she was still running for president months earlier, Harris took a firm stand against fracking.
Asked in a recent CNN interview why she had changed her position, Harris responded: “What I have seen is that we can — we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.” As vice president, she cast the tiebreaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that included many green-energy incentives but also increased leases for fracking.
“The values I bring to the importance of homeownership, knowing not everybody got handed $400 million on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times.”
— Harris
“I wasn’t given $400 million. I wish I was. My father was a Brooklyn builder, a Brooklyn, Queens, and a great father, and I learned a lot from him. But I was given a fraction of that, a tiny fraction, and have built it into many, many billions of dollars, many, many billions.”
— Trump
It depends on inflation. In 2018, an investigation published in the New York Times revealed that Trump had received $413 million in inflation-adjusted dollars from his father. (In 2024 dollars, the value grows to $525 million.)
For many years, as we have detailed, Trump had falsely claimed the only thing he received was a $1 million loan from his father. That was never credible. He benefited from numerous loans and loan guarantees, as well as his father’s connections, to build his real estate business in Manhattan. His father also set up lucrative trusts to provide steady income. When Donald Trump became overextended in the casino business, his father bailed him out with a shady casino-chip loan — and Trump also borrowed $9 million against his future inheritance.
“Defund the police. She’s been against that forever.”
— Trump
Trump, in his clumsy phrasing, got this right — Harris has never supported defunding the police.
“She went out in Minnesota and wanted to let criminals that killed people that burned down Minneapolis. She went out and raised money to get them out of jail.”
— Trump
This needs context. Until the 2020 killing of George Floyd in police custody, the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) was a relatively small vehicle for assisting people who needed cash for bail. Just weeks after Floyd’s death, it raised an astonishing $35 million, in part because of a tweet by Harris, who at the time was a senator for California lending her name to a fundraising effort.
It turned out that few people involved in the protests needed the MFF’s help to get out of jail. According to an accounting by the American Bail Coalition, verified by The Fact Checker with a review of Hennepin County jail records, all but three of the 170 people arrested during the protests between May 26 and June 2, 2020, were released from jail within a week. Of the 167 released, only 10 had to put up a monetary bond to be released; in most cases, the amounts were nominal, such as $78 or $100. In fact, 92 percent of those arrested had to pay no bail — and 29 percent of those arrested did not face charges.
But there have been some instances of the MFF assisting people accused of serious crimes after they were released, including murder, attempted murder and third-degree assault. The man accused of murder had been jailed originally on an indecent-exposure charge, which called for bail of $2,000.
“If she won the election, the day after that election, they’ll go back to destroying our country, and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead. We’ll go back to windmills, and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out.”
— Trump
This is false. Domestic oil production and natural gas production already hit record highs under Biden in December, according to the Energy Information Administration. There was a slight dip in January because of production issues, but the EIA projects the December production levels will be sustained through the rest of 2024.
“When are those people going to be prosecuted? When are the people that burned down Minneapolis going to be prosecuted, or in Seattle, they went into Seattle, they took over a big percentage of the city of Seattle.”
— Trump
This is false. People were prosecuted in Seattle and Minneapolis.
In Seattle, two people were killed, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), a nonprofit. Summer Taylor, a Black Lives Matter activist, died when a car rammed into the protests. Another person, 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr., was shot in an incident that ACLED said was tied to the broader unrest. (Another fatal shooting of a teen was not connected, ACLED concluded.) Dawit Kelete, 30, who drove into the protest on July 4, 2020, killing Taylor and seriously injuring another person, was sentenced to 78 months in jail. The judge said that while there was no evidence he hit the protesters intentionally, his conduct was “extremely reckless.”
Mays died in the early morning of June 29, 2020, while driving a stolen Jeep in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, which protesters occupied for three weeks after police abandoned the area. No one has been charged in Mays’s death.
In Minneapolis, one person was killed, according to ACLED. The Max It Pawn Shop was set on fire during protests on May 28, 2020, and then two months later, police discovered a charred body in the wreckage. Surveillance video footage showed Montez Terriel Lee, 26, pouring an accelerant around the pawn shop and lighting it on fire. Lee was sentenced to 10 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, the Justice Department said.
“I said, ‘I’d like to give you 10,000 National Guard or soldiers.’ They rejected me. Nancy Pelosi rejected me.”
— Trump
This has been repeatedly debunked. Trump and his allies have invented the claim that he requested 10,000 troops before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, twisting an offhand comment into a supposed order to the Pentagon. A Colorado judge considered testimony in November on this point and dismissed a Trump aide’s account as “incredible” and “completely devoid of any evidence in the record.”
In 2021, we explored this claim twice and debunked it, each time awarding Four Pinocchios. Then, in late 2022, the Jan. 6 committee released its report and dozens of transcribed interviews that provided new details on the meetings in which Trump claims he requested troops at the Capitol.
That report underscored how Trump has little basis to make this claim, saying that he brought up the issue on at least three occasions but in such vague and obtuse ways that no senior official regarded his words as an order.
Moreover, the committee said that when he referenced so many troops, it was not because he wanted to protect the Capitol. He “floated the idea of having 10,000 National Guardsmen deployed to protect him and his supporters from any supposed threats by left-wing counter protesters,” the report said.
“Let’s remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches spewing antisemitic hate. And what did the president then at the time say? ‘There were fine people on each side.’”
— Harris
Trump’s meaning is in dispute. The march on Charlottesville by white supremacists in August 2017 — and Trump’s response to it — was a central event of his presidency. Over the course of several days, Trump made a number of contradictory remarks, permitting both his supporters and foes to create their own version of what happened.
Biden has frequently claimed that Trump said the white supremacists were “very fine people.” But the reality is more complicated. Trump was initially criticized for not speaking more forcefully against the white nationalists on the day of the clashes, Aug. 12. Then, in an Aug. 14 statement, Trump condemned right-wing hate groups — “those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
But Trump muddied the waters on Aug. 15, a day later, by also saying: “You had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.” It was in this news conference that he said: “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
Trump added: “There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group, there were some bad ones.”
The problem for Trump is that there was no evidence of anyone other than neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the Friday night rally on Aug. 11. He asserted there were people who were not alt-right who were “very quietly” protesting the removal of Lee’s statue.
It’s possible Trump became confused and was really referring to the Saturday rallies. But that’s also wrong. A Fact Checker examination of videos and testimony about the Saturday rallies found that there were white supremacists, there were counterprotesters — and there were heavily armed anti-government militias who showed up on Saturday.
The evidence shows there were no quiet protesters against removing the statue that weekend.
“And be clear on that point, Donald Trump, the candidate, has said in this election there will be a bloodbath if … the outcome of this election is not to his liking.”
— Harris
Trump is being quoted out of context. Harris suggests Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost the election. But in a March 16 rally, Trump used the word when talking about the impact of Chinese electric vehicles on the U.S. auto industry.
“China now is building a couple of massive plants where they’re going to build the cars in Mexico and think, they think, that they’re going to sell those cars into the United States with no tax at the border,” Trump said. “We’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars. If I get elected. Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath, for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars.”
The Trump campaign noted that one of the definitions of “bloodbath,” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “a major economic disaster.” It also means “a notably fierce, violent, or destructive contest or struggle.”
Trump, of course, frequently quotes his opponents out of context and unfairly twists their words.
“And these people are trying to get them [undocumented immigrants] to vote. And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”
— Trump
This is false. There is no evidence Democrats want undocumented immigrants to vote — which would be against the law.
“No judge looked at it [lawsuits claiming fraud in the 2020 election] and said, they said we didn’t have standing. That’s the other thing, they said we didn’t have standing, a technicality.”
— Trump
This is false. Many 2020 election lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies were rejected on the merits, by judges who examined the evidence. The main case involving standing was at the Supreme Court, which tossed out the long-shot lawsuit filed by Texas and several other states, asking the court to bar four states from casting their electoral votes for Biden and to shift the selection of electors to the states’ legislatures. The court said Texas lacked standing to pursue the case, saying it “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said he would have allowed the case to be heard, for technical reasons, but he offered little hope he would have granted Trump the relief he sought. “I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief,” Alito wrote, “and I express no view on any other issue.”
“I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and Biden put it back on day one.”
— Trump
This is mostly false. Trump enabled the Nord Stream 2 pipeline — which would have doubled the export of Russian natural gas to Germany — over congressional opposition. “Successive U.S. Administrations and Congresses have opposed Nord Stream 2, reflecting concerns about European dependence on Russian energy and the threat Russia poses to Ukraine,” the Congressional Research Service said in a 2021 report.
Trump’s first secretary of state essentially allowed the pipeline to proceed, and only late in Trump’s administration could Congress pass a law that made the pipeline subject to sanctions that halted construction for one year. But by then it was largely complete. Biden waived those sanctions in an effort to mend fences with Germany — but the whole project was killed after Russia invaded Ukraine.
“It is well known that he said of Putin that he can do whatever the hell he wants and go into Ukraine.”
— Harris
This is partly false. Trump did not make this statement in the context of an invasion of Ukraine. In fact, Trump did not issue any invitation to Russia to invade U.S. allies but (in his telling) was informing the leader of a NATO member country that he would not defend that country from a Russian attack if Trump deemed the nation was delinquent on payments to the military alliance.
In a February rally, Trump said “one of the presidents of a big country” at one point asked him whether the United States would still defend the country if they were invaded by Russia even if they “don’t pay.”
“No, I would not protect you,” Trump claimed he told that leader. “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”
“It is well known that he said when Russia went into Ukraine it was brilliant.”
— Harris
Trump did not use that exact word. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Trump called Putin a “genius” and “very savvy.”
“You gotta say, that’s pretty savvy,” Trump said on a conservative talk radio show of Putin’s decision to declare certain breakaway regions in Ukraine as independent. “And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.”
“This is genius,” Trump said. “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.”
“It is well known he exchanged love letters with Kim Jong Un.”
— Harris
Trump called them “love letters.” In 2018, Trump said of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: “We fell in love, okay? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward, in his 2020 book “Rage,” revealed that Trump had permitted him to read and transcribe 27 letters and wrote that “Trump has personally said they are ‘love letters.’” Woodward quoted parts of the letters, and the full file of letters was made available to North Korea expert Robert Carlin, who analyzed them for Foreign Policy magazine.
In one letter, written in 2019, Trump “incredibly” closes with “your friend,” Carlin writes. But he said the letters are mostly an exchange of negotiating positions on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.
“We’re in for 250 billion [dollars] or more [in aid to Ukraine] because they don’t ask Europe, which is a much bigger beneficiary to getting this thing done than we are. … We’re in for 250 to 275 billion. They’re into a 100 to 150.”
— Trump
This is false. As of June 30, European aid to Ukraine exceeds U.S. aid, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. European nations have allocated $110 billion, compared with $83 billion for the United States. Europe has also pledged an additional $85 billion, which has not been allocated, compared with $25 billion for the United States. As a percentage of the economy, the U.S. percentage ranks much lower than 21 other countries, Kiel estimates.
About $36 billion in military assistance has been provided by European Union countries, compared with $56 billion by the United States, according to the State Department.
“He [NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg] got these countries, the 28 countries at the time, to pay up, he said. I’ve never seen — he’s the head of NATO — he said ‘I’ve never seen.’ For years, we were paying almost all of NATO. We were being ripped off by European nations, both on trade and on NATO. I got them to pay up by saying one of the statements you made before, if you don’t pay, we’re not going to protect you, otherwise we would have never gotten it, he said. It was one of the most incredible jobs that he’s ever seen done.”
— Trump
When he was president, Trump often attributed quotes to Stoltenberg that could not be confirmed, such as: “Secretary Stoltenberg has been maybe Trump’s biggest fan, to be honest with you. He goes around telling — he made a speech the other day. He said, ‘Without Donald Trump, maybe there would be no NATO.’” Stoltenberg said no such thing.
Throughout the 2016 campaign, his presidency and now this election, Trump has demonstrated that he has little notion of how NATO is funded and operates. He repeatedly claimed that other members of the alliance “owed” money to the United States and that they were delinquent in their payments. Then he claimed credit for the money “pouring in” as a result of his jawboning, even though much of the increase in those countries’ contributions was set under guidelines arranged during the Obama administration.
“And for 18 months, we had nobody killed [in Afghanistan].”
— Trump
This is misleading. In Trump’s phrasing, it sounds as if no troops were killed in Afghanistan during the last 18 months of his presidency. A Defense Department database shows 12 deaths from hostile action in that period. There was an 18-month gap with no fatalities across Trump’s and Biden’s combined presidencies. We recently gave Trump Two Pinocchios for this claim.
“We wouldn’t have left $85 billion worth of brand new, beautiful military equipment behind.”
— Trump
This is false, especially because Trump referred to “brand new” equipment. Over two decades of war, the United States spent $83 billion to train, equip and house the Afghan military and police — so weapons are just a part of that. Tanks, vehicles, helicopters and other gear did fall into the hands of the Taliban when the U.S.-trained force quickly collapsed. In 2022, CNN reported that a Defense Department report estimated that $7 billion of military equipment had been left behind.
“This is the same individual who took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five young Black and Latino boys who were innocent. The Central Park Five — took out a full-page ad calling for their execution.”
— Harris
The ad did not directly say this. In 1989, Trump placed a full-page newspaper ad calling for a return of the death penalty following a rape in New York’s Central Park, but his message was strongly implied. Five Black and Latino teenagers were convicted, spent years in prison and were later cleared in the case.
“I said, well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, kill the person ultimately. And if they pled guilty, then they pled we’re not guilty.”
— Trump
This is false. The Central Park Five confessions were coerced and then recanted. No one was killed.
“The former president has said that climate change is a hoax.”
— Harris
This is true. Trump has said this several times.
“We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs. … Donald Trump said he was going to create manufacturing jobs. He lost manufacturing jobs.”
— Harris
This is out of date. The number of manufacturing jobs rebounded since the pandemic, but growth in these jobs has essentially stalled. After a decline this year, the number of manufacturing jobs as of August is slightly lower than the number in October 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dating from February 2021, the first month of employment data for Biden’s presidency, about 710,000 manufacturing jobs have been created.
“They lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs this last month.”
— Trump
Trump understates the loss. The number of manufacturing jobs fell by 24,000 from July to August, according to preliminary BLS estimates.
“Biden doesn’t go after people because supposedly China paid him millions of dollars. He’s afraid to do it between him and his son. They get all this money from Ukraine, they get all this money from all of these different countries. And then you wonder, why is he so loyal to this one? That one? Ukraine? China? Why did he get $3.5 million from the mayor of Moscow’s wife?”
— Trump
This is false. There is no evidence Biden received millions of dollars from China. Republican congressional investigators claimed Biden’s son Hunter received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, a Russian billionaire and the widow of the former mayor of Moscow. In 2022, The Fact Checker investigated this transaction and learned that the investment vehicle that received the money was for a real estate deal involving Hunter’s partner, Devon Archer. In congressional testimony, Archer confirmed Baturina was his client and not connected to Hunter Biden.
“I rebuilt our entire military.”
— Trump
This is false. This is a golden-oldie claim that Trump frequently made as president. Trump has said his military budgets were the biggest in history, but adjusted for inflation, his administration’s budgets lag behind some years during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The biggest defense budget was in 2010, and in inflation-adjusted dollars, it was nearly 10 percent larger than Trump’s 2020 budget.
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By Glenn Kessler
Glenn Kessler has reported on domestic and foreign policy for more than four decades. Send him statements to fact check by emailing him or sending a DM on Twitter
Debate FACT CHECKER
The Truth Behind The Rhetoric | By Glenn Kessler
Fact-checking the 2024 Trump-Harris debate
September 11, 2024
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fact-checker/
And MORE:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/11/fact-check-presidential-debate-harris-trump/
Debate Wrap Up: No One Has Ever So Thoroughly Dominated Donald Trump
Story by Josh Marshall
harris-trump
I feel obligated to note at the top that you can win a debate and lose the election. Donald Trump isn’t a momentary candidate. He has a big national political following that has remained loyal over almost a decade. Nothing happened tonight that is going to shake the confidence of his supporters.
But with that said, this debate was an absolute rout. Harris had a minute or two of nerves in her opening statement. But from the very first exchange she maintained the initiative, kept Trump on the defensive the entire time and simply dominated him. I don’t see any way to contest that basic verdict.
She set a tone at the very start when she walked right into his space to shake his hand and made him almost pull back into himself in response. She was in charge and never stopped being in charge.
Harris also managed what neither Joe Biden nor Hillary Clinton nor any of the 2016 Republicans managed to do which is successfully bait Donald Trump and get under his skin. Within a few minutes Trump was visibly angry and not in a way that empowered him but in a way that made him lose focus, go down rabbit holes and generally go off onto damaging tangents. Spittle anger, not righteous anger, shall we say.
The debate basically ended after the extended exchange on abortion rights. Trump’s answers were meandering, defensive and absurd, topped off by a completely needless decision to throw JD Vance under the bus. Harris I think hit every point her campaign or probably any abortion rights advocate could have wished for. She didn’t stop with definitive promises to defend abortion rights. She went into an extended discussion of the human impact of what she branded “Trump abortion bans.” Again and again, through the debate she found ways to hit points her campaign would have prepped her to be ready for. It’s like what are all the possible policy or attack points we might conceivably want to make? Kamala was practically emptying the cupboard. I’m going to hit every damn one! It was amazing. Trump actually managed to lose the exchange over the withdrawal from Afghanistan. How was that even possible? He managed to repeat the grotesque conspiracy theory about feral immigrants hunting down the cats and dogs of flag waving Americans and eating them for breakfast.
It’s not clear to me the degree to which Harris led Trump into relitigating Jan 6th, blaming Nancy Pelosi for planning the attack, hyping Vladimir Putin or diving head first into a dozen other story lines that people hate about him or whether he just went to all those damaging places on his own because he was angry and reverting to form. It’s an interesting question on debating merits. But it doesn’t matter: he went to all those places with the same angry spittle-flecked tone. By the second half of the debate, with Trump punch-drunk and staggering, Harris was beginning to shift every question to her basic themes: national unity, turning the page on the Trump era, Trump’s lies.
As you can see I think Kamala Harris did quite well and Trump did about as bad a job as he could have. It’s fun to reminisce. But I won’t belabor the point. As I said above, we’re still going to have a close election. But what Harris had to do in this debate was show she could handle Donald Trump, even dominate him if possible and do so in a way that was steady and forceful. She did that. And that puts her on a path toward sealing the deal with that small fraction of voters who will determine the outcome of the election. Not a done deal but she took the critical first step. She also managed a bonus, which wasn’t absolutely necessary, which was to set Trump off, rambling, incoherent and angry. He was practically yelling by the end of the debate. She baited him into acting out the role of her foil. As I’ve often said in other contexts, more important than any of the details is likely the imagery of dominance.
She came, she saw, she conquered. But tomorrow is another day. And there’s still two hard fought months to go.
This story originally appeared on Talking Points Memo.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/debate-wrap-up-no-one-has-ever-so-thoroughly-dominated-donald-trump/ar-AA1qmhzr?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=7d0cbdb51e934d21acb17aa9f9a26555&ei=16
The FACT CHECK for Lyin' Trump should be interesting
Sandy Winick ???
(Obviously Sandy Winick has been in the news for several years)
The Defendant Used Call Centers in Canada, Thailand, and China to Steal Investors’ Money
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Earlier today, Sandy Winick, a Canadian citizen who was extradited from Thailand, was sentenced at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, to 78 months in prison following his July 2015 guilty plea to conspiring to commit wire fraud for running an international advance fee scheme. The sentencing proceeding was held before United States District Judge Eric N. Vitaliano. As part of the sentence, Winick was ordered to pay $2,431,038.32 in restitution and $5,000,000 in forfeiture.
...
The Defendant:
SANDY WINICK
Citizenship: Canada
Age: 58
Ontario, Canada
...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/canadian-citizen-sentenced-78-months-prison-leading-international-multimillion-dollar
----------------------------
And you're aware of Sandy Winick's past
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173670460&txt2find=Sandy%2BWinick
Inside Thailand's $2 Billion Scam Industry Now Targeting Americans
Published Sep 08, 2024 at 5:00 AM EDT
Updated Sep 08, 2024 at 10:30 AM EDT
The Chinese gangs taught me how to make my profile look credible, gain followers and post regularly. After finishing my training, I started identifying my victims through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Line," said Narin, a 20-year-old from northern Thailand.
This wasn't just an isolated incident but part of a troubling trend. Thailand leads Asia in scam calls and text messaging, with a staggering 78.8 million incidents reported since last year, according to the country's Office of the National Economic and Social Development Council.
Now, the gangs, often led by Chinese masterminds, are expanding into the U.S. and appear to be ensnaring more Americans.
In 2023, U.S. authorities issued a stark warning about the growing danger of Americans being trafficked into scam syndicates in Southeast Asia. The seriousness of the situation became evident in December 2023, when the Department of Justice announced the indictment of four individuals based in the United States. These individuals were accused of laundering over $80 million in profits from scam operations.
[...]
https://www.newsweek.com/inside-thailand-2-billion-china-scam-industry-now-targeting-americans-1947561
Closing Ceremony: Paralympics handed off from Paris to LA
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and U.S. Paralympian Blake Leeper were onhand to accept the Paralympic flag as part of the handover from Paris 2024 to LA 2028 during the Closing Ceremony of this year's Paralympic Games.
https://www.nbcolympics.com/videos/closing-ceremony-paralympics-handed-paris-la
Closing Ceremony: Paralympics handed off from Paris to LA
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and U.S. Paralympian Blake Leeper were onhand to accept the Paralympic flag as part of the handover from Paris 2024 to LA 2028 during the Closing Ceremony of this year's Paralympic Games.
https://www.nbcolympics.com/videos/closing-ceremony-paralympics-handed-paris-la
Highlights of week 2 at the Paralympics
https://apnews.com/article/paris-paralympics-2024-photo-gallery-119cfce0690f492778976cbc775393bb
Highlights of week 2 at the Paralympics
https://apnews.com/article/paris-paralympics-2024-photo-gallery-119cfce0690f492778976cbc775393bb
Paralympic Sep. 8 Rcap: Highlites ...
2024 Paris Closing Ceremony --- 2024 Coverage has concluded
Paralympic Top Highlights ... See All
https://www.nbcolympics.com/
Paralympic Sep. 8 Rcap: Highlites ...
2024 Paris Closing Ceremony --- 2024 Coverage has concluded
Paralympic Top Highlights ... See All
https://www.nbcolympics.com/
Paris 2024: Top medal moments on Day 11
https://www.paralympic.org/paris-2024/news/top-medal-moments-day-eleven
Paris 2024: Top medal moments on Day 10
https://www.paralympic.org/paris-2024/news/top-medal-moments-day-ten
Paris 2024: Top medal moments on Day 9
https://www.paralympic.org/paris-2024/news/top-medal-moments-day-nine
Paris 2024: Top medal moments on Day 8
https://www.paralympic.org/paris-2024/news/paris-2024-top-medal-moments-day-eight
Paris 2024: Top medal highlights from Day 7
https://www.paralympic.org/paris-2024/news/paris-2024-top-medal-highlights-day-7
At Arlington, Trump earns a medal of dishonor
David Horsey By David Horsey
Seattle Times cartoonist
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign staff got into an altercation with an official at Arlington National Cemetery as they attempted to take campaign photos in an area where recent military dead are buried — a section where partisan political photography is prohibited.
Trump, meanwhile, was laying a wreath in a ceremony honoring the 13 service members who were killed in a suicide bombing when American forces were frantically exiting Kabul in 2021.
It is worth remembering that this gesture was being made by the ex-commander-in-chief who denigrated John McCain’s years of tortuous captivity in North Vietnam,
who skipped out on a tribute to American war dead in France and who,
according to credible witnesses, referred to soldiers as “suckers and losers.”
Chances are, Trump would have never been at the Arlington ceremony if it had not offered an opportunity to score political points against the Biden/Harris administration for the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. As it turned out, Trump succeeded in getting his photo taken with grieving family members at the restricted gravesite. In the picture, he is standing in the middle of the somber group, grinning obscenely with thumbs up.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/medal-of-dishonor/
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he will vote for Harris
His daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, offered her endorsement of the Democratic presidential nominee earlier this week.
Sept. 6, 2024, 1:57 PM CDT / Updated Sept. 6, 2024, 5:14 PM CDT
By Megan Lebowitz
Former Vice President Dick Cheney announced Friday that he will cast his ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris this fall, confirming news that was first made public by his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, earlier in the day.
Both Cheneys are Republicans, and the elder served under President George W. Bush. The younger Cheney, who endorsed Harris this week, has become one of former President Donald Trump’s most prominent conservative critics.
"In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump," Dick Cheney said in a statement. "He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again."
“As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” he added.
Liz Cheney revealed who her father would vote for during an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival.
"Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris," she said earlier Friday.
"If you think about the moment that we’re in, and you think about how serious this moment is, my dad believes and he’s said publicly that there’s never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is," Cheney added. "And that’s the moment that we’re facing."
Liz Cheney had said when announcing her support for Harris on Wednesday that people do not have "the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states."
"Because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris," she said.
Cheney said on Friday that she has not spoken with Harris this week.
Asked for comment Friday about her remarks, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung replied, "Who the f--- is Liz Cheney?"
The former Wyoming congresswoman also said during her Friday interview with The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich that she would support Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, in his Senate bid. Allred is challenging Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who has served in the Senate since 2013.
"Here in Texas, you guys do have a tremendous, serious candidate running for the United States Senate, and his name is —" she paused as the audience cheered and Leibovich asked them to let her speak.
"It’s not Ted Cruz," she said.
Cheney went on to praise Allred's credentials, noting the time she served in the House with him.
"We need people who are going to serve in good faith," Cheney said. "We need people who are honorable public servants, and in this race, that is Colin Allred. So I’ll be working on his behalf."
In a statement, Allred called Cheney a "patriot" and said he was "honored to have her support."
"Though we may not agree on everything, we’ve been able to find common ground by putting our country over political parties," Allred said. "Importantly, we both believe in protecting our democracy, our constitution and the foundational promise of our great country. And we both agree that Texans cannot afford six more years of Ted Cruz."
The Allred campaign also noted that he and Cheney cosponsored more than 50 bills together, a nod to their efforts to work across the aisle.
When reached for comment, a Cruz campaign spokesperson called Cheney “the poster child of flip-flopping.”
“We’re definitely super surprised to hear that Liz Cheney, the poster child of flip-flopping, is endorsing Colin Allred,” the spokesperson said. “Two years ago, the voters of Wyoming overwhelmingly rejected her, just like the voters of Texas will overwhelmingly reject Colin Allred this November. But hey, misery loves company.”
Liz Cheney was ousted in 2021 from her position in House Republican leadership after criticizing Trump. In 2022, she lost her congressional primary race to a Trump-backed challenger.
During the midterm campaign cycle, Dick Cheney taped an advertisement for his daughter's campaign, in which he called Trump a "coward."
A Harris campaign spokesperson on Friday did not provide comment on Liz Cheney’s remarks, but pointed NBC News to the campaign’s efforts to expand outreach to Republican voters.
The Cheneys are the latest in a steady stream of Republicans who, despite policy differences, say they plan to cast ballots for Harris.
Last week, more than 200 Republicans who have worked for both Bush presidents, Sen. Mitt Romney and the late Sen. John McCain announced that they are backing Harris.
"Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected," said the former staffers said in a statement. "The alternative, however, is simply untenable."
Several prominent GOP critics of Trump, including former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, appeared onstage at the Democratic National Convention last month to back Harris. In his speech, Kinzinger urged voters to "put country first" and argued that Trump has "suffocated the soul" of the GOP.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/dick-cheney-kamala-harris-liz-cheney-rcna169979
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he will vote for Harris
His daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, offered her endorsement of the Democratic presidential nominee earlier this week.
Sept. 6, 2024, 1:57 PM CDT / Updated Sept. 6, 2024, 5:14 PM CDT
By Megan Lebowitz
Former Vice President Dick Cheney announced Friday that he will cast his ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris this fall, confirming news that was first made public by his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, earlier in the day.
Both Cheneys are Republicans, and the elder served under President George W. Bush. The younger Cheney, who endorsed Harris this week, has become one of former President Donald Trump’s most prominent conservative critics.
"In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump," Dick Cheney said in a statement. "He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again."
“As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” he added.
Liz Cheney revealed who her father would vote for during an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival.
"Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris," she said earlier Friday.
"If you think about the moment that we’re in, and you think about how serious this moment is, my dad believes and he’s said publicly that there’s never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is," Cheney added. "And that’s the moment that we’re facing."
Liz Cheney had said when announcing her support for Harris on Wednesday that people do not have "the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states."
"Because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris," she said.
Cheney said on Friday that she has not spoken with Harris this week.
Asked for comment Friday about her remarks, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung replied, "Who the f--- is Liz Cheney?"
The former Wyoming congresswoman also said during her Friday interview with The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich that she would support Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, in his Senate bid. Allred is challenging Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who has served in the Senate since 2013.
"Here in Texas, you guys do have a tremendous, serious candidate running for the United States Senate, and his name is —" she paused as the audience cheered and Leibovich asked them to let her speak.
"It’s not Ted Cruz," she said.
Cheney went on to praise Allred's credentials, noting the time she served in the House with him.
"We need people who are going to serve in good faith," Cheney said. "We need people who are honorable public servants, and in this race, that is Colin Allred. So I’ll be working on his behalf."
In a statement, Allred called Cheney a "patriot" and said he was "honored to have her support."
"Though we may not agree on everything, we’ve been able to find common ground by putting our country over political parties," Allred said. "Importantly, we both believe in protecting our democracy, our constitution and the foundational promise of our great country. And we both agree that Texans cannot afford six more years of Ted Cruz."
The Allred campaign also noted that he and Cheney cosponsored more than 50 bills together, a nod to their efforts to work across the aisle.
When reached for comment, a Cruz campaign spokesperson called Cheney “the poster child of flip-flopping.”
“We’re definitely super surprised to hear that Liz Cheney, the poster child of flip-flopping, is endorsing Colin Allred,” the spokesperson said. “Two years ago, the voters of Wyoming overwhelmingly rejected her, just like the voters of Texas will overwhelmingly reject Colin Allred this November. But hey, misery loves company.”
Liz Cheney was ousted in 2021 from her position in House Republican leadership after criticizing Trump. In 2022, she lost her congressional primary race to a Trump-backed challenger.
During the midterm campaign cycle, Dick Cheney taped an advertisement for his daughter's campaign, in which he called Trump a "coward."
A Harris campaign spokesperson on Friday did not provide comment on Liz Cheney’s remarks, but pointed NBC News to the campaign’s efforts to expand outreach to Republican voters.
The Cheneys are the latest in a steady stream of Republicans who, despite policy differences, say they plan to cast ballots for Harris.
Last week, more than 200 Republicans who have worked for both Bush presidents, Sen. Mitt Romney and the late Sen. John McCain announced that they are backing Harris.
"Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected," said the former staffers said in a statement. "The alternative, however, is simply untenable."
Several prominent GOP critics of Trump, including former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, appeared onstage at the Democratic National Convention last month to back Harris. In his speech, Kinzinger urged voters to "put country first" and argued that Trump has "suffocated the soul" of the GOP.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/dick-cheney-kamala-harris-liz-cheney-rcna169979
AP Investigation: The real story of January 6 is found in mountains of shocking evidence
Former President Donald Trump portrays Jan. 6 rioters as hostages and political prisoners.
But inside Washington’s federal courthouse, it’s a starkly different story.
The Associated Press has spent more than three years tracking the nearly 1,500 Capitol riot cases brought by the Justice Department. AP reporters have reviewed hours of video footage .. https://apnews.com/article/jan-6-capitol-siege-video-documents-riot-8233cf9850c2859ca8e412090f7b6159 .. and thousands of pages of court documents.
They have sat through dozens of court hearings and trials for the rioters who descended on the Capitol and temporarily halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. These videos represent a mere fraction of the evidence that prosecutors have presented to juries and judges deciding these cases.
Inside Washington’s federal courthouse, there’s no denying the reality of Jan. 6, 2021. Day after day, judges and jurors silently absorb the chilling sights and sounds from television screens of rioters beating police, shattering windows and hunting for lawmakers as democracy lay under siege.
[...]
https://apnews.com/projects/january-6-cases/
'There’s a lot of anxiety': Top Republicans privately admit they’re hoping Trump will lose
Story by Carl Gibson
Dissent against former President Donald Trump is quietly growing within the ranks of the Republican Party, according to a recent report.
In the Wednesday edition of the Politico Playbook, .. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/09/04/the-republicans-secretly-rooting-for-a-trump-loss-00177272 .. several unnamed senior Republican officials anonymously confided to the publication that they're eager to see Trump lose the November election so the party can move on. The outlet cited "a sliver of elected Republicans and GOP thinkers" who "fear a second Trump term could take the party in the wrong direction."
“There’s a lot of anxiety about what Trump does to Republican ability to win in 2028 — and what he also may do to the party in terms of policy long-term,” an unnamed "conservative leader" told the publication. “There is just this concern that like, ‘OK, if the party just goes in that direction, then what kind of party is it going forward? And can conservatives, then, have a home going forward?’
READ MORE: Best-case scenario for GOP is for Trump to 'lose and lose soundly' in November: columnist
https://www.alternet.org/trump-lose-soundly/
Among the key concerns these Republicans shared were Trump's policy proposals, which eschew traditional conservatism in favor of more free-wheeling economic ideas. This includes the former president's call to drastically increase tariffs on imported goods — which would almost certainly mean companies selling imported goods would simply make up for the tariffs by raising prices on customers.
[...]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/there-s-a-lot-of-anxiety-top-republicans-privately-admit-they-re-hoping-trump-will-lose/ar-AA1q0cY4
He won Olympic gold for Pakistan. He got $1 million. And ... a buffalo!?!
2024 Paris Olympics (NOT the 2024 Paralympics)
August 21, 2024 3:43 PM ET
By Benazir Samad
Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan competes during the men's javelin throw at the Olympics in Paris. He won gold, set an Olympic record — and reaped lots of prizes, including a buffalo from his father-in-law. It's all about the milk!
From left: Patrick Smith/Getty Images; G A Chandio/Getty Images
Arshad Nadeem made history at the Paris Olympics.
A strapping 6 feet 4 inches tall, he set a new Olympic record for the longest javelin throw – 92.97 meters or 305.02 feet.
The 27-year-old became the first Pakistani to secure an individual gold medal.
And oh, one more historic thing: He is undoubtedly the first Olympic champion to be given a buffalo as a reward for his prowess.
Nadeem grew up in a rural community in the Punjab province of Pakistan, the third oldest of eight children. He was a gifted athlete who gravitated to cricket. Then his dad, who worked as a mason, suggested he try a javelin.
Nadeem says he did not get support from the Pakistani government in his training. But his gold medal triggered a gold rush: $50,000 from World Athletics, around half a million dollars from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and $350,000 from Punjab’s Chief Minister Mariam Nawaz. He also got a couple of cars, including a Honda Civic whose license plate bears the number 92.97 as a tribute to his javelin distance.
Then there’s the lifetime supply of free fuel, an apartment, even a gold crown (!).
And from his father-in-law: a buffalo.
Jokes were made – including by Nadeem. On a morning TV show, an anchor asked about the buffalo. Arshad said he had been hoping for a large tract of land since his father-in-law is wealthy. Then he added, “Okay, a buffalo will suffice, too.”
Actually that’s an understatement. The buffalo holds deep cultural significance in Nadeem’s home province of Punjab. “In rural communities, a buffalo is considered one of the most honorable and valuable gifts, much like camels in desert regions like Saudi Arabia,” says Rashad Bukhari, a writer and cultural commentator born and raised in Punjab.
The gift that keeps on giving ... milk
Buffalo are valued for their milk –- called the “black gold’ of Pakistan. With a higher fat and protein content than cow’s milk, buffalo milk makes up 72% of the nation’s milk supply. Their milk is also well-suited to turn into ghee, a clarified butter that is a staple of the Pakistani diet,
So for farmers in the agricultural province of Punjab, a female buffalo is … um … a cash cow.
And it’s a gift that keeps on giving … milk. The average lifespan of a buffalo is 20 years. A female usually starts producing milk after birthing a first calf at 3 years old. The animal will continue giving milk for the rest of its life, according to Dr. Burhan-e- Azam, a veterinarian who works for Punjab’s livestock dept as a farm manager and an animal nutritionist at a buffalo research institute. He notes that most buffalo will yield milk if the udders are massaged – even if the calf is not around.
If you have a buffalo and need some money, you’re in luck. “You can sell it whenever you want and get good money right away,” says Azam. The price of a buffalo typically ranges from $1,500 to $3,600.
That’s why Pakistanis call a buffalo “a poor man’s bank.”
“Buffalo is a blessing for our region,” he adds. “It does not even require too much care like other high maintenance animals.” After letting the animal graze during the day, he says, “mostly people would tie their buffalo with a tree” in their compound at night. He adds that buffalo are well-suited for both hot and cold climates.”
The importance of a buffalo for Punjab can be gauged from the fact that in ancient times there was a profession called khoji, an Urdu word that can mean “detective.” A khoji could study the footprints left by a buffalo thief and follow trails for days, even weeks, until the buffalo rustler was discovered. (The advent of security cameras and modern roads have brought an end to the profession.)
Buffalo are also a part of the traditional dowry in Punjab. And when a family buffalo dies, Bukhari says that to this day, neighbors visit to offer condolences.
nd you may wonder – is it a little odd to have just one buffalo? That’s often the case for families in Punjab, says Azam. Many households have a sole buffalo — and benefit from free door-to-door vaccination services and medical care provided by the government.
For javelin king Nadeem, the buffalo is not just symbolic. Buffalo milk and homemade ghee were a staple in his diet while training. His father-in-law’s gift ensures that the Olympic medalist will have fresh milk as he trains for his next competition.
Benazir Samad is an international journalist at Voice of America in Washington, D.C. She tweets @benazirmirsamad
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/08/21/g-s1-17578/olympics-gold-javelin-pakistan-arshad-nadeem-buffalo
Highlights from the first week of the Paralympic Games in Paris
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Updated 12:11 PM CDT, September 2, 2024
1 of 35 | Beatriz Hatz, of the U.S., competes at Women’s Long Jump -T64 final at the Stade de France stadium, during the 2024 Paralympics, Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Belgium’s Maxime Carabin leads the men’s 400m T52 race at the 2024 Paralympics, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Jayci Simon, 19, left, and Miles Krajewski, 19, from the U.S., compete in their first doubles badminton match in the SH6 classification at Porte La Chapelle Arena during the Paralympic Games, on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Paris. (AP Photo/Samantha Hurley)
Brazil’s Jeferson da Conceicao Goncalves, left, clears the ball past Turkey’s Semih Deniz and Muhammed Ali Oktem during the blind football preliminary match between Brazil and Turkey, at the Paralympic Games in Paris, Sunday, Sept. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Scheyer)
Archer Sheetal Devi from India prepares to fire during the Paralympic Games in Paris on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Scheyer)
Blind soccer players from France and China compete in a Preliminary Round Group A - Match 4, at the Eiffel Tower Stadium, during the 2024 Paralympics, Sunday, Sept. 1, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/sports-paralympics-paris-photo-gallery-68bdad2e45ff47e9ffe22430a15e0c7e
Highlights from the first week of the Paralympic Games in Paris
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Updated 12:11 PM CDT, September 2, 2024
1 of 35 | Beatriz Hatz, of the U.S., competes at Women’s Long Jump -T64 final at the Stade de France stadium, during the 2024 Paralympics, Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Belgium’s Maxime Carabin leads the men’s 400m T52 race at the 2024 Paralympics, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Jayci Simon, 19, left, and Miles Krajewski, 19, from the U.S., compete in their first doubles badminton match in the SH6 classification at Porte La Chapelle Arena during the Paralympic Games, on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in Paris. (AP Photo/Samantha Hurley)
Brazil’s Jeferson da Conceicao Goncalves, left, clears the ball past Turkey’s Semih Deniz and Muhammed Ali Oktem during the blind football preliminary match between Brazil and Turkey, at the Paralympic Games in Paris, Sunday, Sept. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Scheyer)
Archer Sheetal Devi from India prepares to fire during the Paralympic Games in Paris on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Scheyer)
Blind soccer players from France and China compete in a Preliminary Round Group A - Match 4, at the Eiffel Tower Stadium, during the 2024 Paralympics, Sunday, Sept. 1, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/sports-paralympics-paris-photo-gallery-68bdad2e45ff47e9ffe22430a15e0c7e