Liegaslt2 Bak
bak? redumb? not sure whaT goes here trump saved aca
but jan 6 revisionism, lies so blatant false, provably, by so many gop...
KEY TO 11 24 TRUMP 18
SEE PARDON TRUMP FALSE BALANCE
SEE MEMORY HOLE WWW
SEE MISINFO DISINFO CONSPIRACY EARTH2 FASCISM
see false flag projection
see lie hype fear
SEE CRM ECHO ESCA
SEE SOC MEDIA MUSK XITTER MACHO ZUCK
see voodoo
===
UP T0 6K LIES?! 30K?
NOT J6 BUT
AN 4 25
After nearly 100 days into President Donald Trump's second term, New Republic editor Michael Tomasky is wondering who were the "gullible" people buying the lies before November.
“How many times did Trump say he’d end [the Ukraine] war on the first day of his presidency?" Tomasky asks. "It had to have been hundreds. I saw a lot of those clips on cable news over the weekend …. He did not mean it figuratively. You know, in the way people will say, ‘I’ll change that from day one,’ and you know they don’t literally mean day one, but they do mean fast. But that isn’t what Trump said. He meant it literally. He used the phrase“ in 24 hours” many, many times. So, I ask you: Who really believed that?”
Tomasky said the same question can be made of Trump’s “truly unbelievable” claims with tariffs. Tariff is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary,” Trump said, boasting that they would "fix everything."
ALSO READ:'Totally unacceptable': GOP congressman breaks ranks to publicly demand Trump fire Hegseth
“Well … it’s not as if there weren’t hundreds of economists and others pointing out how much smoke he was blowing,” Tomasky writes. “Experts predicted exactly what has unfolded: that he’d start a trade war, which would roil the markets and result in higher prices, and that the rest of the world would stop trusting us. Who’s looking more right today, Trump or the experts?”
“Again: Who on earth believed his nonsense?” writes Tomasky, adding that Trump is the "biggest liar in the history of American politics," who “will say anything to anyone at any time with utterly no thought of consequences or ever being held accountable. When the moment of accountability comes, he just tells another lie. … When he was just a sleazy real estate grifter, this was merely annoying. But now that he’s the president, and he has an army of propagandists behind him insisting that he is American history’s great truth-teller, it’s sick and it’s dangerous.”
The New Republic writer had no hard answer to explain the motivation of voters who bought the “ridiculous and obvious lies …" that he’d bring peace to Ukraine in one day, [or] that his tariffs would produce economic nirvana.
“Anyone who couldn’t see that was either brainwashed by right-wing media and social media or—well, or what? It’s hard to say. Maybe those people’s instinct is to hate liberals. Maybe they believed all that ‘he’s a businessman’ crap. Maybe they just didn’t want a woman in the White House,” Tomasky said. “Whatever the case, they’re poor judges of character, and we—and this is a ‘we’ that includes them—are about to pay a high price for their bamboozlement.
ALSO READ:'He must resign in disgrace': Hegseth on the ropes after second war plans chat exposed
Read the full post at The New Republic at this link.
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not much talk mostly format 6 25
:{:{Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims, including during his first and second terms as President of the United States. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day.[1][5][6][7]}:
The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of six per day.[2] Commentators and fact-checkers have described Trump's mendacity as unprecedented in American politics,[13] and the consistency of falsehoods as a distinctive part of his business and political identities.[14] Scholarly analysis of Trump's X posts found significant evidence of an intent to deceive.[15]}:
:{:{Many news organizations initially resisted describing Trump's falsehoods as lies, but began to do so in June 2019.[16] The Washington Post said his frequent repetition of claims he knew to be false amounted to a campaign based on disinformation.[17] Steve Bannon, Trump's 2016 presidential campaign CEO and chief strategist during the first seven months of Trump's first presidency, said that the press, rather than Democrats, was Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."[18][19]}:
In February 2025, a public relations CEO stated that the "flood the zone" tactic was designed to make sure no single action or event stands out above the rest by having them occur at a rapid pace, thus preventing the public from keeping up and preventing controversy or outrage over a specific action or event.[20]}:
As part of their attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Trump and his allies repeatedly falsely claimed there had been massive election fraud and that Trump had won the election.[7] Their effort was characterized by some as an implementation of Hitler's "big lie" propaganda technique.[21]
In June 2023, a criminal grand jury indicted Trump on one count of making "false statements and representations", specifically by hiding subpoenaed classified documents from his own attorney who was trying to find and return them to the government.[22] In August 2023, 21 of Trump's falsehoods about the 2020 election were listed in his Washington, D.C. criminal indictment,[23] and 27 were listed in his Georgia criminal indictment.[24]
It has been suggested that Trump's false statements amount to bullshit rather than lies.[25][26][27]
Veracity and politics
Further information: Rhetoric of Donald Trump
Many academics and observers who study the American political scene have called Trump unique or highly unusual in his lying and its effect on political discourse. "It has long been a truism that politicians lie," wrote Carole McGranahan for the American Ethnologist in 2017, but "Donald Trump is different". He is the most "accomplished and effective liar" to have ever participated in American politics; moreover, his lying has reshaped public discourse so that "the frequency, degree, and impact of lying in politics are now unprecedented".[9]
Historian Douglas Brinkley stated that U.S. presidents have occasionally "lied or misled the country," but none were a "serial liar" like Trump.[28] Donnel Stern, writing in Psychoanalytic Dialogues in 2019, declared: "We expect politicians to stretch the truth. But Trump is a whole different animal," because Trump "lies as a policy", and "will say anything" to satisfy his supporters or himself.[29]
Heidi Taksdal Skjeseth, writing for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in 2017, described how lies have "always been an integral part of politics". However, Trump was "delivering untruths on an unprecedented scale", during his campaign and presidency. Skjeseth commented that no one in French politics was comparable to Trump in his provision of falsehoods.[10]
Jeremy Adam Smith wrote that "lying is a feature, not a bug, of Trump's campaign and presidency."[30] Thomas B. Edsall wrote "Donald Trump can lay claim to the title of most prodigious liar in the history of the presidency."[30] George C. Edwards III wrote: "Donald Trump tells more untruths than any previous president. There is no one that is a close second."[30]
Repetition
Trump is conscious of the value of repetition to get his lies believed. He demonstrated this knowledge when he instructed Stephanie Grisham, his White House press secretary, to use his method of lying: "As long as you keep repeating something, it doesn't matter what you say."[31]
Trump effectively uses the Big lie technique's method of repetition to exploit the illusory truth effect, a tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure.[32] Research has studied Trump's use of the effect.
New research published in Public Opinion Quarterly reveals a correlation between the number of times President Donald Trump repeated falsehoods during his presidency and misperceptions among Republicans, and that the repetition effect was stronger on the beliefs of people who consume information primarily from right-leaning news outlets.[33]
:{:{The Washington Post fact-checker created a new category of falsehoods in 2018, the "Bottomless Pinocchio," for falsehoods repeated at least twenty times (so often "that there can be no question the politician is aware his or her facts are wrong"). Trump was the only politician who met the standard of the category, with 14 statements that immediately qualified. According to the Post Trump repeated some falsehoods so many times he had effectively engaged in disinformation.[17]}:
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale notes that news outlets may initially check a false claim by Trump, but are unlikely to continue pointing out that it's false, "especially because he is constantly mixing in dozens of new lies that require time and resources to address. And so, by virtue of shameless perseverance, Trump often manages to outlast most of the media's willingness to correct any particular falsehood".[34]}:
Bullshit
:{:{It has been suggested that Trump's apparent "avalanche of lies" consists of bullshit rather than of lying as strictly defined.[26][27] According to Harry Frankfurt's influential 2005 book On Bullshit, the liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it, while the bullshitter does not care whether what they say is true or false.[25] Eduardo Porter writes in The Washington Post that Frankfurt's bullshitter definition fits Trump: "To subvert the truth, you must first know it, or at least think you do. That’s not Trump’s game."[27]}:
For example, Trump does not, in Porter's argument, have to check US unemployment or inflation statistics to assert that "we inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare", because for bullshit, the facts do not matter. On the contrary, by ignoring the facts, bullshit has the power to guide group beliefs in a politically desirable direction and thereby to shape group identities.[27] As early as 2015, Jeet Heer wrote that Trump’s propensity to bullshit is not an aberration in his party: "Over the last two decades, the GOP as a party has increasingly adopted positions that are not just politically extreme but also in defiance of facts and science".[26]}:
Business career
Further information: Wealth of Donald Trump
Real estate
Within years of expanding his father's property development business into Manhattan in the early 1970s, Trump attracted the attention of The New York Times for his brash and controversial style, with one real-estate financier observing in 1976, "His deals are dramatic, but they haven't come into being. So far, the chief beneficiary of his creativity has been his public image." Der Scutt, the prominent architect who designed Trump Tower, said in 1976, "He's extremely aggressive when he sells, maybe to the point of overselling. Like, he'll say the convention center is the biggest in the world, when it really isn't. He'll exaggerate for the purpose of making a sale."[35] A 1984 GQ profile of Trump quoted him stating he owned the whole block on Central Park South and Avenue of the Americas. GQ noted that the two buildings Trump owned were likely less than a sixth of the block.[36]
The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, opened a civil investigation into Trump's business practices, especially regarding inflated property values.[37] She joined the Manhattan district attorney's office in a criminal investigation into possible property tax fraud by the Trump Organization.[38]
Other investments and debt
In 1984, Trump posed as his own spokesman John Barron and made false assertions of his wealth to secure a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans, including by claiming he owned over 90% of his family's business. Audio recordings of these claims were released in 2018 by journalist Jonathan Greenberg.[39]
Following the October 1987 stock market crash, Trump claimed to press that he had taken no losses and sold all his stock a month before. Per SEC filings he owned large stakes in some companies during the crash. Forbes calculated that Trump had lost at least $19 million related to Resorts International stock,[40][better ^source ^needed][41] while journalist Gwenda Blair noted $22 million from stock in the Alexander's department store chain.[42]
Challenging estimates of his net worth he considered too low, in 1989 Trump said he had very little debt.[43] Reuters reported Trump owed $4 billion ($8.25 billion in 2023) to more than 70 banks at the beginning of 1990.[44] In 1997, Ben Berzin Jr., who had been tasked with recovering some of the $100 million ($176 million in 2023) his bank had lent Trump, said "During the time that I dealt with Mr. Trump, I was continually surprised by his mastery of situational ethics. He does not seem to be able to differentiate between fact and fiction."[45]
A 1998 New York Observer article reported that Jerry Nadler "flatly calls Mr. Trump a 'liar'," quoting Nadler stating, "Trump got $6 million [in federal money] in the dead of night when no one knew anything about it" by slipping a provision into a $200 billion federal transportation bill.[46] During a 2005 deposition in a defamation lawsuit he initiated about his worth, Trump said: "My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings ... and that can change rapidly from day to day".[47]
Philanthropy
David Fahrenthold investigated Trump's claims about his charitable giving and found little evidence the claims are true.[48][49] Following Fahrenthold's reporting, the Attorney General of New York opened an inquiry into the Donald J. Trump Foundation's fundraising practices, and issued a "notice of violation" ordering the Foundation to stop raising money in New York.[50] The Foundation had to admit it engaged in self-dealing practices to benefit Trump, his family, and businesses.[51]
Sports
Further information: Donald Trump and American football and Donald Trump and golf
...
Other
In 1973, the New York Times ran its first profile of Trump, stating he had "graduated first in his class from the Wharton School of Finance" five years earlier.[62] However, in 1984, the New York Times Magazine shed light by pointing out that "the commencement program from 1968 does not list him as graduating with honors of any kind."[63]
After three Trump casino executives died in a 1989 helicopter crash, Trump claimed that he, too, had nearly boarded the helicopter. The claim was denied 30 years later by a former vice president of the Trump Organization.[64]
Promoting his Trump University after its formation in 2004, Trump asserted he would handpick all its instructors. Michael Sexton, former president of the venture, stated in a 2012 deposition that Trump selected none.[65]
During a 2018 interview, television personality Billy Bush recounted a conversation he had had with Trump, in which he refuted Trump's repeated false claims that The Apprentice was the top-rated television program in America. Bush recalled Trump responding, "Billy, look, you just tell them and they believe it. That's it: you just tell them and they believe. They just do."[66]
Perceptions
Alair Townsend, a former budget director and deputy mayor of New York during the 1980s, and a former publisher of Crain's New York Business, said "I wouldn't believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized."[40][better ^source ^needed] Leona Helmsley later used this line as her own when she spoke about Trump in her 1990 interview in Playboy magazine.[67]
Trump often appeared in New York tabloid newspapers. Recalling her career with New York Post's Page Six column, Susany Mulcahy told Vanity Fair in 2004, "I wrote about him a certain amount, but I actually would sit back and be amazed at how often people would write about him in a completely gullible way. He was a great character, but he was full of crap 90 percent of the time." (Trump told the magazine, "I agree with her 100 percent.")[68][69] Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization vice president who worked for Trump from 1978 until 1998, said "he would tell the staff his ridiculous lies, and after a while, no one believed a single word he would say".[70]
In The Art of the Deal
Main article: Trump: The Art of the Deal
Tony Schwartz is a journalist who ghostwrote Trump: The Art of the Deal.[71] In July 2016, Schwartz was interviewed by Jane Mayer for articles in The New Yorker.[72][71] He described Trump highly unfavorably, and described how he came to regret writing The Art of the Deal.[72][71][73] When Schwartz wrote it, he created the phrase "truthful hyperbole", as an "artful euphemism" to describe Trump's "loose relationship with the truth".[71] This passage provides context, written in Trump's voice: "I play to people's fantasies ... People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration—and it's a very effective form of promotion".[74] He said Trump "loved the phrase".[71][75]
Schwartz said "deceit" is never "innocent". He also said, "'Truthful hyperbole' is a contradiction in terms. It's a way of saying, 'It's a lie, but who cares?'"[71] Schwartz repeated his criticism on Good Morning America and Real Time with Bill Maher, saying he "put lipstick on a pig".[76]
:{
, c. 1986}:
Fearing that anti-German sentiments during and after World War II would negatively affect his business, Trump's father, Fred Trump, began claiming Swedish descent.[77][78][79] Both parents of Fred Trump were born and raised in Kallstadt, Kingdom of Bavaria, now part of Germany. The falsehood was repeated by Donald to the press[35][80] and in The Art of the Deal,[81][82][79] where he claimed his grandfather, Friedrich Trump, "came here from Sweden as a child".[83] In the same book, Donald said his father was born in New Jersey.[71][84] When asked during his presidency why he upheld the false narrative about his father being Swedish, Trump said, "My father spent a lot of time [in Sweden]. But it was never really something really discussed very much."[85] As president, Trump on at least three occasions claimed his father was born in Germany.[86] Trump's father is of German descent but was born in the Bronx.[79] In one case Trump said his father was "born in a very wonderful place in Germany,"[87] and another time stated, "I was raised by the biggest kraut of them all,"[88] invoking an ethnic slur for a German.[89] The Guardian pointed out the irony of Trump supporting the "birtherism" conspiracy theory asserting Barack Obama was born in Africa.[90]
September 11 attacks
For broader coverage of the events, see September 11 attacks.
On September 11, after at least one of the World Trade Center towers was destroyed, Trump said in an interview with WWOR-TV in New York: "40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest—and then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest, and now it's the tallest."[91] Once the Twin Towers had collapsed, the 71-story Trump Building at 40 Wall Street became the second-tallest building in Lower Manhattan, 25 feet (7.6 m) shorter than the building at 70 Pine Street.[92] Two days after the attack, Trump stood near Ground Zero and told a television station he was paying two hundred of his employees to come "find and identify victims". No record of such work has ever been found. In 2023, he reposted the claim on Truth Social.[93]
At a rally in Columbus, Ohio, in 2015, Trump said "I have a view—a view in my apartment that was specifically aimed at the World Trade Center." He added "and I watched those people jump and I watched the second plane hit ... I saw the second plane hit the building and I said, 'Wow that's unbelievable.'" At the time of the attack, Trump lived in Trump Tower more than four miles (6 km) away from the World Trade Center towers. His campaign did not respond to inquiries about how it was possible for him to see people jumping from that far away.[94]
In another rally in 2015, Trump claimed seeing "thousands and thousands" of Arab Americans in New Jersey cheering during the collapse of the World Trade Center. News organizations like the Associated Press (AP), The Washington Post, and The Star-Ledger reported rumors of 9/11 celebrations in New Jersey, but they were found to be unfounded, unsourced, or finding that people were memorializing the event. Nobody else was known to remember seeing masses of thousands of people celebrating after 9/11. Furthermore, Trump would not have been able to clearly see people cheering in New Jersey from his residence.[95]
During his 2016 campaign, Trump falsely claimed to have predicted the attacks in his 2000 book The America We Deserve, that Osama bin Laden was not well known when the book was published and that it called for the U.S. to "take him out".[96]
2016 presidential campaign
See also: Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories
Trump promoted conspiracy theories that have lacked empirical support. These have included "birther" theories that Barack Obama was not born in the US.[97][98][99] In 2011, Trump took credit for the release of Obama's "long-form" birth certificate, while raising doubt about its legitimacy,[100] and in 2016 admitted that Obama was a natural-born citizen from Hawaii.[101] He then falsely stated that Hillary Clinton started the conspiracy theories.[101][102][103]
In 2015, Boing Boing reproduced newspaper articles from 1927, which reported Trump's father had been arrested at a Ku Klux Klan march and been discharged.[104] Multiple articles on the incident list Fred Trump's address in Jamaica, Queens,[105] as do the 1930 census[106] and a 1936 wedding announcement.[107] Trump admitted to The New York Times that the address was "where my grandmother lived and my father, early on." When asked about the 1927 story, he denied his father had ever lived at that address, and said the arrest "never happened", and, "There was nobody charged."[108]
Within six months of Trump's announcement of his presidential campaign, FactCheck.org declared Trump the "King of Whoppers", stating, "In the 12 years of FactCheck.org's existence, we've never seen his match. He stands out not only for the sheer number of his factually false claims, but also for his brazen refusals to admit error when proven wrong."[109] In 2016, Trump suggested that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[110] He also accused Cruz of stealing the Iowa caucuses during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries.[111]
Trump claimed that his father had given him "a small loan of a million dollars," which he used to build "a company that's worth more than $10 billion,"[112] denying Marco Rubio's allegation that he had inherited $200 million.[113] A 2018 New York Times exposé on Fred and Donald Trump's finances concludes that Donald "was a millionaire by age 8," and that he had received $413 million (adjusted for inflation) from his father's business empire over his lifetime, including over $60 million ($140 million in 2018 currency) in loans, which were largely unreimbursed.[114]
Trump claimed repeatedly on the campaign trail in 2015 that the actual unemployment rate of around 5% "isn't reflective [of reality] ... I've seen numbers of 24%, I actually saw a number of 42% unemployment". PolitiFact rated this claim "Pants on Fire," its rating for the most egregious falsehoods.[115] Jeremy Adam Smith, writing for the Greater Good Magazine, said Trump's falsehoods may be "blue lies," which are "told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group". As a result, he posited, Trump's dishonesty does not lose the support of his political base, even while it "infuriates and confuses almost everyone else".[116][117]
In 2015, BuzzFeed News' Andrew Kaczynski reported that Trump, despite having claimed to have the best memory in the world, had a history of "conveniently forgetting" people or organizations in ways that benefit him. In July 2016, PolitiFact's Linda Qiu pointed out that Trump "seems to suffer bouts of amnesia when it comes to his own statements". Kaczynski and Qiu cited examples of Trump's stating he did not know anything about former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, despite statements showing he clearly knew who Duke was.[118][119] Over three months before the 2016 presidential election, Trump claimed it was going to be "rigged".[120]
In 2016, Trump said repeatedly that he would jail Hillary Clinton. In an interview with Will Cain on Fox & Friends Weekend in June 2024, he denied ever having said so. He blamed his supporters for chanting that message: "I didn't say 'lock her up,' but the people said 'lock her up, lock her up'." He suggested he "could have done it, but I felt it would have been a terrible thing."[121][122] On June 4, he called into Newsmax, claiming he always believed it would have been "terrible to throw the president's wife and the former secretary of state ... into jail", yet this time adding the threat: "It's very possible that it's going to have to happen to them."[123]
Border wall with Mexico
Throughout his campaign and into his presidency, Trump repeatedly claimed the US would "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it". President of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto said his country would not pay, and never did.[124][125] While not unusual for a campaign promise to not pan out, Trump's insistence Mexico would pay was a central element of his campaign and continued for years. At the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump reiterated saying, "Mexico is paying for it and it's every bit—it's better than the wall that was projected."[126]
First term
Fact-checking Trump
Trump's statements as president engaged a host of fact-checkers. Tony Burman wrote: "The falsehoods and distortions uttered by Trump and his senior officials have particularly inflamed journalists and have been challenged—resulting in a growing prominence of 'fact-checkers' and investigative reporting."[127] The situation got worse, as described by Pulitzer Prize-winning Ashley Parker: "President Trump seems to be saying more and more things that aren't true."[128]
Glenn Kessler said in 2017 as a fact-checker for The Washington Post there was no comparison between Trump and other politicians. Kessler gave his worst rating to other politicians 20% of the time, but gave it to Trump 64% of the time.[129] Kessler wrote that Trump was the most fact-challenged politician he had ever encountered and lamented that "the pace and volume of the president's misstatements means that we cannot possibly keep up".[130] Kessler and others have described how Trump's lying has created an alternate reality.[131][132] David Zurawik says we should "just assume Trump's always lying and fact check him backwards"[133] because that's "how to cover a habitual liar".[134]
The Washington Post fact-checker created a new category of falsehoods in 2018, the "Bottomless Pinocchio," for falsehoods repeated at least twenty times (so often "that there can be no question the politician is aware his or her facts are wrong"). Trump was the only politician who met the standard of the category, with 14 statements that immediately qualified. According to The Washington Post, Trump repeated some falsehoods so many times he had effectively engaged in disinformation.[17] Glenn Kessler wrote:
The president keeps going long after the facts are clear, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to replace the truth with his own, far more favorable, version of it. He is not merely making gaffes or misstating things, he is purposely injecting false information into the national conversation.[17]
Professor Robert Prentice summarized the views of many fact-checkers:
Here's the problem: As fact checker Glenn Kessler noted in August, whereas [Hillary] Clinton lies as much as the average politician, President Donald Trump's lying is "off the charts." No prominent politician in memory bests Trump for spouting spectacular, egregious, easily disproved lies. The birther claim. The vote fraud claim. The attendance at the inauguration claim. And on and on and on. Every fact checker – Kessler, Factcheck.org, Snopes.com, PolitiFact – finds a level of mendacity unequaled by any politician ever scrutinized. For instance, 70 percent of his campaign statements checked by PolitiFact were mostly false, totally false, or "pants on fire" false.[135]
At the end of 2018, Kessler provided a run-down summary of Trump's accelerating rate of false statements during the year:
Trump began 2018 on a similar pace as last year. Through May, he generally averaged about 200 to 250 false claims a month. But his rate suddenly exploded in June, when he topped 500 falsehoods, as he appeared to shift to campaign mode. He uttered almost 500 more in both July and August, almost 600 in September, more than 1,200 in October and almost 900 in November. In December, Trump drifted back to the mid-200s.[8]
Several major fact-checking sites regularly fact-checked Trump, including:
- PolitiFact,[136] which awarded Trump its "Lie of the Year" in 2015,[137] 2017[138] and 2019.[139]
- FactCheck.org,[140] which dubbed Trump the "King of Whoppers" in 2015.[141]
- The Washington Post said in January 2020 that Trump had made more than 16,241 false or misleading claims as president,[142] an average of about 15 such statements per day.
- The Toronto Star which said that, as of June 2019, Trump had made 5,276 false statements since his inauguration.[143]
As late as June 2018, the news media were debating whether to use the word "lie" to describe Trump's falsehoods. That month, however, many news organizations, including CNN, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker, and Foreign Policy began describing some of Trump's false statements as lies. The Toronto Star was one of the first outlets to use the word "lie" to describe Trump's statements, and continues to frequently. Some organizations continue to shy away from the term.
On June 5, 2019, Paul Farhi wrote that Glenn Kessler, author of The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" column, had used the word lie only once to describe Trump's statements, although he has sometimes used other terminology that implies lying.[16] Since then, The Washington Post's fact-checking team has written the 2020 book Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth. The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies.[144][145]
By October 9, 2019, The Washington Post's fact-checking team documented that Trump had "made 13,435 false or misleading claims over 993 days".[146] On October 18, 2019, the Washington Post Fact Checker newsletter described the situation:
A thousand days of Trump.
We often hear from readers wondering how President Trump's penchant for falsehoods stacks up in comparison to previous presidents. But there is no comparison: Trump exists in a league of his own. Deception, misdirection, gaslighting, revisionism, absurd boasts, and in some cases, provable lies, are core to his politics.[147]
After departing the White House, January 20, 2021, Trump gave a farewell address at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland prior to departing on Air Force One for his residence in Palm Beach, Florida.[148] The AP fact-checked his speech, and reported that it included false statements about his presidency and administration's accomplishments. These included statements that he passed the largest tax cuts in history; that the U.S. economy during his tenure was the greatest in U.S. history; that he achieved record job creation; that his administration rebuilt both the U.S. military and the American manufacturing industry; that he destroyed the ISIS caliphate; and a reiteration of his previously repeated falsehood that he, and not former President Barack Obama, had passed the Veterans Choice Act.[149] These falsehoods added to the 30,573 falsehoods that The Washington Post's fact-checker had tallied by the end of Trump's presidency,[1] an average of 21 falsehoods a day.[150]
Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found "significant evidence" of an intent to deceive:
Analyzing Trump's tweets with a regression function designed to predict true and false claims based on their language and composition, it finds significant evidence of intent underlying most of Trump's false claims, and makes the case for calling them lies when that outcome agrees with the results of traditional fact-checking procedures.... We argue, based on our findings here, that intent to deceive is a reasonable inference from most of Trump's false tweets, and that drawing that conclusion when the evidence warrants could help scholars and journalists alike better explain the strategic functions of political falsehoods.[15]
Credibility polling
According to a September 2018 CNN-SSRS poll of 1,003 respondents, only 32% percent found Trump honest and trustworthy, the worst read in CNN polling history. The number was 33% on election day, November 8, 2016.[151][152] In June 2020, a Gallup poll of 1,034 adults within the U.S. found that 36% found Trump honest and trustworthy. By comparison, 60% of respondents found President Obama honest and trustworthy in June 2012 during his re-election campaign.[153][154]
Commentary and analysis
As president, Trump frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks.[155][130][156][157] Trump uttered "at least one false or misleading claim per day on 91 of his first 99 days" in office according to The New York Times,[155] and 1,318 total in his first 263 days in office according to the "Fact Checker" political analysis column of The Washington Post.[158] By the Post's tally, it took Trump 601 days to reach 5,000 false or misleading statements and another 226 days to reach the 10,000 mark.[159] For the seven weeks leading up to the midterm elections, it rose to an average of 30 per day[160] from 4.9 during his first 100 days in office.[161] The Post found that Trump averaged 15 false statements per day during 2018.[8]
The New York Times editorial board frequently lambasted Trump's dishonesty. In September 2018, the board called him "a president with no clear relation to the truth".[162] The following month, the board published an opinion piece titled, "Donald Trump Is Lyin' Up a Storm".[163]
James Comey had frequent discussions with Trump, and in his first major interview after his firing he described Trump as a serial liar who tells "baffling, unnecessary" falsehoods:[164]
Sometimes he's lying in ways that are obvious, sometimes he's saying things that we may not know are true or false and then there's a spectrum in between ... he is someone who is—for whom the truth is not a high value.[164]
The Washington Post commentator Greg Sargent pointed out eight instances where government officials either repeated falsehoods or came up with misleading information to support falsehoods asserted by Trump, including various false claims about terrorists crossing or attempting to cross the Mexican border, that a 10% middle class tax cut had been passed, and a doctored video justifying Jim Acosta's removal from the White House press room.[165]
James P. Pfiffner, writing for The Evolving American Presidency book series, wrote that compared to previous presidents, Trump tells "vastly" more "conventional lies" that politicians usually tell to avoid criticism or improve their image. However, Pfiffner emphasized that "the most significant" lies told by Trump are instead "egregious false statements that are demonstrably contrary to well-known facts," because by causing disagreements about what the facts are, then people cannot properly evaluate their government: "Political power rather than rational discourse then becomes the arbiter."[166]
Selman Özdan, writing in the journal Postdigital Science and Education, describes that "many" of Trump's statements in interviews or on Twitter "may now be classed as bullshit," with their utter disregard for the truth, and their focus on telling "a version of reality that suits Trump's aims". She added that these statements are "often" written in a way which criticizes or mocks others, while offering a misleading version of Trump's accomplishments to improve his image.[167]
Daniel Dale, writing for The Washington Post, described fact-checking Trump as being "like fact-checking one of those talking dolls programmed to say the same phrases for eternity, except if none of those phrases were true", noting that Trump had repeatedly and falsely claimed that he had passed the Veterans Choice Act and that U.S. Steel was building six, seven, eight or nine plants (the company had invested in two existing plants). Dale added: "Many of Trump's false claims are so transparently wrong that I can fact-check them with a Google search."[168] In 2019, Dale noted that Trump had a tendency to use large inaccurate numbers instead of smaller accurate ones.[169]
Susan Glasser wrote that falsehoods are "part of his political identity" and quoted Glenn Kessler's description of them as "Trump's political 'secret sauce'". She described how "The White House assault on the truth is not an accident—it is intentional." When comparing Trump to Nixon, she quoted Barry Goldwater, who described Nixon as "the most dishonest individual I ever met in my life", but she did not stop there. She spoke to Morton Halperin "who oversaw the writing of the Pentagon Papers and then served on Nixon's National Security Council staff... Halperin insisted, strongly, that Nixon wasn't nearly as damaging to the institution of the Presidency as Trump has been. 'He's far worse than Nixon,' Halperin told me, 'certainly as a threat to the country'."[14]
Purpose and effect
[
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20241116_%22Gaslighting%22_%28topic%29_on_Google_Trends.svg)
Google Trends topic searches for "Gaslighting" began a substantial increase in 2016, at the time of the campaign for the U.S. presidential election.[170]
[
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20241116_%22Fake_news%22_%28topic%29_on_Google_Trends.svg)
Google Trends topic searches for "Fake news" began a substantial increase in late 2016, about the time of the U.S. presidential election.[171]
A few days after Trump's January 20, 2017, inauguration, some experts expressed serious concerns about how Trump and his staff showed "arrogance" and "lack of respect...for the American people" by making "easily contradicted" false statements that rose to a "new level" above the "general stereotype that politicians lie". They considered the "degree of fabrication" as "simply breathtaking", egregious, and creating an "extraordinarily dangerous situation" for the country.[172]
They elaborated on why they thought Trump and his team were so deceptive: he was using classic gaslighting in a "systematic, sophisticated attempt" as a "political weapon"; he was undermining trust and creating doubt and hatred of the media and all it reports; owning his supporters and implanting "his own version of reality" in their minds; creating confusion so people are vulnerable, don't know what to do, and thus "gain more power over them"; inflating a "sense of his own popularity"; and making people "give up trying to discern the truth".[172]
If Donald Trump can undercut America's trust in all media, he then starts to own them and can start to literally implant his own version of reality.[172]
Specific topics
See also: List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump
Inaugural crowd
Trump's presidency began with falsehoods originating from Trump. On the day after his inauguration, he falsely accused the media of lying about the size of the crowd. He then exaggerated the size, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer backed up his claims.[173][174][175][176] When Spicer was accused of intentionally misstating the figures,[177][178][179] Kellyanne Conway, in an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, defended Spicer by saying he merely presented alternative facts.[180] Todd responded by saying, "Alternative facts are not facts; they're falsehoods."[181]
In September 2018, a government photographer admitted he, at Trump's request,[182] edited pictures of the inauguration to make the crowd appear larger: "The photographer cropped out empty space 'where the crowd ended' for a new set of pictures requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency, after he was angered by images showing his audience was smaller than Barack Obama's in 2009."[182][183]
2016 presidential election
Further information: United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote
Trump went on to claim his victory in 2016 was a landslide;[184][185][186] that three of the states he did not win in the 2016 election had "serious voter fraud";[187][188][189][190] and that he didn't win the popular vote because Clinton received 3–5 million illegal votes.[191][192] Trump made his Trump Tower wiretapping allegations in March 2017, which the Department of Justice twice refuted.[193][194] In January 2018, Trump claimed texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to "treason," but The Wall Street Journal reviewed them and concluded they "show no evidence of a conspiracy against" Trump.[195][196]
Denial of Russian hacking and election interference
Main article: Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Trump frequently denied or sowed doubt that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC and interfered in the 2016 election. He made many different claims, such as that there was no hacking, other countries than Russia did it, or the DNC hacked itself and that Seth Rich was involved. He has said Russia did not try to get him elected and often called allegations of Russian meddling "a hoax". "Trump is fond of tossing out conspiracy theories, even if just to add a sliver of doubt. His supporters have embraced his conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to Mueller's investigation." The Russia investigation conclusively proved Russian intelligence was behind the hackings.[197][198]
Robert Mueller, who led a Special Counsel investigation, concluded Russian interference was "sweeping and systematic" and "violated U.S. criminal law", and he indicted 26 Russian citizens and 3 Russian organizations. The investigation led to indictments and convictions of Trump campaign officials and associated Americans. The Mueller report, made public in April 2019, examined contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that, though the Trump campaign welcomed the Russian activities and expected to benefit from them, there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or associates.[199]
Denial of collusion with Russia
See also: Links between Trump associates and Russian officials, Mueller report § Conspiracy or coordination vs collusion, and Mueller report § False "no collusion" claims
Trump repeatedly claimed he and his campaign did not collude with Russia, and Republicans and many otherwise reliable sources have repeated that false claim even though Mueller explained that he did not investigate "collusion", only "conspiracy" and "coordination". The claim that there was no collusion has been described as a myth.[200]
In a January 2019 interview, Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani undermined Trump's claim when he "claimed Wednesday night that he 'never said there was no collusion' between President Trump's campaign and Russia leading up to the 2016 presidential election."[201]
Giuliani: [complained about] 'false reporting' on the Russia investigation.
Cuomo: 'Mr. Mayor, false reporting is saying that nobody in the campaign had any contacts with Russia. False reporting is saying that there has been no suggestion of any kind of collusion between the campaign and any Russians.'
Giuliani: 'You just misstated my position. I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or between people in the campaign.'
Cuomo: 'Yes, you have.'[201]
After his comments, Giuliani made statements that NPR described as an "apparent reversal" from his TV interview: He said "'there was no collusion by President Trump in any way, shape or form' and that he had 'no knowledge of any collusion by any of the thousands of people who worked on the campaign'."[202]
The investigation found there were at least 140 contacts between Trump or 18 of his associates with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks or their intermediaries, though the contacts were insufficient to show an illegal "conspiracy".[203]
Dismissal of FBI director
On May 9, 2017, Trump dismissed James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying he had accepted the recommendations of U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to dismiss Comey. In their respective letters, neither Trump, Sessions nor Rosenstein mentioned the issue of an FBI investigation into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies, with Rosenstein writing that Comey should be dismissed for his handling of the conclusion of the FBI investigation into the Hillary Clinton email controversy, a rationale seconded by Sessions.[204][205][206] On May 11, Trump said in an NBC News interview: "Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey ... in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story".[207][208][209] On May 31, Trump tweeted, "I never fired James Comey because of Russia!"[195]
Personal lawyer
In 2017 and in the first half of 2018, Trump repeatedly praised his attorney Michael Cohen as "a great lawyer," "a loyal, wonderful person," "a good man" and someone Trump "always liked" and "respected". In the second half of 2018, with Cohen testifying to federal investigations, Trump attacked Cohen as a "rat," "a weak person, and not a very smart person" and described Cohen as "a PR person who did small legal work, very small legal work ... He represented me very little".[207][210][211]
In 2018, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he did not know about a payment of $130,000 that Cohen made to porn actress Stormy Daniels or where Cohen had obtained the money from.[212] Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post described this statement as a lie,[213] as Trump had personally reimbursed Cohen.[212][213][214] On May 30, 2024, a New York City jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal these reimbursement payments.
In 2021, several lawyers who had previously worked with Trump, reportedly declined to assist him in asserting executive privilege over the subpoenas served by the House Select Committee on January 6. One of these was William Burck, who had represented 11 Trump associates regarding the Mueller investigation. When Trump was asked about the refusal of his former lawyers to involve themselves in his legal battle, he said: "I don't even know who they are... I am using lawyers who have been with us from the beginning."[215][216]
Spygate conspiracy theory
In May 2018, Trump developed and promoted the false[217][218][219] Spygate conspiracy theory[217][220] alleging the Obama administration planted a spy inside Trump's campaign to help Clinton win the 2016 election.[221][222]
Political commentators and high-ranking politicians from both main parties dismissed Trump's allegations as lacking evidence and maintained that the FBI's use of Halper as a covert informant was in no way improper. Trump's claims about when the counterintelligence investigation was initiated have been shown to be false.[223] A December 2019 Justice Department Inspector General report "found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any [Confidential Human Sources] within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign."[224]
2018 California wildfires
Main article: 2018 California wildfires
During the 2018 California wildfires which ultimately caused $3.5 billion ($4.18 billion in 2023) in damages and killed 103 people, Trump misrepresented a method that Finland uses to control wildfires. After speaking with President of Finland Sauli Niinistö, Trump reported in November 2018, that Niinistö had called Finland a "forest nation" and "they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem." Trump's comments sparked online memes about raking leaves. Niinistö clarified there is "a good surveillance system and network" for forest management in Finland and he did not recall having mentioned raking.[225]
Special counsel investigation
In March 2019, Trump asserted that the Mueller special counsel investigation was "illegal". Previously in June 2018, Trump argued that "the appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!" However, in August 2018, Dabney Friedrich, a Trump-appointed judge on the DC District Court ruled the appointment was constitutional, as did a unanimous three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in February 2019.[226][227]
The Mueller Report asserted that Trump's family members, campaign staff, Republican backers, administration officials, and his associates lied or made false assertions, with the plurality of falsehoods from Trump himself, whether unintentional or not, to the public, Congress, or authorities, per a CNN analysis.[228]
Also in March 2019, following the release of Attorney General William Barr's summary of the findings of the completed special counsel investigation, Trump tweeted: "No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION". However, Barr had quoted special counsel Mueller as writing that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" on whether he had committed obstruction of justice. Barr declined to bring an obstruction-of-justice charge against the President. In testimony to Congress in May 2019, Barr said he "didn't exonerate" Trump on obstruction as that was not the role of the Justice Department.[229][230][231]
Trump, Republicans, and many otherwise reliable sources have repeatedly and falsely claimed that Mueller found "no collusion", even though Mueller explained that he did not investigate "collusion", only "conspiracy" and "coordination". The claim has been described as a myth.[200]
Economy
See also: Economic policy of Donald Trump
Through his first 28 months in office, Trump repeatedly and falsely characterized the economy during his presidency as the best in American history.[232]
As of March 2019, Trump's most repeated falsehoods, each repeated during his presidency more than a hundred times, were that a U.S. trade deficit would be a "loss" for the country, that his tax cuts were the largest in American history, that the economy was the strongest ever during his administration, and that the wall was being built. By August, he had made this last claim at least 190 times. He also made 100 false claims about NATO spending, whether on the part of the U.S. or other NATO members.[233]
Trump claimed during the campaign GDP could grow at "5 or even 6" percent under his policies. During 2018, the economy grew at 3%, the same rate as 2015 under Obama. Obama's advisers explained growth limits as "sluggish worker productivity and shrinking labor supply as baby boomers retire".[234]
Trump claimed in October 2017 he would eliminate the federal debt over eight years, even though it was $19 ($23.00 in 2023) trillion at the time.[235] However, the annual deficit (debt addition) in 2018 was nearly $800 billion, about 60% higher than the CBO forecast of $500 billion when Trump took office. The CBO January 2019 forecast for the 2018–2027 debt addition was 40% higher, at $13 trillion, rather than $9.4 trillion when Trump was inaugurated.[236] Other forecasts place the debt addition over a decade at $16 trillion, bringing the total to around $35 trillion. Rather than a debt to GDP ratio in 2028 of 89% had Obama's policies continued, CBO estimated it at 107%, assuming Trump's tax cuts for individuals are extended past 2025.[237]
Trump sought to present his economic policies as successful in encouraging businesses to invest in new facilities and create jobs. In this effort, he took credit on several occasions for business investments that began before he became president.[238][239]
Trump repeatedly claimed that China or Chinese exporters were bearing the burden of his tariffs, not Americans, a claim PolitiFact rated as "false".[240] Studies indicate U.S. consumers and purchasers of imports are bearing the cost and that tariffs are essentially a regressive tax. For example, CBO reported in January 2020 that: "Tariffs are expected to reduce the level of [U.S.] real GDP by roughly 0.5 percent and raise consumer prices by 0.5 percent in 2020. As a result, tariffs are also projected to reduce average real household income by $1,277 (in 2019 dollars) in 2020."[241] While Trump has argued that tariffs would reduce the trade deficit, it expanded to a record dollar level in 2018.[242]
Trump repeatedly claimed that the U.S. had a $500 billion annual trade deficit with China before his presidency; the actual deficit never reached $400 billion prior to his presidency.[212]
The following table illustrates some of the key economic variables in the last three years of the Obama Administration (2014–2016) and the first three years of the Trump Administration (2017–2019). Trump often claimed the economy was doing better than it was, after he was elected.[234]
...
family separation policy
For broader coverage of the policy, see Trump administration family separation policy.
President Trump repeatedly and falsely said he inherited his administration's family separation policy from Obama, his predecessor. In November 2018, Trump said, "President Obama separated children from families, and all I did was take the same law, and then I softened the law." In April 2019, Trump said, "President Obama separated children. They had child separation; I was the one that changed it." In June 2019, Trump said, "President Obama had a separation policy. I didn't have it. He had it. I brought the families together. I'm the one that put them together... I inherited separation, and I changed the plan". Trump's assertion was false because the Obama administration had no policy systematically separating migrant families, while "zero tolerance" was not instituted until April 2018. PolitiFact quoted immigration experts saying that under the Obama administration families were detained and released together and separations rarely happened.[254][255][256]
E. Jean Carroll sexual assault accusation
Further information: E. Jean Carroll litigation against Donald Trump and Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations
In June 2019, writer E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a department store in the mid-1990s. In an official statement, Trump said that (1) he had "never met [Carroll] in my life" although she provided a photograph of them socializing in 1987, and (2) the store shared security footage debunking the claim though in his 2022 deposition for the case, he denied having reached out to the company.[257][258] Trump was also criticized for saying in 2019 that Carroll was "not [his] type" but in his deposition confusing her in the aforementioned photograph for his ex-wife Marla Maples.[259]
Article II and unlimited executive power
In July 2019, during a speech addressing youth at Turning Point USA Teen Student Action Summit in Washington, The Washington Post reported that, while criticizing the Mueller investigation, Trump falsely claimed Article Two of the U.S. Constitution ensures, "I have the right to do whatever I want as president." The Post clarified that "Article II grants the president 'executive power'. It does not indicate the president has total power".[260]
Hurricane Dorian
Further information: Hurricane Dorian–Alabama controversy
[
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Donald_Trump_with_Hurricane_Dorian_map,_%22Thursday_August_29,_2019_11_AM_AST_Advisory_21_NWS_National_Hurricane_Center%22_%22Potential_track_area%22_%22Day_1-3%22_and_%22Day_4-5%22_from-_Hurricane_Dorian_Briefing_%2848648405897%29_%28cropped%29.jpg)President Trump receives an update on Hurricane Dorian on August 29, 2019. This map was later altered to show the hurricane impacting Alabama.President Trump displays the altered Hurricane Dorian map in a video published by the White House on September 4, 2019.
As Hurricane Dorian approached the Atlantic coast in August 2019, Trump presented himself as closely monitoring the situation, tweeting extensively as The New York Times reported he was "assuming the role of meteorologist in chief".[261] On September 1, Trump tweeted that Alabama, among other states, "will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated".[262] By that time, no forecaster was predicting Dorian would impact Alabama and the eight National Hurricane Center forecast updates over the preceding 24 hours showed Dorian steering well away from Alabama and moving up the coast.[263][264] The Birmingham, Alabama office of the National Weather Service (NWS) contradicted Trump 20 minutes later, tweeting that Alabama "will NOT see any impacts from Dorian."[265] After ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl reported the correction, Trump tweeted it was "Such a phony hurricane report by lightweight reporter @jonkarl".[266]
On September 4, in the Oval Office, Trump displayed a modified version of an August 29 diagram by the National Hurricane Center of the projected track of Dorian. The modification was done with a black marker and extended the cone of uncertainty of the hurricane's possible path into southern Alabama. Modifying government weather forecasts is illegal in the U.S.[267][268][269] Trump was known to use a Sharpie to write on documents, as well as speech notes and on the campaign trail.[270] A White House official told The Washington Post Trump had altered the diagram with a Sharpie marker.[271] Trump said he did not know how the map came to be modified and defended his claims, saying he had "a better map" with models that "in all cases [showed] Alabama was hit". Later on September 4, Trump tweeted a map by the South Florida Water Management District dated August 28 showing numerous projected paths of Dorian; Trump falsely asserted "almost all models" showed Dorian approaching Alabama.[272] A note on the map stated it was "superseded" by National Hurricane Center publications and that it was to be discarded if there were any discrepancies.[263][273]
On September 5, after Fox News correspondent John Roberts reported about the story, Trump summoned him to the Oval Office. Roberts later characterized Trump as "just looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point, Alabama was at risk—even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet".[274] Trump's Homeland Security Advisor Peter Brown issued a statement asserting Trump had been provided a graphic on September 1 showing tropical storm force winds touching the southeastern corner of Alabama; a White House source told CNN that Trump had personally instructed Brown to issue the statement.[274]
On September 6, at Trump's direction, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross to order acting NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs to fix the contradiction by Birmingham NWS, and Ross threatened to fire top NOAA officials if he did not.[275][276] NOAA then tweeted a statement by an unnamed spokesman disavowing the Birmingham NWS tweet, asserting "the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama," adding that the Birmingham tweet "spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time".[277][278] The president of the NWS Employees Organization responded, "the hard-working employees of the NWS had nothing to do with the utterly disgusting and disingenuous tweet sent out by NOAA management tonight".[279] Former senior NOAA executives were sharply critical.[280] That evening, Trump tweeted a video of a CNN hurricane forecast from the Wednesday before his Sunday tweet in which the forecaster mentioned Alabama could be affected by Dorian—with the video altered to show "Alabama" being repeated several times; the video ended with a CNN logo careening off a road and bursting into flames.[281] Trump continued to insist he was correct through September 7,[282] asserting "The Fake News Media was fixated" and tweeting forecast maps from at least two days before his original Sunday tweet, as the media dubbed the episode "Sharpiegate".[283][284][285] Commentators expressed bafflement that Trump chose to insist he was correct about what might otherwise have passed as a minor gaffe.[292]
On September 9, NWS director Louis Uccellini said the Birmingham NWS had not tweeted in response to Trump's tweet, but in response to phone calls and social media contacts they had received in response to Trump's tweet. "Only later, when the retweets and politically based comments started coming to their office, did they learn the sources of this information," he said.[293]
Meeting with Iran
On September 16, 2019, Trump tweeted that "the fake news" was incorrectly reporting that he was willing to meet with Iran with no pre-conditions. Trump had said in July 2018 and June 2019 that he was willing to meet with Iran with no pre-conditions, and secretary of state Mike Pompeo and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed this to be Trump's position during a White House press briefing five days before Trump's tweet.[294]
U.S military pullout from Kurdistan
After Trump ordered the pullout of U.S soldiers from Kurdistan in October 2019 ahead of an expected Turkish military assault, Trump said the Kurds "didn't help us in the Second World War", which was false as Kurdish soldiers fought for allied forces, notably Britain and the Soviet Union.[295][296]
Obamagate conspiracy theory
Main article: Allegations of Obama spying on Trump
Trump and some of his supporters allege that Obama and his administration conspired to politically surveil Trump's presidential campaign and presidential transition through inappropriate investigations by the Department of Justice, the U.S. Intelligence Community, and the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Trump nicknamed the series of events, which he called a major scandal, "Obamagate". Trump's critics called it an unfounded conspiracy theory.[297][298][299][300]
On May 10, 2020—one day after former president Barack Obama criticized the Trump administration's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic[301]—Trump posted a one-word tweet: "OBAMAGATE!"[302] On May 11, Philip Rucker of The Washington Post asked Trump what crime former president Barack Obama committed. Trump's reply was: "Obamagate. It's been going on for a long time ... from before I even got elected and it's a disgrace that it happened.... Some terrible things happened and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again." When Rucker again asked what the crime was, Trump said: "You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours."[303] On May 15, Trump tweeted that Obamagate was the "greatest political scandal in the history of the United States". This was the third time Trump claimed to be suffering from a scandal of such magnitude, after previously giving Spygate and the Russia investigation similar labels.[304] Also on May 15, Trump linked Obamagate to the "persecution" of Michael Flynn, and a missing 302 form.[305]
Trump called for Congress to summon Obama to testify about "the biggest political crime".[306] Senator Lindsey Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that he did not expect to summon Obama, but would summon other Obama administration officials.[307] Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr stated that he did not "expect" Obama to be investigated of a crime.[306] Some of Trump's allies have suggested that the "crime" involved the FBI launching an investigation into incoming national security advisor Michael Flynn,[308] or possibly the "unmasking" by outgoing Obama officials to find out the name of a person who was reported in intelligence briefings to be conversing with the Russian ambassador.[309]
In a May 2020 op-ed at the news website RealClearPolitics, Charles Lipson, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago analyzed the content of "Obamagate". He claimed that the concept refers to three intertwined scandals: (1) The Obama administration conducted mass surveillance through the NSA; (2) the Obama administration used surveillance against Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and (3) the Obama administration did not transfer power seamlessly to the new Trump administration. Lipson further claimed that "these abuses didn't simply follow each other; their targets, goals, and principal players overlapped. Taken together, they represent some of the gravest violations of constitutional norms and legal protections in American history".[310]
:{The AP in May 2020 addressed Obamagate in a fact check, stating that there was "no evidence" of Trump's suggestion that "the disclosure of Flynn's name as part of legal U.S. surveillance of foreign targets was criminal and motivated by partisan politics." AP stated that there is not only "nothing illegal about unmasking," but also that the unmasking of Flynn was approved using the National Security Agency's "standard process." Unmasking is allowed if officials feel that it is needed to understand the collected intelligence. AP further pointed out that the Trump administration :{was conducting even more unmasking than the Obama administration in the final year of Obama's presidency.[311]}:
In May 2020, attorney general Bill Barr appointed federal prosecutor John Bash to examine unmasking conducted by the Obama administration.[312] The inquiry concluded in October with no findings of substantive wrongdoing.[313] By October 2020, the complex "Obamagate" narrative served as an evolution and rebranding of the "Spygate" conspiracy.[314]}:
Joe Scarborough murder conspiracy theory
Trump repeatedly advocated a baseless conspiracy theory suggesting that television host Joe Scarborough was involved in the 2001 death of a staffer Lori Klausutis, who worked for Scarborough while the latter was a member of Congress.[315] Trump labeled the woman's death an unsolved "cold case" in one of multiple tweets and called on his followers to continue to "keep digging" and to "use forensic geniuses" to find out more about the death. Scarborough's wife and Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski called the president a "cruel, sick, disgusting person" for his tweets and urged Twitter to remove Trump's tweets.[316] Scarborough called Trump's tweet "unspeakably cruel".[317]
Lori Klausutis was a constituent services coordinator in one of Scarborough's congressional offices in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.[315] Klausutis was found dead on the floor near her desk in that office on July 19, 2001.[318] An autopsy by Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Berkland[319] revealed a previously undiagnosed heart-valve irregularity, floppy mitral valve disease, that caused a cardiac arrhythmia that in turn halted her heart, stopped her breathing, and caused the 28-year-old to lose consciousness, fall, and hit her head on the edge of a desk.[318][320][321][322] Klausutis' cause of death was determined at the time of death to be due to natural causes, and local authorities have never attempted to re-investigate because there was no evidence of an alternative explanation for her death.[323] Scarborough was in Washington, D.C. at the time of her death in Florida.[324][325][326]
In May 2020, Klausutis's widower, Timothy Klausutis, called for the removal of Trump's tweets. He wrote a letter to Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, saying: "I'm asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him—the memory of my dead wife—and perverted it for perceived political gain".[327] Twitter refused to take down Trump's false tweets, and the White House Press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, only stated that her heart was with the family. Twitter stated that statements by the President, even false ones, are newsworthy.[328]
Advances for black Americans
In 2020, Trump claimed multiple times that he or his administration had "done more for the black community than any president," in some cases compared to all presidents, and in other cases to all presidents "since Abraham Lincoln" (who abolished slavery in the U.S.). Prominent historians instead pointed to Lyndon B. Johnson as the president who did most for the black community since Lincoln, for his Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his Voting Rights Act of 1965. The historians also highlighted that the presidencies of Harry Truman, Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama had done much for the black community. Trump's own achievements were dismissed as minor, while Trump was faulted for racially divisive rhetoric and attacks on voting rights.[329]
Republican Party approval rating tweets
| Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump |
| --- |
President Trump Approval Rating in the Republican Party at 96%. Thank You!
July 10, 2020[330]
After Trump took office in 2017, he routinely tweeted an approval rating between 94% and 98% in the Republican Party without citing a source. Trump tweeted these approval ratings almost weekly, with a percentage around 96%. For example, a tweet from June 16, 2020, by Trump says "96% Approval Rating in the Republican Party. Thank you!" Another tweet from August 23, 2019, says "94% Approval Rating within the Republican Party. Thank you!" Trump's approval rating in the Republican Party was found to be around 88% in a Fox News poll, 90% in a Gallup poll and 79% in an AP-NORC poll, with no evidence to support his tweets of approval ratings around 96%.[331][332][333] In 2020, the Pew Research Center reported an average approval rating of 87% amongst Republicans.[334]
Ilhan Omar
In 2019, Trump falsely accused Ilhan Omar of praising al-Qaeda, describing remarks Omar made in 2013 about how one of her college professors acted when he discussed al-Qaeda.[335] In 2021, Trump stated without evidence that Omar married her brother, committed "large-scale immigration and election fraud", and wished "death to Israel".[336]
COVID-19 pandemic
Further information: COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, COVID-19 misinformation by the United States § Trump administration, and Communication of the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic
[
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20200401_Trump_coronavirus_quote_timelines_-Washington_Post.svg)In the early stages of the pandemic, Trump's pronouncements "evolved from casual dismissal to reluctant acknowledgement to bellicose mobilization".[337] Though Trump "occasionally adopted health officials' more cautious tone", the optimism that dominated his early response "hadn't completely disappeared",[338] Trump having downplayed the threat of COVID-19 over 200 times by November 3, 2020.[339][
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20200806_Trump_coronavirus_quote_timeline_II_-The_Guardian.svg)As U.S. cases reached 4,800,000 and deaths reached 157,690 in the summer of 2020, Trump repeated his assertion that he believes coronavirus will "go away" despite his top public health expert warning that it could take most of 2021 or longer to get the pandemic under control.[340] Trump "made numerous versions of this assertion over...more than six months".[340][
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:202003-_Cumulative_county_COVID-19_death_rates_-_by_share_of_votes_for_Donald_Trump.svg)After the December 2020 introduction of COVID vaccines, a partisan gap in death rates developed, indicating the effects of vaccine skepticism.[341] As of March 2024, more than 30 percent of Republicans had not received a Covid vaccine, compared with less than 10 percent of Democrats.[341]
Trump denied responsibility for his administration's disbanding of the Pandemic Response Team headed by Rear Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer in 2018.[342][343]
Trump made false, misleading, or inaccurate statements related to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as "We have it under control. It's going to be just fine" (January 22, 2020); "Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away" (February 10), and "Anybody that wants a test can get a test" (March 6).[344] Trump repeatedly claimed the pandemic would "go away", even as daily new cases rose.[345]
On February 24, Trump tweeted: "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,"[346] and the next day Trump said, "I think that whole situation will start working out. We're very close to a vaccine," when none was known to be near production.[347][348][349][350] In late February, the Trump Administration stated that the outbreak containment was "close to airtight" and the virus is only as deadly as the seasonal flu.[351] The administration also stated that the outbreak was "contained" in early March even as the number of U.S. cases continued to increase, regardless of being publicly challenged.[352][353][354][355]
While on Fox News, Trump contradicted the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that the global mortality rate for SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is 3.4%, saying. "Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number—and this is just my hunch—but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it's very mild, they'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor. They don't even call a doctor. You never hear about those people," and said his "hunch" is that the real figure is "way under 1%". Trump speculated that "thousands or hundreds of thousands" of people might have recovered "by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work but they get better," contradicting medical advice to slow disease transmission.[356][357][358][359][360] On March 17, Trump stated, "I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."[361]
Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained in a Science interview that before press conferences, the task force presents its consensus to Trump "and somebody writes a speech. Then (Trump) gets up and ad libs".[362] Fauci explained the task force told Trump to "be careful about this and don't say that," Fauci added "I can't jump in front of the microphone and push him down. OK, he said it. Let's try and get it corrected for the next time."[362]
Trump made 33 false claims about Covid in the first two weeks of March, per CNN analysis.[363] Trump made other incorrect Covid statements.[364][365] One false claim was that the U.S. had the highest rate per capita of COVID-19 testing, which it did not, compared to South Korea, Italy, and Germany.[366] Trump's misrepresentations attempted to paint the federal response in an excessively positive light, such as claiming hospitals "even in the really hot spots" were "really thrilled" with the level of medical supplies, when in fact hospitals were concerned about shortages of medications, personal protective equipment, and ventilators.[367]
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in April,[368] found 36% of Americans trusted Trump for information on COVID, and 52% distrusted him.[369] On April 14, Trump said he had "total" authority to reopen states, then said the next day that governors had to make decisions on when to reopen.[370]
On April 16, Trump said "Our experts say the curve has flattened, and the peak...is behind us." Trump added that "Nationwide, more than 850 counties, or nearly 30 percent of our country, have reported no new cases in the last seven days." The 30% of counties represented 6% of the population. Cases were added in counties where 94% of the population lived.[371]
On April 28, while discussing his own response to the pandemic, Trump falsely suggested that in late February, Fauci had said that the American COVID outbreak was "no problem" and was "going to blow over". Contrary to Trump's claims, Fauci had said in a February 29 interview that "now the risk is still low, but this could change...You've got to watch out because although the risk is low now...when you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread ... this could be a major outbreak." Fauci had stressed "we want to underscore that this is an evolving situation".[372]
On "totally harmless" cases
Now we have tested over 40 million people. But by so doing, we show cases, 99 percent of which are totally harmless.
South Lawn "Salute to America" speech[373][374]
July 4, 2020
On COVID testing
Think of this: If we didn't do testing—instead of testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing, we would have half the cases. If we did another—you cut that in half, we would have, yet again, half of that.
Rose Garden press conference[375]
July 14, 2020
On per capita death rates
Journalist: "I'm talking about death as a proportion of population. That's where the US is really bad. ..."
Trump: "You can't do that! You have to go by—look, here's the United States—you have to go by (death as a proportion of) the cases."
Interview with Jonathan Swan[376]
August 2020
On effectiveness of masks
Just the other day (the CDC) came out with a statement that 85 percent of the people that wear masks catch it.
Trump in the NBC Town Hall[377]
October 15, 2020
On May 19, Trump tweeted a statement claiming the WHO had ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in December 2019, including from The Lancet.[378][379] The Lancet rejected Trump's claims, saying "The Lancet published no report in December 2019, referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China. The first reports the journal published were on January 24, 2020".[378][379] The Lancet wrote that the allegations Trump made against the WHO were "serious and damaging to efforts to strengthen international cooperation to control this pandemic".[378][379] The Lancet said "It is essential that any review of the global response is based on a factually accurate account of what took place in December and January".[378][379]
On June 20, at a rally in Oklahoma, Trump suggested America should slow down testing. In response to the high number of tests, he said that "When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people, you're going to find more cases, so I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'" White House officials claimed that Trump was only joking. In an interview, Trump said that while he never gave an order to slow down testing, he claimed that if the U.S. slowed down the testing, they would look like they're doing better. "I wouldn't do that," he said, "but I will say this: We do so much more than other countries it makes us, in a way, look bad but actually we're doing the right thing." The percentage of positive cases in the U.S. was over two times higher than recommended by the WHO.[380][381][382]
On July 4, 2020, Trump falsely stated that "99 percent" of cases are "totally harmless".[374][383] Trump contradicted public health experts by saying that the U.S. will "likely have a therapeutic and/or vaccine solution long before the end of the year".[383] FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn declined to state whether Trump's "99 percent" statement was accurate or to say how many cases are harmless.[383] In March 2020, the WHO had estimated 15% of COVID cases become severe and 5% become critical.[384][needs ^update]
As the U.S. daily new case count increased from about 20,000 on June 9 to over 50,000 by July 7, Trump repeatedly insisted the increase was a function of increased COVID-19 testing.[385] Trump's claims were contradicted by the fact states having increased case counts, as well as those having decreased case counts, had increased testing, that the positive test rate increased in all ten states with the largest case increases, and that case rate increases consistently exceeded testing rate increases in states with the most new cases.[385]
On August 5, 2020, Trump asserted that children should go back to school and learn in an in-person setting. He said, "If you look at children, children are almost, I would almost say definitely, but almost immune from this disease. So few. Hard to believe. I don't know how you feel about it but they have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this. They don't have a problem." According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children account for about 7% of COVID cases. A study reported in Science Magazine showed that "children under age 14 are between one-third and one-half as likely as adults to contract the virus." Facebook took action against Trump's claim that children are "almost immune," removing a video of him claiming this posted on his account. Twitter took action against a similar tweet made by Trump's campaign, stating the account would be restricted from tweeting until the tweet was removed. The account removed the tweet that day.[386][387][388]
Trump noted New Zealand's success in dealing with COVID while referring on August 18, 2020, to a "big surge in New Zealand"[389]—on a day when New Zealand had 13 new reported cases, a cumulative total of 1,643 COVID cases and a cumulative total of 22 COVID-related deaths, with no new COVID-related deaths reported since May 2020. Commentators in New Zealand called Trump's terminology into question—Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters noted: "The American people can work out that what we have for a whole day, they have every 22 seconds of the day [...]."[390] (New Zealand has a population about 1.5% of the U.S.[391])
In 18 interviews from December 5, 2019, to July 21, 2020, between Trump and Bob Woodward, Trump admitted he deceived the public about the severity of the pandemic. On February 7, he told Woodward, "This is deadly stuff. You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flu." On March 19, he said, "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." Audio recordings of these interviews were released on September 9, 2020.[392][393][394][395]
Legal analyst Glenn Kirschner argued that Trump should be charged with manslaughter for deaths resulting from him intentionally lying to the public about the danger posed by COVID.[396][397]
The military and veterans
In 2014, a bipartisan initiative for veterans' healthcare, led by Senators Bernie Sanders and John McCain, was signed into law by President Barack Obama. The Veterans Choice program enables eligible veterans to receive government funding for healthcare provided outside the VA system. In 2018, Trump signed the VA MISSION Act to expand the eligibility criteria. Over the next two years, Trump falsely claimed over 150 times that he had created the Veterans Choice program itself. When reporter Paula Reid questioned him about this in August 2020, noting that he repeatedly made a "false statement" in taking credit for the program, Trump abruptly walked out of the news conference.[398]
In a speech given at Al Asad Airbase to US military personnel on Christmas 2018,[399] Trump boasted that the military had not gotten a raise in ten years, and that he would be giving them a raise of over 10 percent. In fact, American military personnel received a pay hike of at least one percent for the past 30 years,[400] got a 2.4 percent pay increase in 2018, and would receive a 2.6 percent pay increase for 2019.[401]
On January 3, 2020, Trump stated in a speech "Last night, at my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qasem Soleimani."[402] Trump's act of changing the reasons for killing Soleimani were questioned and analyzed by fact-checkers, and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper contradicted Trump's claim that the Iranians were planning to attack four embassies.[403]
Voting by mail
| Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump |
| --- |
There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!
May 26, 2020[404]
President Trump repeatedly made false, misleading or baseless claims in his criticism of voting by mail in the U.S. This included claims that other countries would print "millions of mail-in ballots", claims that "80 million unsolicited ballots" were being sent to Americans, and claims that Nevada's presidential election process was "100% rigged".[405] Another claim was alleging massive voter fraud. In September 2020, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, who was appointed by Trump, testified under oath that the FBI had "not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise".[406]
2020 presidential election
Further information: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, Big lie § Donald Trump's false claims of a stolen election, and Republican reactions to Donald Trump's claims of 2020 election fraud
[
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20210609_Trump_lies,_statements_after_leaving_office_-_horizontal_bar_chart.svg)CNN fact checker Daniel Dale reported that through June 9, 2021, Trump had issued 132 written statements since leaving office, of which "a third have included lies about the election"—more than any other subject.[407]
Missing ballots
Did you see they found 50,000 ballots in, like, a river?
—Trump, in Michigan, October 2020[408]
During his 2020 presidential campaign, Trump claimed his opponent Joe Biden would "destroy" Americans' "protections for pre-existing conditions",[409] while Trump's administration has said the entire Affordable Care Act, which created such protections, should be struck down.[410]
On November 4, Trump delivered a speech inside the White House falsely claiming he had already won the 2020 presidential election. He made numerous false and misleading statements to support his belief that vote counting should stop and that he should be confirmed as the winner.[411] After Joe Biden was declared the winner of the election, Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed Biden had won through ballot fraud against him.[412] He repeated and tweeted false and misleading claims about vote counting, Dominion Voting Systems, poll watchers, alleged voting irregularities, and more.[413] During the two-month transition period to the Biden administration, according to a Huffington Post count of his false claims, Trump said the election was rigged (he made this claim 68 times), stolen (35 times), determined by fraudulent or miscounted votes (250 times), and affected by malfunctioning voting machines (45 times).[414]
Following the election, Trump continued to claim he had won it[415] and that it was a rigged election.[416][417] Anthony Scaramucci, a longtime Trump associate who was briefly White House communications director before breaking with Trump, said in July 2022 that the former president knew the election had not been stolen. Scaramucci said that during the 2016 campaign Trump had asked him and others why people didn't realize he was playacting and 'full of it' at least half the time, "so he knows that this is all a lie."[418] Years later, Trump persists in the false claim about the 2020 election. For example, on August 29, 2022, he demanded on Truth Social that the nation "declare the rightful winner or ... have a new Election, immediately!"[419]
In October 2022, a U.S. District Court Judge ruled that Trump and allies participated in a "knowing misrepresentation of voter fraud numbers in Georgia when seeking to overturn the election results in federal court". Specifically, the judge wrote that "President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public". The judge also found that related emails "are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States" that the crime-fraud exemption voids Trump's lawyer's claim of attorney–client privilege.[420][421]
On April 25, 2023, CNN reported that Trump had told a new lie about the 2020 election: "Trump pointedly noted that Biden got more votes than Trump in fewer than a fifth of US counties in 2020. Trump then said, 'Nothing like this has ever happened before. Usually, it's very equal, or—but the winner always had the most counties.'" The statement was described as "complete bunk". Both "Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, carried a minority of counties in each of their victories." William H. Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, explained the facts:
There is nothing suspicious about winning the presidency with a smaller number of counties. Counties vary widely in size, with large urban and suburban counties—areas where Biden did best—housing far larger populations than most of the outer suburb, small town and rural counties that Trump won.[422]
On July 18, 2023, when responding to Sean Hannity at a town hall meeting in Iowa, Trump told a new lie: "I also have to say something else, 'cause the one thing a lot of people, including you, don't talk about: they also create phony ballots, and that's a real problem. That's my opinion. They create a lot of phony ballots." The claim was described as "pure fiction".[423]
January 6 attack
See also: January 6 United States Capitol attack § Aftermath
On the attack of the Capitol
It was zero threat. Right from the start, it was zero threat. ... Some of them went in, and they're hugging and kissing the police and the guards, you know? They had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in, and they walked out.
Donald Trump on March 25, 2021
Phone interview with Fox News[424]
"... unbelievable patriots ...
You see the spirit from the hostages, and that's what they are—hostages.
—Trump, March 16, 2024
Campaign rally, Dayton, Ohio[425]
During the January 6, 2021, attack, minutes after Mike Pence had been rushed off the Senate floor, Trump tweeted that "Mike Pence didn't have the courage" to refuse to certify the election results, implying Pence had the Constitutional power to do so—a claim dismissed by the federal judges in the final two of 62 election-related lawsuits.[426]
In a January 7, 2021, White House video, Trump claimed, falsely, that he had "immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders".[427]
Among outtakes for the January 7 video that were shown on July 21, 2022, by the House Select Committee, Trump remarked, "I don't want to say the election's over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election's over, OK?"[428]
In late March 2021, Trump said the rioters "were ushered in by the police"[429][427] and "They showed up just to show support",[427] which is false in view of the 140 assaults on police officers in hours-long battles involving police engaging in hand-to-hand combat to try to keep rioters out of the building.[429]
At a July 7, 2021, news conference, Trump claimed "the person that shot Ashli Babbitt right through the head, just boom. There was no reason for that"; in fact, Babbitt was shot in the shoulder as she tried to enter an area of the Capitol used to evacuate lawmakers[427] and was within sight of lawmakers being evacuated.[430]
In a July 11, 2021, interview on Fox News, Trump called the events of January 6 a "lovefest" and said that it was "not right" that the rioters were "currently incarcerated"—conflicting with his January 7 statement telling rioters, "You will pay."[427]
In an interview that aired on December 1, 2021, Trump said "hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people" had gathered to hear him speak on the day of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, saying "I think it was the largest crowd I've ever spoken before";[431] the Associated Press reported it as "several thousand."[432] Investigators estimated that "more than 2,000 people" entered the Capitol.[433]
On December 10, 2021, Trump told Fox News that the attack was "a protest" and that "the insurrection took place on November 3" (election day),[429][434] while in fact about 140 police officers were assaulted and the peaceful transfer of power was violently interrupted in an attack that involved thousands of alleged crimes, and the election was neither rigged nor fraudulent.[429] Trump also said to Fox News of his January 6 speech that "if you look at my words and what I said in the speech, they were extremely calming, actually", while in fact his speech proclaimed that "we fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."[434]
On December 21, 2021, Trump made a statement calling the attack a "completely unarmed protest".[429] Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson subsequently testified before the House January 6 committee that the Secret Service had warned Trump on January 6 that protestors were carrying weapons,[435] but that Trump demanded that the magnetometers—used to detect metallic weapons—be disabled, so that more supporters would fill the rally space.[436] When warned, Trump is said to have angrily responded:
I don't fucking care that they have weapons, they're not here to hurt me. They're not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here, let the people in and take the mags away.[435]
Some protestors were armed with guns, stun guns, knives, batons, baseball bats, axes, and chemical sprays. In January 2022, the Justice Department made an official statement that over 75 people had been charged with entering a restricted area with "a dangerous or deadly weapon".[429]
In a February 5, 2022, rally, Trump said that if he runs again in 2024, "we will treat those people from January 6 fairly... And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly"[437]—the claim of unfairness being unsupported by evidence.[438] Trump's claim echoed his September 16, 2021, written statement that "Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election".[439]
Between terms
2021 California gubernatorial recall election
Before the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election, Trump claimed without evidence that the election was "probably rigged" and said, "Does anybody really believe the California recall election isn't rigged?"[440][441] After polls closed, he said there was "rigged voting".[442]
COVID-19 healthcare discrimination against white people
In reference to a New York policy that allows race to be a consideration when dispensing oral antiviral treatments, Trump lied at a rally that white people don't get the vaccine and "have to go to the back of the line" for COVID-19 care.[443][444]
Spygate conspiracy theory
In a new iteration of the Spygate conspiracy theory,[445] in February 2022, Trump falsely[446] claimed Hillary Clinton spied on him during the Russia investigation.[447][448]
Drop boxes in the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin
Following a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling declaring ballot drop boxes illegal, Trump claimed this ruling retroactively applies to the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin.[449] He also suggested he was the legitimate winner of that election.[450]
Federal prosecution (government documents case)
Main article: Federal prosecution of Donald Trump (government documents case)
Declassification of documents
There doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it. You're the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it's declassified, even by thinking about it. ... In other words, when I left the White House, they were declassified."
Donald Trump on September 21, 2022
Interview with Fox News[451]
Following the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, Trump made false, misleading, unsubstantiated, and contradictory claims about the investigation into his handling of classified material. Among these, he suggested, without evidence, that President Biden played a role in the search, the FBI planted evidence, the search was unnecessary, and the classified documents in his possession were already declassified. He stated that as a US president, he was not required to follow the prescribed legal process, but could simply declassify them just "by thinking about it",[452][453] and "because you're sending it to Mar-a-Lago or wherever you're sending it. There doesn't have to be a process. There can be a process, but there doesn't have to be."[454]
On June 8, 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump. The 37th count was for "False statements and representations", specifically alleging that Trump hid documents from his own attorney, Evan Corcoran. The government had subpoenaed Trump for any classified documents he might have, so Corcoran searched the boxes for documents with classified markings. Because Trump deliberately misled him, Corcoran drafted a "sworn certification" that all subpoenaed documents had been returned, and another attorney, Christina Bobb, provided it to "the grand jury and the FBI".[22] On June 27, 2023, responding to the revelation that in 2021 he showed off a classified document and told the writers in the room to "look" at it, Trump described his own audiotaped words as "bravado, if you want to know the truth... I was talking and just holding up papers... but I had no documents."[455]
Federal prosecution (2020 election case)
Main article: Federal prosecution of Donald Trump (2020 election case)
The August 1, 2023 indictment listed 21 election-related lies Trump told.[23]
Claim of intervening in 2018 Florida vote count
On November 10, 2022, Trump alleged that Democrats had perpetrated "ballot theft" four years earlier in the Florida gubernatorial election. He claimed that, as president, he had intervened to support Republican candidate Ron DeSantis over his Democratic rival Andrew Gillum. "I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys," Trump claimed, when it seemed that DeSantis had been "running out of the votes necessary to win." Trump said he had thereby "fixed" the DeSantis campaign. Gillum filed in court to demand further information from Trump, as it sounded like an admission of wrongdoing; meanwhile, Florida's Broward County elections office denied that any such thing had happened during the 2018 election.[456] The FBI said in March 2023 that it had no records to support Trump's claim.[457]
2022 announcement speech
On November 15, 2022, almost two years in advance of the 2024 election, Trump announced his candidacy for a second term as president.[458][459][460] His announcement speech at Mar-a-Lago was "full of exaggerated and false talking points"[458] and at least "20 false and misleading claims",[459] uttering the first inaccurate claim "about two minutes in and a few minutes later, tick(ing) off at least four hyperbolic claims about his own accomplishments".[460] The New York Times Fact Check stated that "Mr. Trump repeated many familiar exaggerations about his own achievements, reiterated misleading attacks on political opponents and made dire assessments that were at odds with reality."[460]
Trump's first inaccurate claim, about two minutes in, was that his administration "built the greatest economy in the history of the world", a claim that was inaccurate even for recent American history.[460] Trump wrongly claimed Americans surrendered $85 billion worth of military equipment to the Taliban in the Afghanistan withdrawal; the Defense Department estimate was $7.1 billion, some which was rendered inoperable before the withdrawal.[459] Trump claimed that his administration "filled up" the Strategic Petroleum Reserve but that under Biden it has been "virtually drained"; in fact, the reserve was not "virtually drained" under Biden, and it actually contained less when Trump left office than when he took office.[459] He falsely claimed that climate scientists "say the ocean will rise 1/8 of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years"; NOAA estimated average sea level rise along the U.S. coastline will be 10–12 inches in the next 30 years.[459]
Speaking of border crossings by undocumented aliens, he said "I believe it's 10 million people coming in, not three or four million people", a claim for which there is no empirical basis.[459] Likewise, his claim that the U.S.-Mexico border had been "erased" since Biden was sworn in, was also baseless.[458] Trump falsely heralded completion of his border wall; in fact, the vast majority of the "new" barriers reinforced or replaced existing structures, and only about 47 miles were new primary barriers along the 1,900-mile border.[460]
Trump said "I've gone decades, decades without a war, the first president to do it for that long a period"; however, he presided over U.S. involvement in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and was commander-in-chief for dozens of U.S. airstrikes.[459] He claimed that when he began his term the U.S. had jet fighters that were 48 years old (and) bombers that were 60 years old—but not anymore"; in fact, the military continues to use B-52 bombers that are being outfitted with new Rolls-Royce engines to prolong their life even further.[459] Trump was wrong in claiming that the U.S. takes longer than "any" country to count votes, belied by longer times in Indonesia (more than a month in 2019), Afghanistan (five months after a September 2019 vote), and Bosnia (weeks in fall 2022).[460]
2023 CNN town hall
During the May 10, 2023 CNN Republican Town Hall, Trump repeated his false claims about the 2020 presidential election, the January 6 Capitol attack and his handling of classified documents. He also falsely claimed he had never met E. Jean Carroll and that the jury in her lawsuit against him had ruled that "he didn't rape her". Trump also falsely claimed that Brazil had seen a significant decline in gun-related violence after loosening its gun laws;[461] criminologists consulted by The Washington Post cited an aging population, investment in policing and recessions in drug cartel conflicts as more likely explanations for the decline.[462][461] He also promoted false claims about aid given to Ukraine for Russia's invasion, abortion and the economy during his presidency.[461]
2024 presidential campaign
See also: Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign and 2024 United States presidential election
To sow election doubt, Trump escalated use of "rigged election" and "election interference" statements in advance of the 2024 election compared to the previous two elections—the statements described as part of a "heads I win; tails you cheated" rhetorical strategy.[463]
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump has made numerous false and misleading statements.[464][465][466] The large amount of lies and false statements have been attributed to Trump's rhetorical style described as using the big lie and firehose of falsehood propaganda technique.[467][468] During a 64 minute news conference on August 8, 2024, NPR counted Trump making over 162 "misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies" averaging more than two per minute. They described the amount of Trump's lies as "stunning" and "beyond the bounds of what most politicians would do".[469] CNN has called Trump's claims a "bombardment of dishonesty" and a "campaign of relentless lying".[470][471] The Washington Post has described Trump's speeches as a "bacchanalia of lies and mistruths".[472]
False and misleading statements by topic
2024 presidential election
Trump has made a variety of false claims aimed at sowing doubt in the election's integrity and setting up an election challenge should he lose the 2024 presidential election. He has repeatedly said that he can only lose the election through cheating, that it was "unconstitutional" for the Democratic party to make Kamala Harris the nominee, that all of the legal cases against him constitute election interference organized by Biden and Harris, and that extensive voter fraud is occurring, including through non-citizen voting, mail-in ballots, and early voting.[473]
Immigration and crime
In March and April 2023, on several occasions, Trump claimed that all the psychiatric patients in an unnamed "South American country" had been sent to the United States; he said he had "read a story" in which an unnamed "psychologist or psychiatrist" in that country said all his patients had disappeared. When CNN asked the Trump campaign to substantiate this, a spokesperson responded by providing unrelated information.[474] Trump has repeated this assertion throughout his campaign, falsely stating that foreign leaders are deliberately emptying insane asylums to send "prisoners, murderers, drug dealers, mental patients, terrorists" across America's southern border as migrants.[475]
Trump has made false claims of a "migrant crime wave" that are not supported by national data.[476] He claimed that "13,000 convicted murderers" had entered the U.S. during the Biden-Harris administration and "freely and openly roam" the country, when that number is for immigrants who'd committed a variety of crimes and entered the country during several administrations, many of whom are jailed.[477] Trump has falsely claimed that crime in several South American countries has decreased because their leaders are sending criminals into the United States.[478] Trump has painted America as violent and crime-ridden on the campaign trail. Trump has falsely stated that FBI statistics showing that homicides have dropped by 6% in 2022 and 13% in 2023 are "a lie".[479] Trump has repeatedly claimed that crime in America is only going up. In reality, crime is going down.[480] Trump falsely alleged that immigrants commit crimes because they have "bad genes," invoking what science writer Daniel Vergano describes as "the deeply dishonest scientism" of eugenics.[481]
Trump has falsely claimed America "had the most secure border" when he was President. In reality, illegal immigration was higher than it was during both of Obama's terms.[478] Trump has falsely claimed that illegal immigration has only increased under the Biden administration. In reality, by June 2024, illegal immigration reached a three-year low[482] and decreased to levels not seen since September 2020 when Trump was in office.[483]
Trump has falsely claimed that 107% of jobs are taken by illegal immigrants. In reality, native-born Americans have gained more jobs than illegal immigrants during Biden's administration.[478] Research has repeatedly found that illegal immigrants do not depress wages or take jobs from Americans.[484][485][486][487]
Trump has falsely claimed that immigrants take social security benefits and are decreasing the life of the program. In reality, immigrants cannot take social security benefits but pay taxes, thus increasing the life of the program.[478]
The Bulwark uploaded a satirical video showing and debunking clips of Trump blaming migrants for "all problems," including "hurricane damage, bribery prosecutions, veteran homelessness, missing pets, and, the decline of little league baseball."[488]
Global warming and climate change
...not our problem
When people talk about global warming, I say the ocean is going to go down 100th of an inch within the next 400 years. That's not our problem.
— Presidential candidate Donald Trump,
September 2024[489]
[
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2017_Human-related_causes_of_bird_deaths_%28US%29.svg)Trump's opposition to wind power involves repeated claims that "windmills" "kill the birds",[490] but cats in the U.S. actually kill on the order of 10,000 times as many birds as wind turbines.[491]
Trump has "routinely" dismissed climate change.[492][493] In 2012, Trump tweeted[494] that "global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive".[495] In December 2013, he tweeted that "I'm in Los Angeles and it's freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!"—conflating global climate and local weather.[492] In January 2016 Trump told Fox News that he had been joking in the China tweet, but in a September 2016 presidential election debate he altogether denied having said the content of the tweet.[495]
In 2018, Trump told 60 Minutes that he does not believe that climate change is a hoax, but that "it'll change back again".[496] Similarly, during the 2020 California wildfires, Trump assured that "It'll start getting cooler, you just watch. [...] I don't think science knows, actually"—without justifying how he knew that things would get cooler but that scientists did not know things would get warmer.[497] While campaigning in September 2024, Trump said, "when people talk about global warming, I say the ocean is going to go down 100th of an inch within the next 400 years. That's not our problem";[489] in fact the IPCC forecast in 2019 that, even with significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions, the average sea level will rise 0.3 metres (0.98 ft) to 0.6 metres (2.0 ft) by 2100.[498]
Foreign policy
In rallies and interviews, Trump has repeatedly asserted that multiple events since the 2020 election would not have happened if he had won the election, those being the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Experts have stated that such events likely would still have happened even if Trump won the 2020 election. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution have stated that there was no Trump-era policy that would have stopped the Hamas attack on Israel.[499] Scholars have also estimated that Russia's invasion of Ukraine would likely still have occurred and that Trump's statements towards NATO and Russia would likely have made an initial unified response to the Russian invasion "implausable" and may have resulted in an early Russian victory.[500]
During his campaign speeches, Trump erroneously asserted that the Biden administration was in the process of converting U.S. Army tanks into electrically powered vehicles.[501][502][503]
Healthcare
Trump has falsely claimed that he was responsible for lowering insulin costs to $35 for those on Medicare, and has falsely claimed that Biden is taking credit for his accomplishment. Trump has falsely claimed that he was responsible for the VA Choice law passed by Obama.[504]
Abortion
Trump has falsely claimed that Democratic states are passing laws to allow executing babies after birth.[505]
Roe v. Wade
At various times in 2024, Trump has claimed that everyone wanted Roe v. Wade to be overturned, including all legal scholars and people throughout the political spectrum.[506][507][508][509][510][511] Legal scholar Kimberly Mutcherson called the assertion "mind-numbingly false" and other legal scholars concur.[506][509][512] Similarly, many polls have shown that the majority of Americans did not want Roe overturned.[506][508][510][512]
LGBTQ claims
Trump has falsely claimed that schools are secretly sending children to have sex-change surgeries.[513]
Indictments
On July 18, 2023, Trump said in an Iowa speech that, before he was indicted on 88 felony charges, "I didn't know practically what a subpoena was and grand juries and all of this—now I'm like becoming an expert."[514] (He and his businesses had been involved in over 4,000 legal cases even before he was elected president seven years earlier.)[515] He also suggested he was facing jail time for having "sa[id] something about an election",[514] whereas the charges had to do with attempts to overturn it.
In August 2023, 27 of Trump's falsehoods about the 2020 election were listed in his Georgia indictment.[24]
Music Modernization Act
On February 11, 2024, Trump claimed on Truth Social that he "signed and was responsible" for the 2018 Music Modernization Act.[516] Dina LaPolt, an entertainment attorney who helped advance the law, told Variety "Trump did nothing on [the] legislation except sign it, and doesn't even know what the Music Modernization Act does."[517]
Real vs. AI-generated images
On August 7, Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport for a rally,[518] where she was received by a large crowd.[519] On August 11, Trump posted claims on social media that the crowd was not real, but AI-generated: "Trump (...) made the fabricated claim that Harris had been "turned in" by an airport maintenance worker who "noticed the fake crowd picture." He then said Harris should be "disqualified" from the 2024 election "because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!""[520]
These claims generated responses from fact-checkers,[521] news outlets,[522] and technology-related articles debunking him,[523][524] eliciting opinions and discussions about Trump's mental state.[525] When later asked about these claims, while Trump did not concede that the crowd in Michigan was real, he did not say again that the images were AI-generated: "Well, I can't say what was there, who was there. I can only tell you about ours. We have the biggest crowds ever in the history of politics (...)"[526]
Shortly thereafter, Trump himself would post several AI-generated images and videos on social media, which showed him dancing with Elon Musk,[527] falsely suggested that he had been endorsed by singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and her fans,[528] and depicted Kamala Harris speaking at a communist rally; many of these images were posted ahead of the first day of the 2024 Democratic National Convention.[529] When later asked whether he was worried that Taylor Swift would sue him, Trump stated: "I don't know anything about them, other than somebody else generated them."[530][531] Swift would later endorse Harris in the general election.[532]
Hurricane Helene
CNN and PBS NewsHour reported in the aftermath of the September 2024 hurricane that Trump had engaged in several days of spreading lies, distortions, disinformation and conspiracy theories about the federal response, which public officials said created confusion and hindered recovery efforts. Among the false claims were that Biden wouldn't take calls from Georgia's governor; that Harris had stolen Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to house undocumented migrants; that the Biden administration was providing only $750 to people whose homes had been destroyed by the hurricane; and that no attempts had been made to rescue people.[533][534][535]
Events
Biden vs. Trump presidential debate
On June 27, 2024, Biden and Trump debated in Atlanta. Fact-checking found that both debaters had made false or misleading statements, with most of them adjudicated to Trump. ^[536]
Speech at the Republican Convention
On July 18, 2024, the fourth day of the Republican Convention (Milwaukee), Trump addressed the audience at accepting the nomination. Fact-checking found he made several false statements.[537][538][539]
CPAC Speech
In what CNN described as a "lie-filled CPAC speech" in February 2024, Trump repeated false claims about the 2020 election and the border wall.[540]
NABJ interview
On July 31, 2024, Trump was interviewed at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention, in Chicago. ^[541] According to fact-checkers, he made several false statements.[542][543][544]
Statements that caused special controversy were one about immigrants: "Coming from the border are millions and millions of people that happen to be taking Black jobs," and one about Kamala Harris: "I've known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much. And she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?".[545][546][547] Harris has always identified as both Indian-American and Black, attended Howard University (an historically Black university), and was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority.[548]
Mar-a-Lago news conference
On August 8, 2024, Trump gave a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence,[549] that NPR fact-checked and reported to contain "at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in 64 minutes."[550] Other fact-checkers also discussed the falsehoods.[551][552]
Two claims that drawn attention were that his January 6 crowd had been bigger than Martin Luther King Jr.'s attendance to his "great speech,"[553][554][555] and, the story about having been in a helicopter flight with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, where Mr. Brown told him "terrible things" about Kamala Harris, and which ended in an emergency landing. It was discussed whether Trump had confused Willie Brown with former California Governor Jerry Brown,[556][557][558] but Politico established that the Trump's helicopter flight that ended in an emergency landing happened in 1990, having as passengers former city councilmember and state senator from Los Angeles Nate Holden, Barbara Res, Robert Trump, and attorney Harvey Freedman. There was no mention of Harris in that occasion.[559][560][561]
Elon Musk interview
On August 12, Elon Musk interviewed Donald Trump via X Spaces. The conversation start was delayed by technical issues; it was listened to live by an audience calculated in more than a million people.[562][563][564] Trump's campaign claimed that a billion people had listened to the conversation.[565]
Fact-checking found multiple and familiar false or misleading statements.[566]
Howell, Michigan speech
In a campaign speech in Howell, Michigan, on August 20, 2024, Trump falsely accused Harris of a "vicious, violent overthrow" in replacing Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. After Biden voluntarily resigned under political pressure, his replacement followed Democratic Party rules and was without violence. Trump also repeated a false claim that no one was killed in the January 6 United States Capitol attack. Trump incorrectly attributed reclassification of some state crimes to Harris (who as Attorney General of California did not have the power to do so), including those reclassified by voters in 2014 California Proposition 47.[567]
Harris vs. Trump presidential debate
On September 10, 2024, Harris and Trump debated in Philadelphia. During the debate, differently from what CNN did in the previous debate with Joe Biden, the moderators fact-checked live several of Trump's claims.[568] Fact-checkers found that Trump made many false or misleading statements, while Harris made one false and several misleading statements.[569]
Among other false claims, Trump repeated a debunked hoax spread by neo-Nazi groups,[570] right-wing politicians and media figures that immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.[571] Moderator David Muir debunked it again on the spot. On September 11, Trump called into Fox & Friends and suggested ABC News should lose its broadcasting license because the moderators fact-checked him.[572] The claim that the moderators' fact-checking demonstrated the debate was rigged against Trump was also spread by his supporters, and itself fact-checked.[568][573][574]
On September 18, at Fox News' show Gutfeld!, Trump claimed that the debate's audience had gone "crazy" about him being fact-checked, despite the debate having no live audience; it was unclear whether he was meaning the TV ratings or the TV audience.[575][576][577]
Second term
The Associated Press fact-checked several of Trump's statements from his first week in office, declaring them false and misleading.[580]
Events
Major events during Trump's second presidency that were fact-checked for multiple falsehoods.
Inaugural statements
On January 20, 2025, Trump made his official inaugural address at the Capitol's rotunda, unscripted second and third speeches at the Capitol Visitor Center’s Emancipation Hall and Washington’s Capital One Arena, concluding the day with statements to reporters at the Oval Office. News media and fact-checkers declared Trump made multiple false and misleading statements, mostly repetitions of falsehoods from his campaign.[581]
Speech to a joint session of Congress
On March 4, 2025, Trump addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. News media and fact-checkers declared Trump made multiple false and misleading statements.[582]
False and misleading statements by topic
Blame for start of Russo-Ukrainian War
Trump has falsely stated that Ukraine is to blame for the Russian invasion of Ukraine that started the Russo-Ukrainian War:[583]
In Mr. Trump's telling, Ukrainian leaders were at fault for the war for not agreeing to surrender territory and therefore, he suggested, they do not deserve a seat at the table for the peace talks that he has just initiated with Mr. Putin. 'You should have never started it,' Mr. Trump said, referring to Ukrainian leaders who, in fact, did not start it. 'You could have made a deal.'
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rebutted that claim and accused Trump of spreading disinformation:[584]
"I would like to have more truth with the Trump team," Mr. Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv during a broader discussion about the administration, which this week opened peace talks with Russia that excluded Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky said that the U.S. president was "living in a disinformation space" and in a "circle of disinformation."
Peter Baker of The New York Times described how Trump has never uttered "one word of reproach for Mr. Putin or for Russia". He also debunked other false claims by Trump:[583]
As he often does, Mr. Trump flavored his comments with multiple false claims. Among them, he said that the United States has contributed three times as much aid to Ukraine since the war started as Europe has. In fact, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Europe has allocated $138 billion compared with $119 billion from the United States.
Sanewashing of Donald Trump
See also: Age and health concerns about Donald Trump
During the 2024 presidential campaign, the unlikelihood of some of Trump's falsehoods—for example, that images of Harris's campaign crowds were generated by AI; that in Springfield, Ohio, illegal immigrants were eating' neighbors' pets; or that schoolchildren were receiving surgery to change their gender — and the incoherence of his answers and unscripted addresses[585] drew attention from experts and the media, who questioned Trump's mental state and fitness to serve.[586]
On September 5, 2024, Trump addressed the Economic Club of New York, where he was asked, "If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation would you advance?" A commentator from The Independent characterized Trump's two-minute, 362-word tariff-centered response as "word salad",[587] and a CNN commentator remarked that it "could accurately be described as a ramble without an answer".[588] Several news media reports about the event did not mention or comment on that answer,[589][590][591] including The New York Times.[592]
That kind of characterization (or lack thereof), plus previous occasions in which the media interpreted Trump's answers instead of transcribing (and fact-checking) them, has been denounced as "sanewashing."[593]
On September 12, 2024, the Poynter Institute defined "sanewashing" as "the act of packaging radical and outrageous statements in a way that makes them seem normal," and proposed ways to avoid doing it.[594] On October 6, 2024, The New York Times published an article reviewing Trump's public statements. A computer analysis found out that Trump's speeches last longer, and include more all-or-nothing, negative, and curse terms, all of which point at cognitive changes since 2015. The analysis found that the complexity of Trump's speeches remained relatively steady in recent years, at a fourth-grade level (equivalent to a nine- or ten-year-old child). The article presents testimonies of former collaborators and acquaintances, plus comparisons of his present addresses with recordings from years earlier, "clearer and more comprehensible than now, and balanced with flashes of humor." The article notes that the Trump campaign has refused to release his medical records, and ends with a quote of his from a rally: "Trump is never wrong. I am never, ever wrong."[595][596] On October 15, The Washington Post noted that recent polls showed that Trump's age and mental acuity were of increasing concern for voters, though it is not clear whether the same applies to swing voters.[597]
After the election, mainstream media continued to be criticized and accused of sanewashing Trump's most controversial statements.[598]
Public opinion
A house in Goffstown, New Hampshire displays a sign endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 Presidential Election which parodies "Make America Great Again" as "Make Lying Wrong Again" in response to Trump's record of misinformation.
A June 2019 Gallup poll found that 34% of American adults think Trump "is honest and trustworthy".[599]
A March 2020 Kaiser Family Foundation poll estimated that 19% of Democrats and 88% of Republicans trusted Trump to provide reliable information on COVID-19.[600]
A May 2020 SRSS poll for CNN concluded that 36% of people in the U.S. trusted Trump on information about the COVID-19 outbreak: 4% of Democrats compared to 84% of Republicans.[601]
In April 2022, Trump stated at a rally in Selma, North Carolina: "I think I'm the most honest human being, perhaps, that God ever created," prompting laughter from the crowd.[602]
In two 2023 polls, Trump was thought to be "honest" by 29% of respondents (March 2023; a low since Quinnipiac University first asked this question of registered voters in November 2016)[603] and 36% of respondents (November 2023; George Washington University Politics Poll).[604]
In a September 2024 Associated Press/NORC at the University of Chicago survey, a majority (57%) of Americans believed that claims from Trump and his campaign are "rarely" or "never" based on facts.[605][606]
See also
- Post-truth politics
- Reality distortion field
- Trump derangement syndrome
- Trumpism
- Truth sandwich
- Veracity of statements by Boris Johnson
References...
---
ggl 6 25
[### False or misleading statements by Donald Trump
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › False_or_misleading_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump)
Many news organizations initially resisted describing Trump's falsehoods as lies, but began to do so in June 2019. The Washington Post said his frequent ...
[### We fact-checked Trump's recent news conference
NPR
https://www.npr.org › 2024/08/11 › nx-s1-5070566 › t...](https://www.npr.org/2024/08/11/nx-s1-5070566/trump-news-conference)
Aug 11, 2024 — 162 lies and distortions in a news conference. NPR fact-checks former President Trump. August 11, 20247:00 AM ET.
[### Trump made 30573 false or misleading claims as president ...
The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com › politics › 2021/01/23](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-fact-checker-tracked-trump-claims/2021/01/23/ad04b69a-5c1d-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html)
Jan 23, 2021 — “As a result of Trump's constant lying through the presidential megaphone, more Americans are skeptical of genuine facts than ever before,” ...
[### Donald Trump's lie meter is running full steam
The Cap Times
https://captimes.com › opinion › dave-zweifel › opinio...](https://captimes.com/opinion/dave-zweifel/opinion-trumps-lie-meter-is-running-full-steam/article_0ff250d0-da75-11ef-8e62-e7ae386ec333.html)
Jan 27, 2025 — During Donald Trump's first term, the Washington Post famously kept count of the lies the president told. The paper's final tally was 30,573 ...
[### Trump's lies are no longer a novelty — they're the norm
Athens County Independent
https://athensindependent.com › lte-kinsey-trump-lies](https://athensindependent.com/lte-kinsey-trump-lies/)
Apr 11, 2025 — In Trump 2.0 counting lies is no longer the 'novelty' it was in Trump 1.0. In 2.0 the lying is a given, “normalized.”
[### "A Legacy of Lies: Examining Donald Trump's Record ...
Western Washington University
https://cedar.wwu.edu › wwu_honors](https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwu_honors/486/)
by S Sceats · 2021 — Presidential lying has a long history in the United States, and significant research has been done on intention, lie typology, and outcomes. Trump's lies go ...
[### Data Wonk: Counting the Lies By Trump
Urban Milwaukee
https://urbanmilwaukee.com › 2024/07/03 › data-wonk...](https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2024/07/03/data-wonk-counting-the-lies-by-trump/)
Jul 3, 2024 — Thus, Trump's lies came at the rate of one lie per minute and a half. Second, Trump showed an inability to learn. He continues to assert that “ ...
[### Trump's bombardment of dishonesty: Fact-checking 32 ...
CNN
https://www.cnn.com › fact-check-trump-time-magazine](https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/04/politics/fact-check-trump-time-magazine)
May 4, 2024 — Trump had been frustrated with Barr over Barr's public rejection of his lies about mass election fraud and had been seriously considering firing ...
[### With 20 lies on Day 1, will Trump break his first-term record
India Today
https://www.indiatoday.in › World › US News](https://www.indiatoday.in/world/us-news/story/era-fact-check-begins-ten-lies-day-one-donald-trump-day-1-january-20-panama-canal-immigration-electronic-vehicle-2667890-2025-01-21)
Jan 21, 2025 — Several outlets had started lie meters or truth-o-meters for his 2016-2020 term. They calculated the number of his lies each time the US ...
[### Trump's address to Congress was built on a foundation of lies
MSNBC News
https://www.msnbc.com › maddowblog › trump-speech...](https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-speech-fact-check-joint-address-congress-lies-rcna194848)
Mar 5, 2025 — ... Trump lied repeatedly throughout his remarks. The problem is made worse by the apparent fact that he felt like he had to lie — likely aware ...
---
MMA NEWSMAX
May 28, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports A VERB?
GREG KELLY (HOST): Mike Johnson, I'm expecting more out of you.
Speaker Johnson, come on — you said this year that you were going to establish a new select subcommittee for the 119th Congress to continue House Republicans' investigation into all events leading up to and after January 6.
Now, a couple of things about this, folks. He announced his intent. Right? And what does he say there at the end, into all events leading up to and after January 6, right? Up to and after January 6? What's that all about? What about on January 6? You see, he's playing a little bit of a game there. OK. What else? We are establishing this select subcommittee to continue our efforts to uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people. Well, do it already. Do it. He's not doing it. All right, we can. Yeah. Yep, yep. You see, all events leading up to and after January 6 seems a little fishy to me.
All right, one other thing about this January 6 stuff and somebody who might just turn out to be an ally. See you later, Speaker Johnson. Officer Harry Dunn. Now, I don't like him. We were just talking about this guy. I picked up his book and I found something kind of fascinating in the book. Listen to what was different for him about January 6. Check this out. It's pretty wild.
...
KELLY: Brand new helmets, OK. Brand new helmets. What's so special about brand new helmets? Brand new helmets on January 6? I'm not raising these questions, Harry Dunn is. Check this out.
...
KELLY: I'd just like to know why, that's all. How about that, Harry Dunn? I'd like to know why too. But here's the thing. I know you came to some conclusions there that it wasn't — maybe they didn't know ahead of time. I think a lot of people knew ahead of time that something big was going down on January 6, and some of them wanted it to go down.
We need another real investigation about January 6, looking at the cops, not just underlying issues or questions about the election — about the FBI, about the cops leaving doors open. Ashli Babbitt, Michael Byrd, the whole damn thing. OK?
---
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NOTE DOZENS OF DENIAL HE WD CUT MEDICAIRE, HE PIVOTS TO GAS PRICE BS ALSO TARIFFS?
AN 5 25
Asked about Republican plans to cut food aid to low-income families, President Donald Trump gave what MSNBC producer Steve Benen described as “arambling and dishonest answer” that included the sentence: “Energy’s down … Gasoline? They’re now buying — they’re buying gasoline now for $1.99.”
This, according to Benen, was a lie — and an unnecessary one at that.
READ MORE: There's a hidden provision in that big ugly bill that makes Trump king
“The president doesn't have to lie about gas prices, but he apparently can't help himself. … In fact, in recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly claimed, in a variety of settings, that consumers in unnamed states are paying $1.98 per gallon,” said Benen, who cited Trump’s recent appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” where the president told host Kristen Welker that gasoline prices are below “$2 a gallon. $1.98, $1.99, $1.97. ... I have it down to $1.98 in many states right now.”
“None of this was even close to being true,” said Benen, according to AAA’s price tracker, which puts the national average price for gasoline at $3.18 per gallon.
“Literally zero states have prices below $2.60 per gallon,” said Benen. “What’s more, when White House officials have been pressed for evidence to substantiate the president’s claims, they’ve offered nothing.”
While Trump lying is “hardly unusual,” Benen was similarly outraged at the pointlessness of the fabrication.
READ MORE:'Really irresponsible': Outrage as White House has disappeared almost every Trump transcript
Thanks to international fears of a recession due to Trump’s tariffs, and the market value of oil companies tumbling amid geopolitical tensions and a glut in oil supply, the price Americans pay for gasoline “has gone down since the president returned to the White House,” said Brenen.
“But as is too often the case, Trump isn’t satisfied with a flattering fact, instead preferring to peddle made-up nonsense that even his most loyal sycophants would struggle to believe.”
Read the full MSNBC blog here.
---
---
tnr
the Trump administration is planning to pay the family of January 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt $5 million to settle a lawsuit.
The Washington Post reports that the family of Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer while trying to climb through a broken glass panel of the barricaded Speaker’s Lobby doors inside the Capitol, reached a settlement with the Department of Justice earlier this month. The terms of the settlement had not been disclosed until two unnamed sources spoke with the Post Monday.
The settlement reverses a 2021 DOJ finding that Babbitt’s civil rights were not violated and it was reasonable for the officer who shot her to believe he was acting in self-defense or in defense of members of Congress.
U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd was also cleared by a Capitol Police investigation, which found that his actions “potentially saved members and staff from serious injury and possible death from a large crowd of rioters who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol and to the House Chamber where members and staff were steps away.”
One-third of the settlement will go toward the Babbitt family’s lawyers, which include the right-wing legal group Judicial Watch and Richard Driscoll, an attorney in Alexandria, Virginia. Conservatives, led by Trump, have tried to rewrite the narrative of January 6, 2021, minimizing the violence of the rioters, who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and paint them as victims who were unfairly punished by the justice system for supporting Trump.
The president has in effect legitimized the rioters’ actions by issuing blanket pardons for everyone involved in the insurrection, including violent participants and hate group members such as the Proud Boys. He has also taken steps to punish prosecutors and federal law enforcement officers involved in investigating and bringing cases against the rioters.
The settlement with Babbitt’s family will appease Trump’s die-hard supporters who would be willing to commit violence on his behalf, and is an attempt to rewrite history by painting Babbitt as a victim and martyr rather than one of the many criminals on that day four years ago. It also sends the message that violence committed in Trump’s name won’t lead to punishment but to rewards.
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an 5 25
The Trump administration has reportedly agreed to pay nearly $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a supporter of President Donald Trump who was fatally shot when she attempted to break into the Speaker of House's corridor during the Jan. 6. insurrection.
Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran, was shot by a Capitol Police officer while attempting to climb through a barricaded door near the House Speaker's Lobby on Jan 6. 2021.
The Washington Post reportedMonday that the settlement resolves the lawsuit filed by her family in early 2024, which initially sought $30 million in damages. The agreement avoids a trial that was scheduled for July 2026.
READ MORE:A dangerous new lie is being peddled by Trump's toadies
Approximately one-third of the settlement amount will go to Babbitt's attorneys, including the conservative group Judicial Watch and Virginia lawyer Richard Driscoll, per the report.
The settlement does not include an admission of wrongdoing by the government.
The decision has been met with widespread criticism on social media, with many users expressing concerns that it constitutes an unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer funds.
Dan Cluchey, a former White House speechwriter, wrote on the social platform X: "Donald Trump is giving *your* tax dollars away to the family of an insurrectionist who stormed the Capitol to overturn an election at the behest of Donald Trump."
READ MORE: 'Betrayed': Alarm sounded as GOP 'plotted behind closed doors to hurt even more families'
"You can’t have Medicaid but a criminal’s family can have $5 million," saidlobbyist Lisa Kirbie.
"Giving our tax dollars to insurrectionists, solely because they were Trump supporters. Absolutely despicable," wrote a user.
"American tax dollars going to an insurrectionist," said another.
Political commentator Shea Jordon Smith wrote: "Ashli Babbitt — the insurrectionist who stormed the Capitol on January 6 — has a family that’s about to get $5 million in so-called 'wrongful death' money from the Trump administration. Thirty million dollars[sic] — for revolting while white."
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The Trump administration has reportedly agreed to pay nearly $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a supporter of President Donald Trump who was fatally shot when she attempted to break into the Speaker of House's corridor during the Jan. 6. insurrection.
Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran, was shot by a Capitol Police officer while attempting to climb through a barricaded door near the House Speaker's Lobby on Jan 6. 2021.
The Washington Post reportedMonday that the settlement resolves the lawsuit filed by her family in early 2024, which initially sought $30 million in damages. The agreement avoids a trial that was scheduled for July 2026.
READ MORE:A dangerous new lie is being peddled by Trump's toadies
Approximately one-third of the settlement amount will go to Babbitt's attorneys, including the conservative group Judicial Watch and Virginia lawyer Richard Driscoll, per the report.
The settlement does not include an admission of wrongdoing by the government.
The decision has been met with widespread criticism on social media, with many users expressing concerns that it constitutes an unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer funds.
Dan Cluchey, a former White House speechwriter, wrote on the social platform X: "Donald Trump is giving *your* tax dollars away to the family of an insurrectionist who stormed the Capitol to overturn an election at the behest of Donald Trump."
READ MORE: 'Betrayed': Alarm sounded as GOP 'plotted behind closed doors to hurt even more families'
"You can’t have Medicaid but a criminal’s family can have $5 million," saidlobbyist Lisa Kirbie.
"Giving our tax dollars to insurrectionists, solely because they were Trump supporters. Absolutely despicable," wrote a user.
"American tax dollars going to an insurrectionist," said another.
Political commentator Shea Jordon Smith wrote: "Ashli Babbitt — the insurrectionist who stormed the Capitol on January 6 — has a family that’s about to get $5 million in so-called 'wrongful death' money from the Trump administration. Thirty million dollars[sic] — for revolting while white."
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How MAGA got brainwashed: The science behind the right-wing’s 50-year propaganda campaign
Thom Hartmann May 14, 2025
Donald Trump has been lying to us ever since he came down that escalator. He just never stops lying because as a lifelong con man, it’s all he knows how to do.
He’s still insisting he won the 2020 election, despite having lost by about 7 million votes and being wiped out in the Electoral College. He lied at the State of the Union about having a mandate to cut Medicaid, as Rep. Al Green (D-TX) pointed out. Along with over 100 other lies he told that day. And now he’s lying about his trade deals with the UK and other governments. Every single day he adds to the pile of lies he’s inflicting on the American people and the world.
Science, it turns out, explains why this works for him.
Not the science of elections: the science of propaganda.
New findings from psychologists at universities in California and Georgia published in the journal Cognitive Research show that the more often a statement — regardless of its truthfulness — is repeated, the more emphatically it’s believed.
The researchers noted:
“Repeated information is often perceived as more truthful than new information. This finding is known as the illusory truth effect, and it is typically thought to occur because repetition increases processing fluency. Because fluency and truth are frequently correlated in the real world, people learn to use processing fluency as a marker for truthfulness.”
While modern science is affirming this truism, it’s been in use a long time. In the past century, for example, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called out Republicans for using what we today call the Big Lie around several issues. Running for re-election in 1944, he said:
“The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself.“The technique was all set out in Hitler's book — and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan. According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible — if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again.”
Back then Republicans were lying that Democrats had caused the Republican Great Depression (as it was called until the 1950s) and that FDR had “failed” to adequately prepare America for war with Germany or Japan (while Republican after Republican took to the floor of Congress to tell us, before the war, that “we can do business with Hitler”).
Now Trump’s lies (like about the election, immigrants, and what Elon Musk is up to) are parroted daily by Republican politicians and usually echoed in the media without pushback. After all, Trump reportedly slept with a collection of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside: he would be fluent in Hitler’s Big Lie strategy.
Besides the addition of Trump’s lies, Republican lies haven’t changed a lot since FDR’s era, although they’re more focused and now repeated daily by thousands of rightwing websites, bloggers, podcasts, Fox “News,” and talk radio shows.
Over the past 44 years, Republican billionaires have built an extraordinary nationwide media propaganda machine. Their goal was directed towards justifying tax cuts for the morbidly rich and the deregulation of polluting industries, but now it’s been taken over by Trump acolytes promoting, among other lies, the idea the Democrats torture children and drink their blood.
The “useful idiots” in this scheme have been the American corporate and billionaire-owned media, who dutifully echo or leave unchallenged the GOP’s regular lies.
One of the Republicans most egregious lies — that America is evenly split 50/50 between Republicans and Democrats and on the issues of the day — is constantly repeated on the political Sunday shows. Always without a single word of pushback from the show’s host.
While the Senate may be more-or-less split 50/50, Democrats in the Senate represent over 40 million more Americans than do Republicans. And on issues like tax cuts for billionaires, the right to unionize, access to Medicare/Medicaid, climate change, the right to abortion, privatizing Social Security, drug prices, Medicaid expansion, free college, and the minimum wage Americans are overwhelmingly on the side of Democrats.
So how did so many Americans end up believing the many lies that are daily pushed by the GOP?
In a word: repetition, just like the science shows works. Here are a few of their greatest hits, with each followed by my rebuttal:
'Tax cuts produce prosperity'
In a remarkable study published by The London School of Economics, looking at 18 wealthy OECD countries over 50 years, the researchers discovered, unambiguously:
“We find that major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect remains stable in the medium term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment.”
In other words, tax cuts for the rich make the rich richer and throw the nation into debt, but otherwise have no measurable effect on the economy.
Ever since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have been assuring us that if we just give more money to the “job creators,” they’ll use it to open new factories and raise wages. In fact, the morbidly rich simply put that extra money into their offshore accounts and money bins.
In fact, in the 44 years since Reagan started the practice of massive Republican tax cuts for the richest Americans, there has been a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from America’s working class into the money bins of our morbidly rich.
The idea that tax cuts for the rich and corporations would produce prosperity was a lie from the beginning and still is, but Republicans are still repeating it after nearly 50 years of disastrous experience with neoliberal Reaganomics.
...?
In fact, immigrants — legal and undocumented — are far less likely to commit crimes than American citizens. After all, who wants to either get deported or blow up their chances of becoming a citizen of the country they’ve taken such huge and often deadly chances to reach?
And the statistics aren’t even close. In a massive study funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice, published by the University of Wisconsin at Madison, scientists discovered American citizens are 200% to 400% more likely to commit violent felonies against persons, drug crimes, and felony property crimes than immigrants, regardless of their immigration status.
But that won’t stop rightwing media from hyping every exception-to-the-rule when an immigrant is caught committing a crime. Lies, after all, are the coin of their realm.
The minimum wage was established in 1938 and has been raised 22 times. If there had ever been — in all that time — even a single year when inflation increases could be tied to increases in the minimum wage, every Republican in America would have the year memorized.
“You don’t want what happened in 1958 to happen ever again!” they’d warn us while wagging fingers in our faces. Except there is not even one single example of an increase in the minimum wage increasing inflation, which is why they never cite a single statistic or year.
When researchers decided to seriously dig into the topic, they found that a massive 10% increase in the minimum wage may have as much as a 0.1% — one-tenth-of-one-percent, or ten cents on a $100 product — impact on inflation, but that’s never been recorded in American history. Wages simply aren’t that large a part of the price of most goods and even most services.
This is a favorite of the multi-billion-dollar union-busting industry to roll out in their mandatory “reeducation” sessions with captive workers who are considering voting for unionization. It’s a complete lie.
Unlike workers’ actual bosses, whose compensation typically goes up with profits, union “bosses” are simply employees of heavily regulated nonprofit organizations (unions) who work on a salary. They earn just a small fraction of what the actual corporate bosses take from the companies they’re trying to unionize.
When they’re successful, however, union bosses do reduce corporate profits by forcing companies to give their workers better pay and benefits. Which is why corporations are willing to pay millions of dollars a day, in some cases, to bring in these high-powered law firms to intimidate workers.
This one depends on how you define “corrupt.” If you mean that dead people are voting or people are voting multiple times in multiple states, that’s so rare as to compete with the Loch Ness Monster for headlines.
After all, with millions of dollars and over a hundred lawyers and lawmakers, Republicans tried in 60 courtrooms (including the U.S. Supreme Court) to prove even a single case of election fraud that may have affected the outcome of the 2020 election: they failed every time.
On the other hand, if you define “corrupt” as Republican elections officials purging millions of voters — most people of color, students, city-dwellers, and the working poor — from the voting rolls, then maybe there’s some truth to it. But that’s not the line Republicans are selling.
This is one of the deadliest lies Republicans promote. A massive study published in The Annals of Internal Medicine found that having a gun in the home doubles the risk of residents of that home being victims of homicide and triples the risk of successful suicide.
Nonetheless, the big gun manufacturers and their Russian-supported National Rifle Association shower millions on Republican politicians all across America, so now guns have become the top cause of death among children here, something that’s never happened in any developed country, anytime in history, anywhere else in the world.
America now has about 120 guns per 100 people, while in most other developed countries the ratio is around 20 guns per 100 people. In many countries — Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, for example — it’s fewer than one gun per 100 people.
We are awash in blood and gun violence because of this Republican lie.
This lie is vigorously promoted by the Christian nationalist movement, led by multi-millionaire preachers and televangelists who are not only profiting from it but also have acquired considerable political power through it.
America, in fact, was the first democracy in the world that was founded in an entirely and explicitly secular fashion. The only prominent Founder who promoted the idea of America as a Christian nation was “Give me liberty or give me death” Patrick Henry, who was Virginia’s largest slaveholder and refused to sign the Constitution when it was finished in the fall of 1787.
Jefferson, Franklin, Rush, Washington and numerous others among the Founders didn’t even consider themselves Christians, and those who did — most notably John Adams and James Madison — were outspoken about the dangers of mixing religion and politics.
President Madison’s first veto, in fact, was to strike down a law that gave a DC church money to run a poorhouse. He said in his veto message that it would strike a bad precedent for the American government to give any money whatsoever to any church for a function that government should run itself.
Madison, who was a regular churchgoer (Jefferson attended, too, because until the Revolution the law in Virginia required church membership and attendance as a prerequisite for running for political office), was concerned that government money would corrupt the religion he loved; Jefferson was worried that if “priests” ever became politicians it would lead to the ruin of the republic.
The two debated the issue of which was the greatest danger to America regularly: it turns out both were right.
This is so facially absurd it shouldn’t even require mentioning, but there is literally not a single elected Republican at the federal level (at least that I know of) who will contradict it.
Like with the gun industry, the fossil fuel industry pays their politicians very well, and, since the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision and its predecessors, that money has worked to hold the GOP in the blood-stained clutches of the industry.
And now these Republican lies about climate change threaten all life on Earth.
So much happened during the last Trump administration that Americans can be forgiven for forgetting that Trump, in 2019, promised Chinese President Xi Jinping that he wouldn’t object if Xi brutally crushed the Hong Kong independence movement.
Trump was working on getting Chinese trademarks for his daughter Ivanka’s fashion line and other Ivanka-branded items (including coffins, voting machines, and almost any other category available) so, as CNN reported on October 4, 2019:
“The remarkable pledge to the Chinese leader is a dramatic departure from decades of US support for human rights in China and shows just how eager Trump is to strike a deal with Beijing…”
Trump’s so-called “trade war” with China was a joke. He imposed a few cosmetic tariffs that backfired and the Chinese didn’t take seriously because they were done by executive order rather than an act of Congress.
After hubby Jared got $2 billion for selling America out to Saudi Arabia, Ivanka seems to have lost interest in her business dealings in China. But in the meantime, the democracy movement in Hong Kong was completely crushed and its advocates are now dead or in prison thanks to Trump.
Every one of these lies, among others, are vigorously promoted by GOP-aligned media.
Their constant repetition has led average Republicans to fervently believe them, to the detriment of both the United States and, particularly with climate change, the future of life on Earth.
And now Trump has rolled out a new Big Lie that the media is obediently repeating: surrendering Ukraine to Russia will bring about “peace.” It’s probably the most despicable lie he’s promoted in decades.
FDR was right to call out the Republican Party for their Big Lie strategy back in the day. Tragically, he was 80 years too early for today’s Americans to realize the long, deep roots of the modern GOP’s propaganda strategy.
Over the past 40 years, our media has been largely complicit, echoing these Republican Big Lies. It’s well past time for American media to take its responsibility to present the truth seriously.
NOW READ: The single stupidest statement about Trump ever made
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by
- Peter Wade @ Rolling Stone: Trump Says ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked if He Has to ‘Uphold the Constitution’
The president complained that due process rights are interfering with his mass deportations.
- Joe DePaolo @ Mediaite: Trump Tries to Have it Both Ways on Economy: The ‘Good Parts’ are Mine, The ‘Bad Parts’ are Biden’s
President Donald Trump attempted to take credit for parts of the economy which he considers “good,” while blaming former President Joe Biden for other parts he considers “bad.”
- Travis Gettys @ Raw Story: 'I love you guys': Trump greets convicted Proud Boys militant at Mar-a-Lago
President Donald Trump offered a message of support to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists when he met with a former Proud Boys militant in Mar-a-Lago over the weekend.
- Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: A curriculum coup: Oklahoma Republicans allow right-wing rewrite of history
State Superintendent Ryan Walters bypassed oversight to push Christian Nationalism and right-wing conspiracies into public classrooms.
- The Throckmorton Initiative: Charlie Kirk's Christian America, Part Two
In this segment, I examine the notion that there was something exceptionally Christian about America's founding era. Last week, I fact-checked Charlie Kirk's viral video defense of the belief that America was founded as a Christian nation in the legal sense. Most of what Kirk had to say was irrelevant or incorrect.
- Janna Brancolini @ The Daily Beast: Laura Loomer Sets to Work on New MAGA Civil War Over Trump Pick
The 9/11 truther denounced Trump’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general and claimed the COVID-19 vaccine is “killing millions of people.”
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Trump’s clown car cabinet is driving off a cliff
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reacts as she walks towards the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 10, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Sabrina Haake, Raw Story May 03, 2025
UPS, the United Parcel Service, just announced that it is laying off 20,000 employees and closing 73 of its buildings by the end of June. It attributes the downturn to reduced shipping volume from its largest customer, Amazon, due to Trump’s tariffs.
When a division of Amazon considered telling consumers the truth, by posting the costs tariffs added to the price of each imported product, the mere possibility set the White House on attack mode. Trump immediately called Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who reassured him Amazon would never do such a thing, while Karoline Leavitt accused Bezos of a “political and hostile” act just for thinking about it.
When a presidential team of incompetent egoists calls truth-telling a “hostile act,” we’re in trouble.
Ruinous economic indicators prompt ruinous deflection
Trump’s first quarter report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis reflects a sharp contraction in the economy, showing an annual decrease in the GDP of 0.3 percent. Compared to Biden’s last quarter, when “real GDP increased 2.4 percent,” the data suggest that perhaps Trump isn’t the economic genius he claims to be.
These are not partisan data; that the Bureau falls under the US Department of Commerce suggests Trump may soon hobble its reporting capacity. For now, the data show economic contraction, reflecting a colossal reversal from Biden’s expansion. Wall Street sums up Trump’s first 100 days in office as the “worst for the stock market in half a century.”
On brand, when faced with these data, Trump lied, deflected, and blamed his predecessor, posting,“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th. This… has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that (Biden) left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”
Trump continues to manufacture Biden’s “bad numbers”
Trump can’t stop parroting his own campaign lies about Biden’s economy. During the 2024 presidential campaign, when he wasn’t manufacturing a border invasion to enrage people, Trump repeatedly attacked Biden’s economy. It worked. While remaining mum on how his own COVID-19 mismanagement worsened the economy, he convinced 49% of voters that they were impoverished, despite economic indicators to the contrary.
After commerce reports came out this week, Trump doubled down. During an embarrassing televised cabinet meeting orchestrated to praise himself, Trump confirmed that he sought to undo everything Biden did to improve the economy, stating, “We came in and I was very against everything that Biden was doing in terms of the economy. … We took over his mess in so many different ways.”
Trump and his cabinet may drink their own economic Kool-Aid, but Wall Street is abstaining. Multiple indicators confirmed that Biden delivered the strongest post-COVID economic recovery in the world, including: growth and job creation that exceeded G7 and other advanced economies' growth in 2024; inflation control despite global inflationary pressures; avoidance of the post-COVID recession predicted by many; wage gains; strong market performance with record S&P 500 highs; and stellarinfrastructure investment that Trump, in a toddler-esque pique of jealousy, is scrambling to unravel.
During Biden’s term, the U.S. added 16 million jobs, low earners were experiencing wage growth, inflation levels approached the Federal Reserve’s target, and unemployment hit a 54-year low. By these metrics, Biden performed economic jujitsu, delivering an economy that The Economist called “the envy of the world.”
Teaching Trump media how to lie better
After Trump officially blamed Biden this week for economic contractions caused by his own ill-conceived tariffs, he went further, instructing right-wing media how to spin bad economic news of the future. During his televised “Praise Dear Leader” cabinet meeting, Trump told his preferred outlets (Fox, Newsmax, OAN) that they should also blame any economic downturns in the second quarter on Biden.
Trump showed similar intransigence during an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man Trump is keeping in an El Salvador prison despite a Supreme Court order to facilitate his return. Trump insisted during the interview that an obviously photoshopped picture showed Garcia with “MS13” tattooed on his knuckles. When Moran told Trump that the image was clearly photoshopped, Trump acted like a tyrant. He first suggested Moran owed him something – it was thanks to Trump that Moran got the interview at all. Frustrated by Moran’s continuing refusal to lie, Trump told him, “you’re not being very nice,” before pivoting to attacking media as a whole, saying this “is why people no longer believe the news … It’s such a disservice…”
Discussing the Supreme Court order to facilitate Garcia’s return, Moran stated the obvious — that Trump could simply pick up the phone, call El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and get him back. Trump confirmed that he is, indeed, flouting the Supreme Court’s authority, stating, “I could…. And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that.”
In one interview, Trump vacillated between being the all powerful Oz, and the cheap salesman behind the curtain. When Moran reminded him that the high court ordered him to return Garcia, Trump deflected, incredibly: “I'm not the one making this decision. We have lawyers who don't want to do this.”
Trump’s clown car cabinet is driving off a cliff
After the Supreme Court slapped the administration and ordered Garcia’s return with a 9-0 decision, White House adviser Stephen Miller simply lied about it. Miller claimed on Fox News that the administration had “won” the case, “clearly,” prompting a conservative columnist to retort, “Nope, you lost. Unanimously.” Fox viewers, of course, won’t hear that rejoinder as Fox anchors continue to throw falsehoods at the wall to see what sticks.
As Team Trump continues governing the country like a made-for-Fox-TV reality show, real-life consequences are piling up. China just canceled orders for American pork, soybeans, and lumber, putting US farmers in “full-blown crisis” mode.
Maybe, like dolls for Christmas, farmers can make do with selling one or two hogs instead of 30. As Trump put it during a town hall Wednesday night, he plans to defeat public skepticism over his tariffs through deception. “I just think that I’ll be able to convince people how good this is.”
NOW READ: Trump's rampage is out of control — but there's one way to stop it
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are or have been published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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How Fox News and the right-wing media made Jan. 6 revisionism great again
Written by Matt Gertz
:{:{Published 01/03/24 mma}:
Three years after the January 6 insurrection, the initial broad agreement about that day’s depravity lies in ruins. That consensus didn’t unravel on its own — right-wing commentators deliberately dismantled it for power and profit.
Republicans have made their peace with the violent mob of Donald Trump’s supporters that stormed the U.S. Capitol as the culmination of his plot to remain in office, according to a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll the paper reported on Tuesday.
“Republicans are showing increased loyalty to the former president as he campaigns for reelection and fights criminal charges over his attempt to stay in power after losing in 2020,” the Post reported. “They are now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were ‘mostly violent,’ less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate than they were in a December 2021 Post-UMD survey.”
Right-wing propagandists engineered that shift in GOP views of the January 6 insurrection by creating a revisionist counternarrative out of lies they repeated over and over again. Their work created a permission structure for Republicans to stop caring about the assault of hundreds of law enforcement officers amid an effort to overturn a presidential election by force. That helped ensure that the mob’s leader would remain the GOP’s presumptive nominee in 2024, positioned to carry out the party’s top priorities of cutting taxes for rich people, banning abortions, building huge migrant deportation camps to expel undocumented immigrants Trump claims are “poisoning the blood” of the country, and deploying state power against left-wing “vermin.”
Trump’s 2020 election subversion effort received strong support among his media allies, many of whom backed his claims of a stolen election even as they privately acknowledged those claims were false. When Trump urged the violent mob he had summoned to Washington, D.C., to “fight like hell” to stop the steal — and they responded by attempting to do just that and attacked the Capitol — the right’s propagandists could have washed their hands of the then-president and his violent supporters.
They made a different choice. As I detailed last month:
The right-wing effort to minimize January 6 and Trump’s role in fomenting it began that very day. Fox hosts who knew better told their viewers that Trump’s supporters had been responding to reasonable fears that the election had been stolen, while any violence may have been caused by antifa interlopers.
In the intervening years, Trumpist media stars — led by former Fox host Tucker Carlson — cosseted their viewers with a slew of lies about January 6. There was no “insurrection,” just a “political protest [that] got out of hand” in which “the overwhelming majority” of participants were “orderly and meek.” The rioter shot and killed by law enforcement while trying to breach the speaker’s gallery was a martyr, while the officers who were nearly beaten to death during the attack deserve mockery. The violence was orchestrated by undercover federal agents as part of a sinister plot to imprison patriotic Americans for their conservative views. The events were comparable to staffers for a late-night talk show shooting an unauthorized video in the Capitol complex, or a Democratic congressman foolishly pulling a fire alarm, or progressive protests at state capitols.
Trump’s 2020 subversion effort ultimately failed — but he still claims that he won the election, and gives every indication that he could try again should he lose in 2024. Voters expect as much: Roughly 7 in 10 respondents say Trump won’t accept the results of the election if he is defeated, according to the Post/UMD poll.
After a yearslong right-wing drumbeat of stolen-election lies and insurrection revisionism, and the corresponding purges of dissident Republican leaders and terror campaigns against election workers, the battleground is more favorable to a second attempt to overturn an election through lies and violence.
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02/24/21
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texts Fox hosts sent during the Jan. 6 riot don't match how Fox covered it on air
:{:{December 15, 2021}:
Heard on All Things Considered
By
Fox hosts sent desperate messages during the Capitol riot, urging Trump to act. The messages are a stark contrast to the way Fox has covered the insurrection on air.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Fox News is in damage control mode.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "HANNITY")
SEAN HANNITY: Now, all riots, obviously, are bad - all of them. And on this program, we strongly condemn the violence on January 6, just like we condemned all of the violent riots from the summer of 2020.
KELLY: That is Fox News host Sean Hannity talking about text messages that he sent then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on January 6 as rioters were storming the U.S. Capitol. The messages were released earlier this week by the House committee investigating January 6. Over and over, they reveal Fox News hosts - Hannity, also Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade - pleading with Meadows to get his boss, then-President Trump, to stop the attack. The messages also stand in stark contrast to the way Fox has covered the insurrection on-air this past year.
And I want to bring in two voices to examine that disconnect - NPR's Tom Dreisbach, who's been covering the attack and its aftermath. Hey, Tom.
TOM DREISBACH, BYLINE: Hey.
KELLY: And NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik. Hey, David.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: David, you start and set the stage a bit further for us. What are some of the other text messages that have now come to light?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, they heard from Brian Kilmeade. He's one of the hosts of "Fox & Friends," an opinion show in the morning - very popular - and somebody in contact with the former president and his advisers. He texted on that day, please get him - meaning Trump - on TV destroying everything you have accomplished. Laura Ingraham wrote, Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy. Interesting choice of words - all of us. Sean Hannity - simply - can he make a statement - meaning Trump - ask people to leave the Capitol? Of course, that didn't happen until many hours later. In fact, too late to have a meaningful effect on what was there.
Very different from the tenor of what you heard subsequent to that. Let's hear from Laura Ingraham - what she had to say on the show the night of the attack, suggesting to her audience of who really might be behind that siege of the Capitol.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FOX NEWS")
LAURA INGRAHAM: Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd. We'll have more on that later.
FOLKENFLIK: You know, I think what you heard was an incredible diminishment of how serious it was in terms of what Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity had to say to viewers on their airwaves in front of millions of viewers and a kind of erasure of then-President Donald Trump as a player in all of this.
KELLY: And I want to bring in Tom on that in just a second. But David, one more to you. Now that these text messages are out there in public as of this week, how long before Fox hosts address this, took any of this on and covered it on-air?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, it took about 24 hours for Hannity and Ingraham to address it themselves. Amazingly, right after those texts were released, Hannity had Mark Meadows on the air with him on the show - didn't touch it.
KELLY: Yeah. And Tom Dreisbach, jump in here because I want to hear just a little bit more about how the - these months, between January 6 and now, just how big has the gap been between what Fox News hosts were saying on-air and what they were texting privately to top White House officials?
DREISBACH: Well, I think what the text messages revealed in many ways is how broadly the narrative around January 6 has shifted. In the moment that it was happening and immediately afterwards, the event was almost universally condemned on the right, including by President Trump. It's important to remember what Donald Trump himself said in taped remarks the day after, on January 7.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DONALD TRUMP: To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.
DREISBACH: That was January 7. Now and as soon as this summer, Trump was saying something completely different. He was describing the rioters who have been arrested and charged with crimes as political prisoners. And he says that January 6 was actually just a protest.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: I reverse it. The insurrection took place on November 3 - that was Election Day - and before and after. That was, to me, the insurrection. And the - January 6 was a protest.
KELLY: So what's going on with this evolution? Is this Fox coverage mirroring an evolution in what Trump and his loyalists have been saying or are they driving that evolution? Or do you think it's some of both?
DREISBACH: It's a little hard to say who's driving it. It's sort of a chicken-and-the-egg issue, who is in control of this narrative. But I would say that early on, the seeds of this counter-narrative were being planted. As you heard, Fox hosts like Laura Ingraham were arguing that leftists or antifa were actually causing the violence, even though rioters who were there that day say that is completely false. Then there was this narrative that the violence was being overblown in order to discredit Trump and his supporters.
Most recently, what we've seen is from folks like Tucker Carlson - Fox host - this argument that is largely based on conspiracy theories that federal agents must have been instigating the attack that day, causing a sort of false flag so they could launch a, quote, "war on terror" against Trump supporters. And at this point, I should say there's really no evidence to support any of those narratives
KELLY: Well, this prompts a wider question. David, is Fox News - should we be calling it Fox News? This is a TV channel. They track current events. Are they performing journalism?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think we can answer that question just by looking at what's happened in recent days. Fox News at no point is addressing the fact that, you know, these opinion journalists who are primetime stars are acting essentially as fully part of the Trump political circle. They're never addressing that. That's not - you know, you're still supposed to admit facts against your rooting interest as an opinion journalist. It's not happening here. The way to think about Fox News right now is as a highly profitable political operation to which some journalists are appended, some of them trying to do honest reporting.
KELLY: Well, and some journalists jumping ship, as we saw with Chris Wallace this week.
FOLKENFLIK: That's right. Wallace raised objections about Tucker Carlson's documentary that Tom alluded to about January 6 itself, that it was filled with lies and unfounded conspiracy theories. He objected to the CEO, Suzanne Scott, and got nowhere with it.
KELLY: And this brings me to my last question, which is all of this matters because a whole lot of people are watching and listening to what Fox broadcasts. Tom, you have spent the last year talking to people connected to the riot. How closely are they watching? How entrenched are these alternate narratives?
DREISBACH: Well, just today, PolitiFact declared that lies about the January 6 attack on the Capitol are the lie of the year. I think that's a recognition of just how entrenched these views have become. I talk to people who were at the riot, who have admitted to breaching the Capitol of their own will. And after the Tucker Carlson series aired on Fox, on Fox Nation, they started questioning their own experience not based on what they saw or did that day themselves, but based on what they saw on TV.
And we are seeing some of that playing out in the broader public. You look at polling, and a majority of Republicans think too much attention is being paid to the attack on the Capitol now. And the number of Republicans in the public who say it's important to prosecute the rioters is going down by about 20 points, according to Pew Research, over just the last several months.
KELLY: NPR investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach and NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. Thanks to both of you.
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lie gaslight
Dozens of FBI confidential sources on the ground at ...}:
Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com › video](https://www.foxnews.com/video/6365915181112)
Dec 12, 2024 — Trump-Vance transition senior adviser Jason Miller reacts to claims there were multiple FBI confidential sources present at the January 6th Capitol riot.
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4 25 TRUMP ATTACKS LAW FIRMS, THEN KRIS KREBS CALLED BS ON BIG LIE
FIRED BUNCH OF PROSECUTORS OF JAN 6
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an the conv 2 25
There have been many questions raised about the intentions behind Donald Trump’s spate of radical public statements about Canada, in which he claims trade deficits amount to subsidies, massive amounts of fentanyl are flowing across the border and the country should become the 51st American state, among other things.
The U.S. president’s comments have fuelled speculation about what he means when he makes these kinds of false claims — or whether he means anything at all.
After all, rounded to the nearest percentage point, zero per cent of illicit fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from Canada, trade deficits are not subsidies and annexing Canada is an absurd proposal.
So why say things that are so untrue?
Is Trump serious about any of this?
Ignore Trump? Or fear him?
The aggregate opinion seems to be both an unhelpful no and a yes, so the answer remains unclear.
If we take every provocation seriously, we’re falling for the “flood the zone” strategy as Trump spews out outlandish claims as a form of distraction.
If we shrug off his claims, we’re ignoring the potential danger.
But there are patterns and incentives behind Trump’s flouting of basic communicative norms. One illustrative example dates back to 2018 talks with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when Trump complained about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada. Later, he told prospective donors in Missouri that he’d made this claim up on the spot.
Why make up a claim like that? And, having done so, why admit and even brag about it, and then renew this knowingly false claim six years later?
My colleague Jennifer Saul and I are scholars in the political philosophy of language. We’re among those who cite this example of Trump bullshit in our work on bullshit in authoritarian political speech and how bullshit can succeed even though everyone recognizes that it is, in fact, bullshit.
Why Trump bullshits
Our notion of bullshit is a refinement of the term that was the subject of American philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s seminal 2005 book *On Bullshit*.
Most liars care enough about the truth to try to conceal it. But simply not caring either way is a different vice, which Frankfurt called bullshitting.
An example would be claiming a trade deficit without having any idea whether that’s true or false. Other examples include uttering falsehoods that are so obvious they couldn’t possibly be intended to deceive anyone.
Really obvious bullshit can succeed politically, we proposed, because there are many audiences in mass communication. Bullshit targeted at Audience A can be a big hit with Audience B, if B thinks A deserves it.
Then it becomes a display of power over A, with B enjoying the spectacle. This overt bullshitting lends itself to authoritarian politics for someone cultivating a strongman image. It marks an opponent for disrespectful treatment, and advertises that the bullshitter cannot be held to account.
So Trump’s admission that he bullshitted Trudeau in 2018 was a successful strategy because he revealed it to a sympathetic audience, who got to see themselves as part of the performance and not as its target. Asking: “Does Trump really mean this?” is often less revealing than: “How does this promote Trump’s image as an authority figure, and to which audience?”
Similarly, Trump falsely remarked in 2019 that Hurricane Dorian’s projected path included Alabama. He responded to fact-checking by showing an official storm track map that he literally altered by hand, with a marker.
Such a ridiculous invention couldn’t be meant to deceive. But it showed Trump’s base, many of whom distrust mainstream information sources, that he couldn’t be made to back down for reporters, no matter the facts.
Some claims appear deceptive lies to one audience and bullshit to another, like Trump’s recent claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator who started the war in Ukraine.
Some audiences might believe it. Others will see it as false and designed to be deceptive, yet recognize it as a threat to treat Ukraine as an aggressor with American demands for Ukraine’s rare earth minerals at stake.
Credibility matters in unexpected ways
Even conservative pundits initially worried that Trump’s propensity to bullshit would diminish the finite resource that is credibility.
They didn’t recognize that credibility is a dubious virtue in strongman politics. Its absence can even be an asset. Acting without credibility is a chance to flex — to show that you can compel others to take you seriously whether they believe you or not.
These incentives link frivolous outbursts of bullshit with very serious doubling-downs. Trump first spoke about Canada becoming the 51st state in a meeting with Trudeau in late November so offhandedly that it was not immediately mentioned in news reports.
Once Fox News seized upon it, Trudeau was forced to publicly dismiss the comment as a joke.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in November 2024. Trudeau apparently thought Trump was just bullshitting when he made mention of Canada becoming a 51st state during the dinner.(X/@JustinTrudeau)
A
more commentary revealed liberal-leaning Canadians and Americans were angry and even frightened by this sort of talk — conditions that made it attractive for Trump to double down rather than back down.
Combing through Trump’s speech and actions towards Canada to discover what he really means may just be an attempt to “sane-wash” them; meaning trying to figure out if they reflect a stable and sincere attitude, or even a stable and insincere negotiating strategy.
What makes Trump’s bullshit so dangerous is that it rarely reflects fixed, coherent meanings or convictions. It lurches from triviality to deadly seriousness, depending on how his various audiences provide the approval and the outrage Trump seeks for his performances of strength.
Tim Kenyon, Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Brock University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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AN 2 25 MEM HOLE PRO PUB
n Jan. 10, the U.S. Department of Justice released a 123-page report on the 1921 racial massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which claimed several hundred lives and left the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood in smoldering ruins. The department’s investigation determined that the attack was “so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence.” While it conceded that “no avenue of prosecution now exists for these crimes,” the department hailed the findings as the “federal government’s first thorough reckoning with this devastating event,” which “officially acknowledges, illuminates, and preserves for history the horrible ordeals of the massacre’s victims.”
“Until this day, the Justice Department has not spoken publicly about the race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific events that transpired in Tulsa,” said Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, in announcing the report. “This report breaks that silence through a rigorous examination and a full accounting of one of the darkest episodes of our nation’s past. This report reflects our commitment to the pursuit of justice and truth, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles.”
Only two weeks later, the department took a strikingly different action regarding the historical record of a violent riot: It removed from its website the searchable database of all cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol that were prosecuted by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
These jarringly discordant actions were, of course, separated by a transfer of power: the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who swiftly moved to issue pardons, commute prison sentences and request case dismissals for all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes on Jan. 6, including seditious conspiracy and assaulting police officers. That sweeping clemency order — “Fuck it, release ’em all,” Trump said, according to Axios — prompted a wave of outrage, and criticism even from some Republicans. “I’ve always said that when you pardon people who attack police officers, you’re sending the wrong signal to the public at large,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.
The removal of the database happened more quietly, but it is worthy of notice in its own right. It signals the Trump administration’s intention to not only spare the president’s supporters any further consequences for their role in the riot, but to erase the event from the record — to cast it into the fog of confusion and forgetting in which the Greenwood massacre had existed for so long.
As some have noted, this push to whitewash recent history carries a disconcerting echo of countless autocratic regimes, from the Chinese Communist Party’s memory-holing of the Tiananmen Square massacre to the Argentine military junta’s “disappearing” of dissidents in the 1970s. It comes at the same time as the administration is also seeking to whitewash the teaching of American history, more generally: Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 29 titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” that threatens to withhold federal funds from schools that teach that the country is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory” and instructs the government to “prioritize federal resources, consistent with applicable law, to promote patriotic education.” One wonders: Would teaching the Tulsa massacre be allowed?
But the removal of the database is troubling for another reason, too: It undermines our ability to consider the events of Jan. 6 in all their complexity and particularity.
I was made aware of that complexity when I spent several days after the riot immersing myself in the more than 500 smartphone videos that participants had shared on the Parler social-media app, for an essay accompanying ProPublica’s compilation of the video trove. What struck me perhaps more than anything else about the videos was the sheer diversity of the motivations, profiles and actions that they put on display. Yes, seen from afar, the mob seemed to assume the unity of purpose of a single, organized mass bent on destruction.
But seen in the close-up of the videos, heterogeneity emerged. There were young women with puffy jackets and pompom hats, middle-aged women who could have been coming straight from a business lunch, young men furtively removing their black tactical gear under the cover of a tree to pull on red MAGA sweatshirts to pass as mere Trump supporters. There were people viciously attacking police officers and denigrating them (“You should be ashamed, fucking pansies”), others pleading with them not to (“Do not throw shit at the police!” “Do not hurt the cops!”) and still others thanking the cops who were arriving on the scene (“Back the blue! We love you!”). There were people smashing in windows and others decrying them for doing so (“Oh, God no. Stop! Stop!” “What the fuck is wrong with him?” “He’s Antifa!”) There were people who, in a matter of moments, swung from being pitchfork-carrying marauders to wide-eyed tourists, as they deferentially asked a Capitol police officer for directions or swung their cameras up to capture the inside of the dome. (“This is the state Capitol,” an awestruck man says to his young female companion.)
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Memory-holing Jan. 6: What happens when you try to make history vanish? - Alternet.org
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mma
Right-wing media figures rushed to defend President Donald Trump’s decision to issue pardons or commutations to over 1,500 people who participated in the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol — including those convicted of violence against police.
They offered a number of arguments to support their defense: They baselessly claimed legal efforts to hold participants accountable were “show trials” or unfair compared to legal repercussions for the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, said the pardons are justified because of former President Joe Biden’s pardons, and diminished the violence on January 6 by recasting those criminally charged as “ordinary patriots.”
Other right-wing figures defended the clemency by noting that Trump had campaigned on the issue, declaring, “Promises made, promises kept."
Right-wing media figures spent years urging pardons for January 6 participants, which Trump granted on the first day of his second term
- Trump issued pardons or commutations on the first day of his second term to over 1,500 participants in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, including those convicted of violent offenses against law enforcement officers. Trump had stated ahead of his presidency that he intended to issue pardons to some January 6 participants “in the first hour” of his second term. The Associated Press, [1/21/25; The Guardian, 1/6/25]
* Right-wing media figures have spent years creating a revisionist history of January 6, claiming that Trump supporters were “set up” and casting attempts to hold participants accountable as politically motivated. Right-wing media figures, initially led by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, sought to downplay the extent of the day’s violence and substitute a revisionist counternarrative that declared January 6 participants as the victims of a false-flag operation perpetuated by the federal government. When participants were charged with crimes, right-wing figures suggested the prosecutions were evidence that “the major critics of the left have been targeted by lawfare” and referred to defendants as “political prisoners.” Media Matters, [5/21/24, 2/24/21, 1/3/24; The Associated Press, 1/4/24]
- Right-wing media also specifically pushed for pardons for January 6 participants for years. Right-wing media figures have been defending January 6 participants since at least February 2022, suggesting that Trump should “pardon every January 6ther," or at least “pardon those people who were nonviolent on January 6.” Media Matters, [1/20/25, 1/10/25]
- Prior to Trump’s issuance of the pardons, right-wing media lashed out against now-Vice President JD Vance, who told Fox News that violent January 6 defendants “obviously” should not be pardoned. Following Vance’s January 12 interview, where he suggested the pardons would be selective, right-wing media figures urged the president to “pardon everybody,” recycling claims that the Capitol riot was a “setup” by law enforcement. Media Matters, [1/28/25, 1/22/25]
- ## Right-wing media justified January 6 pardons by claiming that the government “showed mercy” or “nothing happened” to Black Lives Matter protestors in 2020
* Right-wing media figures have continued to baselessly claim that Black Lives Matter protesters were treated with leniency compared to January 6 participants even though news outlets have debunked the claim and reported that over 17,000 arrests were made in the first two weeks of the BLM protests. Additionally, a reportfrom the City University of New York Law School’s Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility Clinic determined that the Trump administration engaged in an “aggressive assertion of federal jurisdiction” over the protests and that many of the federal penalties were “clearly harsher” than applicable state law.
- Right-wing host Dan Bongino claimed that “the process used to target [J6ers] was clearly political,” arguing that “absolutely nothing happened” when BLM protestors allegedly attacked police at the White House. Bongino stated: “But there is zero doubt that when the White House was attacked by BLM and antifa and Secret Service agents and uniformed division officers I know personally were hurt and wounded, that absolutely nothing happened to these people at all. So you can have two simultaneous thoughts at the same time, and I want you to pay attention to this. You can and should say, ‘I am absolutely, resolutely against attacks on law enforcement for doing their job,’ period there. But I am also against a greater danger, which is a weaponized Justice Department that picks and chooses when they take this stuff seriously and targets political opponents for it. And that’s what happened here.” Rumble, *The Dan Bongino Show*, [1/22/25]
- Fox News host Laura Ingraham complained about outrage over January 6 pardons, saying, “Where was their demand for jail time and their outrage when the George Floyd rioters burned down American cities?” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [1/21/25]
- Defending the pardons, Fox host Sean Hannity falsely claimed that the government “never prosecuted” Black Lives Matter protestors for the 2020 protests. Hannity lamented that there were “574 riots in the summer of 2020, we had dozens of dead Americans, thousands of injured cops, billions in property damage, we have videotape evidence — they never prosecuted these people.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [1/22/25]
- Right-wing pundit Larry Elder claimed that “absolutely nothing happened” to BLM protesters who attacked cops. Elder: “In the summer of 2020, you got people who were battering police officers and absolutely nothing happened to them.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [1/21/25]
- Fox host Jesse Watters praised the January 6 pardons while claiming that Democrats “showed mercy to BLM after they ransacked and firebombed cities.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [1/22/25]
- Fox & Friendsco-host Lawrence Jones claimed that “there were no charges” for the BLM protests. Jones added: “So, I don't want anybody targeting cops. But I think what ended up happening, according to some of the reports, and I can pretty much confirm it, is when there was some debate going on who to pardon and they kept going back and forth and he said, just pardon them all. I'm not going to do this. If this is your effort to delay me getting the J6ers pardoned, the people that were overcharged, which a lot of legal scholars agree, then I'm just going to pardon them all.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [1/23/25]
- ## Right-wing media justified the pardons by claiming that the January 6 trials were politically motivated and unfair and that the sentences were excessive
- Watters praised Trump for issuing a pardon for a man who received 20 years for “punching a cop at a rally that got out of control,” adding, “These guys got squeezed into pleas.”He said: “We don't think you should be able to punch a cop in the face and get away with it, but 20 years is a long time for punching a cop in the face. And these guys got squeezed into pleas.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [1/22/25]
- Fox host Will Cain claimed that investigations into January 6 participants were “an attempt to cook the books within the DOJ and the FBI to suggest that domestic terrorism was on the rise.” He also stated that, “Real people had their lives ruined. Real people sat and rotted in jail. And Donald Trump, today, for those real people, brought justice.” Fox News, *The Will Cain Show*, [1/21/25]
- During Fox News’ inauguration coverage, Ingraham defended the pardons by claiming “these people were never had the real chance to put on a proper defense” and “documents were destroyed.” Ingraham noted Trump had granted “1,600 pardons for J6ers who were arrested,” adding, “And a lot of them were sentenced to two, three, four, five years in jail. His point is, documents were destroyed, which they were, and these people were never had the real chance to put on a proper defense. That was really big.” Mediaite, [1/20/25]
- Ingraham also justified Trump pardoning participants because “a lot of them served years in jail already.” She added, “We know sex assaults of convicts are, you know, go to jail all across this country for a couple of years. Some of these people have been in jail for already four years.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [1/22/25]
- Former GOP congresswoman Michelle Bachmann said onFlashPointthat January 6 “was like a prayer meeting” and complained that there were “1,500 people who've been in jail serving time is far in excess of what murderers and rapists have to serve in jail.” Bachmann added, “People were preaching the gospel on the streets. It was like a family reunion. The happiest people you would ever see. There was no discontent on the Capitol Hill that day.” Victory Channel, *FlashPoint*, [1/21/25]
- Right-wing conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich wrote, “Not one J6’er got a real trial so Trump had to release them all.” He added, “Anyone who has a problem with this can talk to the judges and prosecutors who did Stalin era show trials.” Twitter/X, [1/21/25; Media Matters, 8/21/18]
- Right-wing figure Dinesh D’Souza, who has pushed election denial conspiracy theories, called the pardons in an X post “a just outcome” because the trials were “show trials.” He also claimed that “when the process is thoroughly corrupted, everyone is presumed innocent after the fact.” Twitter/X, [1/21/25; Media Matters, 5/4/22]
- Former Fox host Bill O’Reilly claimed that “there was prosecutorial misconduct directed at some people who got into this fracas and got punished far beyond their crime.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [1/24/25]
- ## Right-wing media figures compared Trump’s pardons to Biden’s preemptive pardons for potential targets of the Trump administration
- Prior to exiting the White House, then-President Joe Biden issued pardons for Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, members of the House January 6 committee, and several of his family members in an attempt to protect them against potential reprisals by the incoming Trump administration. Following Trump’s January 6 pardons, right-wing media figures have equated the pardons issued by Biden and Trump, ignoring that the Trump administration had publicly telegraphed its intent to target many of those pardoned by Biden.
- OnFox Noticias, co-host Julie Banderas questioned why the media is “so focused on the Jan. 6 pardons and not the criminal pardons granted by Joe Biden.” Fox Deportes, *Fox Noticias*, [1/22/25]
- Discussing the potential political fallout of Trump pardoning January 6 participants convicted of violence, Newsweek deputy opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon invoked Biden’s preemptive pardons. She said that “what Biden did in terms of pardoning was so utterly egregious and is going to become a massive albatross around the neck of his party in a way that these really aren't for Donald Trump.” The Free Press, *Honestly with Bari Weiss*, [1/24/25]
- Fox anchor Bret Baier likened Biden's preemptive pardons of his family to Trump's pardon of January 6 participants, saying, “What about that, the pardon back and forth between the two presidents?” Fox News, *Special Report with Bret Baier*, [1/21/25]
- ## Right-wing media figures glossed over violent offenses by January 6 participants, saying Trump pardoned nonviolent “ordinary patriots” who were set up by law enforcement
- Right-wing media figures have justified Trump’s blanket January 6 pardons by glossing over pardons for those convicted of seditious conspiracy or violent crimes. Approximately 140 police officers were injured that day, and several armed individuals and extremist groups were present.
- Newsmax’s Greg Kelly excused the pardons as “Donald Trump pardon[ing] vulnerable, not very powerful, regular, ordinary patriots” and claimed that “to the extent he [Enrique Tarrio] did anything wrong, it was a setup, a total and complete setup.” Kelly claimed that Trump pardoned the vulnerable and powerless. He also argued that Tarrio — the leader of the Proud Boys who was convicted of seditious conspiracy — was “just a guy who was being a guy, exercising his constitutional rights.” Newsmax, *Greg Kelly Reports*, [1/20/25; NBC News, 1/22/25]
- Lawrence Jones suggested Trump pardoned people who “didn’t attack officers" or engage in “any actual violence,” failing to mention that several of the pardons went to those who did attack officers. While discussing Trump’s January 6 pardons, Jones alluded to the fact that both Trump and Vance previously implied the pardons would be for people who “didn’t attack officers, if there wasn’t any actual violence.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends First*, [1/21/25]
- Fox News legal editor Kerri Urbahn failed to note that violent offenders were also pardoned when she emphasized “incredibly harsh sentences and penalties for mostly, for most of them, relatively minor offenses." Instead, she highlighted what she implied was over sentencing of “relatively minor offenses like trespassing, misdemeanors, and the like” and called the pardons “great.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [1/21/25]
- Lara Logan, who has pushed conspiracy theories, responded to a post about Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, receiving a pardon and wrote that he was “set-up” and “it was complete BS.” Twitter/X, [1/21/25; CBS News, 1/22/25; Media Matters, 3/28/22, 10/21/22]
- ## Right-wing media figures defended the clemency as a campaign promise Trump fulfilled: “Promises made, promises kept”
- Rumble host Donald Trump Jr. shared a video of Trump signing the pardons, commenting, “Promises Made, Promises Kept… And we are only just starting.”He also posted, “President Trump has just signed an executive order granting full pardons to about 1,500 J6 prisoners!” Twitter/X, [1/20/25]
- Pro-Trump troll Laura Loomer posted, “God bless the J6 patriots and President Trump for pardoning them! Promises made, promises kept!” Twitter/X, [1/20/25]
- OnOutnumbered, Fox News contributor Steve Hilton said, “The Trump pardon, whatever you think of them, it's the delivery of an election promise.” He added, “He said he would do this in pretty much every rally. He’s doing what he said. Biden said he would never do anything like this. It's the exact opposite. Trump is doing what he said. Biden is doing the opposite of what he said.” Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [1/21/25]
- Lawrence Jones celebrated the clemency: “Promises made, promises kept on day 1.” He said of Trump: “I think he made pretty clear and JD Vance kind of doubled down on it, if you didn't attack officers, if there wasn't actual violence, and you were caught up within the system, you were overcharged, you’ve done enough time, and he — promises made, promises kept on day 1.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [1/21/25]
//
01/24/25 12:57 PM EST
- ### After Trump sets January 6 rioters free, Fox News changes its tune on pardons for violent offenders
01/22/25 7:56 PM EST
01/28/25
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rww
01/27/2025
by
In the immediate aftermath of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 when Trump supporters violently attacked Capitol police and rampaged through the building in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's electoral victory, even those on the far-right openly admitted that MAGA activists were responsible.
But shortly thereafter, the MAGA movement set about attempting to shift the blame onto left-wing activists while painting Trump supporters as heroic figures who were merely trying to protect democracy.
When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, one of his first orders of business was to issue "full, complete and unconditional pardons" to nearly everyone convicted of participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection, which included hundreds of people who had been found guilty of violent criminal acts.
Predictably, this has caused Trump supporters to double down on their efforts to rewrite history, with former Rep. Michele Bachmann claiming that Jan. 6 had been "like a prayer meeting" and Christian nationalist Rick Green hailing as heroic a man who had been convicted of, among other things, punching a Capitol police officer while wearing brass knuckles.
Never one to be outdone, far-right commentator Eric Metaxas delivered a stunningly dishonest and absurdly hypocritical rant on his program last week during which had the gall to claim that the media was lying and "gaslighting" the nation about what really happened on Jan. 6.
It must be remembered that Metaxas was the emcee of a major “Stop the Steal” protest on the National Mall in December 2020 that was billed as a prayer rally but featured violent and extreme rhetoric, including one speaker, the Oath Keepers’ Stewart Rhodes, who demanded that if Trump did not use his powers as commander in chief to stay in power, right-wing militia groups would have to wage a “much more bloody war.” In 2023, Rhodes was found guilty of seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection and sentenced to 18 years in prison, only to have his sentence commuted by Trump upon his return to office.
Video URL
"Folks, in case you didn't already know, CNN is despicable," Metaxas said. "The mainstream media must die. We must starve it and die because they lie. They are foul liars, and they have been lying all day yesterday about the J6 stuff, all these violent protesters. These are lies. We know that on this program but most Americans and most people who watch Fox News, they have this muddled view, 'Oh yeah, but there's some violence.' Yeah, you tell me who the violent insurrectionists were. You tell me who the pro-Trump violent people were; I'll be all for them staying in jail. You tell me who they are. They are like FBI plants."
"This narrative is such a wicked lie, and CNN is pushing this filthy lie," Metaxas fumed. "When you see somebody lying brazenly, you think this is disgusting. Like, this is really gross for your soul to be lying brazenly. It's not just presenting a different. This is now brazen lying. But I want to be clear: There are tons of Americans that believe these lies. They believe these lies. And this is the gaslighting of the mainstream media."
"The FBI was very complicit in this," Metaxas continued. "The elites were complicit in this. It doesn't get bigger in terms of scandal. It does not get bigger. Nancy Pelosi and whoever else was in on this, these are despicable, treasonous figures, and they make Benedict Arnold look like a good guy. I'm not even kidding."
"What they have done is so despicable," Metaxas declared.
The FBI, of course, was not responsible for what happened on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol; that was the work of MAGA activists and Trump supporters and no amount of gaslighting from the likes of Metaxas can hide that fact. [vid]
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According to the Ohio Capital Journal:
“Alex Sheppard of Powell, Ohio was sentenced to 19 months in prison for his participation in the riot, but got an early release after the U.S. Supreme Court took up a case challenging the Department of Justice’s use of obstruction charges.”
Video
Citation
From the January 21, 2025, edition of The Stew Peters Show, streamed on Rumble
STEW PETERS (HOST): For more in this and more insight on the immediate reaction of the January 6ers and their families, we're now joined by Alex Sheppard, who he himself is a January 6 patriot. So a big weight off of your shoulders today, I imagine.
ALEX SHEPPARD: Yeah. Thank you for having me on, Stew. Like you said, glory to God, glory to everyone who kept pushing for this. There were a lot of people in Trump's ear, JD Vance included, it sounded like, that really didn't want the violent offenders included in this. Now, I was, you know — I was nonviolent. But even a lot of the quote-unquote, "violent people," you know, were nonviolent, and they hit them with all these charges. They took these terrible plea deals. And so it's what we've been pushing for. It's what we've been pushing for. A lot of people didn't think it was going to happen. They thought maybe he'd pardon some people, but not all. Trump came through and he delivered. And really, today is just a day of celebration.
...
PETERS: I mean, I think that it needs to go further. I think it needs to be blanket. I think that every single person that was charged needs to be pardoned. I think that clemency needs to be granted where it's appropriate. I think that sentences need to be commuted of course. Everybody needs to be taken care of in this. This needs to be a full sweeping, all out, "we're pardoning this." No, these are patriots who just went to Washington, D.C., to petition the government to redress their grievances. I mean, this is one of the most existential rights of the American people. One of the most important things that we have in our power is to be able to petition our government, to voice our concerns. They work for us. And this was a kill box that was set up from day one.
And there are foreign fingerprints all over this thing. And I think that we need to get to the bottom of who exactly it was that was responsible for this. You saw Biden on his way out pardoning the entire J6 Committee — all of his family, by the way, and rat-faced Tony Fauci on his way out as well. Preemptive pardons? I mean, this is criminal activity. These people need to be exposed. Whoever was behind this and set up January 6 from the beginning needs to be put on trial in the United States, tried for criminal treason, tried for crimes against humanity, tried for a coup, and they need to be convicted. And when they're convicted, they need to face extreme accountability. He can't just let this go. You agree?
SHEPPARD: One hundred percent. Like I said, this was an important first step. The next obvious step would be fire all prosecutors, all FBI agents who were involved in this witch hunt. Fire them. And, you know, there's a lot of talk about class action lawsuits going on right now. I would rather we have some sort of situation where we just take the pensions of all these people who went after us, judges included. These judges are the worst in D.C. You got to take their pensions and give them to us and give the most money to the people who have been locked up for four years straight.
And we need — we need reparations. We need restitution. We did not get a jury of our peers in D.C. I talked about it on this show several times. I'm striking DOJ lawyers from my jury pool. The judge wouldn't strike them for cause because they're on a different floor of the DOJ building than the people prosecuting me. So, yeah, we need extreme accountability. We need investigations. We need prosecutions. We need firings. And, you know, this was a huge first step. So I think it's looking pretty promising. We obviously got to continue to push for it just like we did with these. But it is looking very good for our country right now.
//
01/21/25
01/21/25
- ### Fox stars told their audiences that Trump should not pardon violent J6 offenders. He just did it.
01/21/25
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an 1 25
no vids
After being sworn in for a second term by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts on Monday, January 20, President Donald Trump gave his inaugural address — which was followed by a different speech later in Emancipation Hall.
CNN's Daniel Dale gave Trump many fact-checks during his first term as president. And he wasted no time fact-checking Trump's Emancipation Hall speech.
Dale's colleague Jake Tapper told him, "I know there are a lot of familiar lies that were just told, but bring us up to speed on what you think the biggest ones were." And Dale responded, "There were a bunch, Jake."
READ MORE: Biden preemptively pardons members of January 6 panel and other Trump targets
Dale noted that while there was only a "smattering of falsehoods" in Trump's "scripted" inaugural speech, he "returned to his familiar lie-a-minute style" during the "unscripted" Emancipation Hall speech.
"He said the 2020 election was totally rigged," Dale told Tapper. "We know that's a lie. He said his opponents tried to rig it this time; that is more nonsense. He said California Democrats tried to cheat, and that he thinks he would have won the state this time if it were not rigged. Well, it was a free and fair election in that state as well; he lost by more than three million votes."
Dale continued, "He claimed he won Alabama this time by 48 points — more like 30, 31. And then, on immigration, he spoke of the jails of every country in the world being emptied into this country. He has never provided any evidence for his familiar claim that foreign countries are deliberating emptying prisons to send people here as migrants."
The CNN fact-checker also debunked Trump's false claims about the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.
READ MORE: Trump expected to target citizenship of children with undocumented parents
"He repeated the claim that former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi has admitted that she rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 National Guard troops on January 6, 2021," Dale told Tapper. "First of all, there is no basis for the claim Trump even made her such an offer. It wouldn't even have made sense, given he, the president, is the commander of the DC National Guard — the speaker of the House has no authority to deploy them or for a deployment."
Dale added, "And second of all, (Pelosi) never admitted that such an offer was made. She has steadfastly rejected that. She is on tape, on January 6, expressing frustration with the security failure that day, and saying: I take responsibility for not having them better prepared."
---
WOW NOTE DENIAL
AN 1 25
alternet
Trump's mysterious relationship with Zuckerberg — and the real reason behind Meta's shift
Thom Hartmann January 09, 2025
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg (wearing a $900,000 watch) announced yesterday morning that across their over-7-billion-user-strong social media empire — Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp — they’ll be dialing back on fact-checking. They’re also preparing to promote more “political” content (among other changes that support those two moves, like no longer filtering out trash-talking women, queer people, or immigrants, and moving what’s left of their Trust & Safety team from liberal California to conservative Texas).
Here’s the problem: Republican politicians rely on lies, distortions, and falsehoods to sell most of their policies and candidates.
They must do this because the reality of their actual goals (cut billionaire taxes, increase pollution, gut worker and consumer protections, defund schools and medical care, privatize and cut Social Security and Medicare, subsidize oil companies, outlaw abortion, etc.) are so repellent to most Americans.
The Democratic Party, on the other hand, has been shockingly scrupulous for decades about telling the truth, at least with regard to policy. The last “big lie” I can remember coming from the Dems was LBJ’s claiming that North Vietnam had attacked us at the Gulf of Tonkin. And that was 60 years ago!
Seriously, can you think of any major Democratic Party lies in the past few decades that Democratic politicians repeated regularly on cable TV shows, op-eds, and in campaign commercials? Particularly, lies about important public policy debates and the structure of our government and its programs?
I did a search for “Democratic lies” using 2 different AI programs, Google, and DuckDuckGo. The worst I could find — none of which are consequential or even real, actual, or oft-repeated lies — were, according to those search sites:
— Only the rich will pay more taxes under proposed policies.
— A transition to green energy won’t cost any jobs.
— Sanctuary cities reduce crime rates universally.
— Social media platforms primarily suppress left-wing voices.
— Trump’s Project 2025 wasn’t actually Trump’s project.
— Expanding federal funding for education guarantees improved student outcomes.
— Kamala Harris falsely claimed Trump encouraged Putin to invade U.S. allies.
— Harris mischaracterized a border security bill as the "strongest in decades."
— Tim Walz falsely attributed a quote about ruthless use of power to JD Vance.
— Illinois Governor JB Pritzker misleadingly claimed Trump told people to drink bleach for COVID-19.
— Electric vehicles are affordable and practical for all Americans, regardless of income or location.
On the other hand, those same sources handed me this (partial) list of actual and destructive-to-democracy-and-society lies that are regularly told and promoted by Republicans in pretty much every venue and show up every Sunday on the political shows:
— The 2020 election was stolen.
— Global warming isn’t real or important.
— Giving tax cuts to billionaires helps average working people.
— Biden “opened” our southern border for four years.
— Democrats encourage illegal immigrants to vote.
— Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that’s going broke and can only be fixed by cutting benefits or privatization.
— A national healthcare system like every other advanced democracy in the world has won’t work in America.
— Free or inexpensive college doesn’t benefit the nation, but student debt builds “individual responsibility.”
— The Democratic Party is filled with sexual monsters and child predators who drink blood.
— Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and Afghanistan was responsible for 9/11.
— The United States was founded as a Christian nation, and the Founding Fathers intended it to be governed by biblical law.
— Critical Race Theory is being taught in elementary schools to make white children feel guilty.
— Cutting corporate taxes leads to higher wages for workers.
— Climate change policies are an attack on the economy and personal freedom.
— Gun control laws lead to higher crime rates.
— Wind and solar energy are unreliable and will destroy the energy grid.
— LGBTQ+ rights threaten religious freedom and the safety of children.
— Voter fraud is a widespread problem in the United States.
— Democrats want to abolish the police and create lawless “anarchy zones.”
— Universal basic income or expanded welfare programs discourage hard work.
— Raising the minimum wage will destroy small businesses and increase unemployment.
— Public schools are indoctrinating children with Marxist and homosexual ideologies.
— The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) caused massive job losses and economic ruin.
— Immigration is the primary cause of crime and drug trafficking in the U.S.
— The January 6th insurrection was a peaceful protest.
— Unions are corrupt and hurt workers more than they help.
— Democrats are pushing to remove God and religion from American society.
— The mainstream media is entirely biased and acts as a propaganda arm for the Democratic Party.
— Raising taxes on the wealthy will hurt small businesses and destroy the economy.
— Abortion is murder, and Democrats support killing babies even after birth.
— Medicare and Medicaid are unsustainable and should be privatized.
— America’s biggest national security threat is China, not climate change.
— Universal background checks for gun purchases are a slippery slope to gun confiscation.
— The U.S. military is being weakened by “woke” policies and diversity initiatives.
— Public health measures during pandemics, like masks and vaccines, are a government overreach and an attack on personal freedom.
— The Green New Deal will eliminate cows, airplanes, and American jobs.
— The COVID-19 vaccine is part of a government tracking or depopulation program.
— Teachers’ unions are destroying education by prioritizing their own interests over students.
— Democrats want to eliminate suburbs through urban housing policies.
— Cutting capital gains taxes helps working Americans and stimulates the economy.
— The U.S. has the best healthcare system in the world, and any changes would make it worse.
— Climate scientists are exaggerating or fabricating evidence to get government funding.
— Most Americans support banning books and other restrictions on teaching controversial topics.
— Homelessness is caused by laziness and bad personal choices, not systemic issues like housing costs and investment operations.
— DEI, Affirmative Action, and similar programs are a form of “reverse racism” that discriminates against white people.
— Black immigrants eat white people’s dogs and cats.
— January 6th was an inside FBI operation, a Democratic Party Antifa operation, or both.
These lies have political potency and have often altered election outcomes. Many or even most are frequently promoted by Republican politicians at every opportunity. Many are at the foundation of GOP political campaigns.
Zuckerberg, the country’s richest millennial (with an estimated 1/50th of all American millennial’s wealth in his own money bin), recently made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump’s ass and hand him a $1 million check.
Yesterday, Trump bragged that Zuck did this because he was frightened by Trump’s explicit and written threat to put him in prison for the “rest of his life.” He essentially bragged, “I’m alpha, Zuck is beta.”
Zuckerberg also put one of Trump’s closest personal buds, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship Dana White, on Meta’s board of directors, where White can keep an eye on the CEO for Trump.
Finally, Zuckerberg promoted Joel Kaplan, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for George W. Bush, to Chief Global Affairs Officer. Kaplan then went on Fox and bragged that they were making the changes because Trump is coming into the White House:
“We saw a lot of societal and political pressure, all in the direction of more content moderation, more censorship, and we’ve got a real opportunity. Now, we’ve got a new administration and a new president coming in who are big defenders of free expression, and that makes a difference.”
Right.
One hand washes the other. Meta is fighting the federal government right now, which wants to break up its alleged monopoly. Trump’s friends Putin and the rightwing death squad militias forming in America — when their most violent members are let out of prison with a pardon — can now have free rein to dominate, recruit, and terrorize on social media, much like they did before.
Most important, though, in a nation where one political party routinely uses lies and distortions but the other is generally committed to telling the truth, who benefits when the “free expression” of political lies is dramatically boosted?
(And none of this even begins to explore the political bias of the algorithms used by Meta and X to promote rage-producing content to users…because those algorithms are secret.)
Meta and X could prioritize telling the truth and stopping — or at least identifying — naked political lies to help stabilize America’s political system and society. Instead, it appears that the 54% of Americans who get all or most of their news from social media are now about to get drenched in a hurricane of Republican lies and misinformation.
This is not without consequences for our nation and the world.
The removal of fact-checkers and subsequent increase in false online information, which we’ve already seen on other platforms, erodes truth and accountability in public discourse, creates fertile ground for authoritarian politicians, undermines democratic processes, and fuels societal polarization.
It’s exactly what Vladimir Putin wants for America and has paid millions for trolls to produce for years, which is why it’s no surprise that Donald Trump would threaten Mark Zuckerberg to make it happen.
Without a shared baseline of truth, meaningful public debate becomes impossible. People retreat into echo chambers, making collective problem-solving a relic of the past and turning governance into a tool for manipulation rather than representation.
Ultimately, this path leads to a dystopia where truth becomes irrelevant, power dictates reality, and the fundamental principles of democracy — accountability, transparency, and representation — are destroyed.
The proof that we’re already a far ways down this road is that — by substantial margins — voters who got their news and political/current events information from traditional sources like major newspapers and the mainstream TV networks (that still fact-check) voted for Harris, while those who got most of their news from social media primarily voted for Trump.
Republican strategists know this and are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of Meta following X’s path.
But the worst of it is that virtually all of the Democratic “lies” aren’t really lies; they’re usually disjointed attempts to push policies (like raising taxes on the rich or Medicare For All) that ultimately benefit average Americans.
On the other side, though, virtually all of the Republican “lies” are actual lies or major distortions designed to either inflame bigoted passions or conceal the real goal of what they’re doing in the background (typically to make the morbidly rich even richer).
For example, as the press is focused on Trump‘s Greenland rants, Republicans in Congress are preparing a massive multi-trillion-dollar tax cut (that will fuel inflation and further impoverish working-class people) for billionaires like Musk, Zuckerberg, and Trump.
The old sleight-of-hand begins anew, with social media ready to put it on steroids.
Using massive amounts of naked lies as a political strategy is relatively new in America, having started with Reagan promising that trickle down would increase prosperity and gone into hyperdrive with Trump’s first lie-filled term.
By killing off or even reducing meaningful fact-checking, Zuckerberg, like Musk before him, is handing a loaded gun to a GOP ready and willing to use it, while Democrats are left with, at best, slingshots that they really don’t even want to use (and aren’t particularly good at).
And you can bet your bottom dollar that billionaires Trump, Zuckerberg, Putin, and Musk know it.
rww
01/07/2025
by
- Isaac Schorr @ Mediaite: Here Are the 5 Craziest Moments from Trump’s Off-the-Wall Presser — From ‘Gulf of America’ to Hezbollah Capitol Rioters
President-elect Donald Trump held a press conference on Tuesday with the ostensible aim of touting foreign investment in the United States in anticipation of his administration. It ended up being so much more than that.
- Bob Smietana @ Religion News Service: Trump Bible gets new 'Inauguration Day Edition' just in time for Jan. 6
A new ad urges supporters to buy a Bible commemorating Trump's return to the White House. The new edition of the God Bless the USA Bible features Trump's name on the cover and will be on sale until Jan. 19.
- Amanda Marcotte @ Salon: Why Mike Johnson's fake "Jefferson prayer" matters
Replacing facts with phony history is a linchpin of the Christian nationalist movement.
- Jared Holt @ MSNBC: How Brandon Gill went from clickbait to Congress
The 30-year-old Texas congressman helped promote the big lie documentary “2,000 Mules” and founded a far-right website.
- Angry White Men: Christian Nationalists Attempt To Rewrite Jan. 6
> On Monday, Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon celebrated the four-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection by lauding the violent mob as “patriots.” Webbon’s guest, far-right blogger Charles Haywood, agreed, and called on President-elect Trump to issue medals to the insurrectionists while imprisoning those who prosecuted them.
- Julie Roys @ The Roys Report: Jesse Duplantis, Lance Wallnau, Jack Graham & Kunnemans Leave Daystar TV in Wake of Scandal
More programmers have confirmed they’ve left Daystar TV network, following allegations of sex abuse cover-up and financial misconduct, including televangelists Jesse Duplantis, Lance Wallnau, and Hank and Brenda Kunneman.
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rww
01/07/2025
by
- After Congress certified the results of the 2024 presidential election, Rick Green thanked God that "there wasn't the same chaos as four years ago" when "the election was stolen" and "the Constitution was violated."
- Joel Webbon asserts that "Jan. 6 was not that bad and, in fact, there were a lot of things that were honorable and should be esteemed."
- Lance Wallnau declares that far-right British activist Tommy Robinson is "very courageous" and "a folk hero."
- Mark Meckler wants to see Washington, D.C., literally eliminated as a city and instead made a part of Maryland. If that doesn't happen, Meckler hopes that Congress will completely take over the city "and run it correctly."
- Finally, Glenn Beck hates Daylight Savings Time largely because it was implemented during World War I by the Woodrow Wilson administration, which Beck claimed "pushed [America] into socialism." If Wilson was a socialist, he certainly had an odd way of showing it.
On the Watchlist
===
an 1 25
Monday, January 6, 2025 not only marks the certification of President-elect Donald Trump's Electoral College victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, but also, the fourth anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building by Trump supporters who refused to accept the 2020 election results.
Ahead of the joint session of Congress where the 2024 electoral votes will be counted and certified, Democratic strategist Maria Cardona and right-wing media figure Brad Todd discussed the anniversary of the January 6, 2021 riot.
Cardona was vehemently critical of the way many Republicans have responded to that attack, arguing they failed to hold Trump accountable. During the segment, Cardona butted heads with Todd — who noted the criticism of Trump that initially came from some GOP leaders four years ago. The criticism, Cardona reminded Todd, didn't last long.
READ MORE:'**Frightening': Trump not ruling out pardoning January 6 participants convicted of sedition
, "I do think that Republicans — not just Trump, but Republican leaders — are going to bear a lot of responsibility. And the history is not going to be kind to them because while what you said is true that they were against him, that lasted like a nanosecond…. The facts are the facts, Brad."
Todd interjected that the Capitol riot "deserved a full bipartisan investigation," and Cardona responded, "But you can't have a full bipartisan investigation when your party initially said yes, Donald Trump is in the wrong — and then, completely capitulated."
Todd argued that the Capitol riot investigation "was controlled by one party completely" — meaning Democrats — and Cardona countered, "Everyone went down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring, and everything changed after that."
[he GOP's willingness to defend Trump despite the January 6, 2021 attack is a very bad reflection on the party.
READ MORE:January 6 rioters are 'political dissidents' declares spouse of Trump Cabinet nominee
The, "I think that history will certainly deem Donald Trump as one of the most violent presidents — who allowed violence, who encouraged violence. And I don't think history will judge him well…. It might very well have been that if Kamala Harris had won, there could have been violence, because Donald Trump would have promoted it. Because Donald Trump would have urged it."
READ MORE: 'Trump's foot soldiers': White nationalists are feeling emboldened by his return to power
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an 1 25
A Republican’s vigorous defense of Donald Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol four years ago turned an on-air CNN discussion into a full-on debate about who was peacefully protesting, who was trespassing, and who should’ve been prosecuted.
The moment came Monday evening on CNN’s“The Source” when GOP strategist David Urban said that not only was the issue of Jan. 6 litigated in the courts, but also in the last election – “and the American people dismissed it as well.”
“I agree the beating of police officers – Donald Trump said it himself – violence is never acceptable,” Urban said Monday. “Those people that beat the police officers, that injured a police officer, should go to jail. There's no ifs, ands or buts.”
However, Urban added, “there’s a completely different story” on the Supreme Court side of the Capitol, where he said people “were allowed in” and officers “didn't seem frightened or outnumbered.”
He also told the panel that “to be factual” Ashli Babbitt “was the only person who died” on that day.
ALSO READ:'Bring it on': Defiant Raskin responds to GOP threats of retaliation for J6 investigation
But the longtime Republican’s separation of the violence didn’t sit well with CNN’s Kate Bedingfield or Sarah Matthews, Trump’s former deputy press secretary who resigned on Jan. 6, 2021, over the Capitol riot.
“That is beyond splitting hairs,” Bedingfield said referencing the Capitol police officer who died the day after the attack. “Come on."
“She wouldn't have been there that day if Donald Trump didn't spread conspiracy theories about an election that he knew was not stolen,” Matthews told Urban. “And he told those people to go to the Capitol. And so, she was there as a result of him telling her. She would not have died if it weren't for Donald Trump refusing to accept the results of the election, and you know that.”
Urban concluded the dust-up by adding that he doesn't believe that Trump should pardon Jan. 6 defendants on day one.
“I think there are lots of things the American people care about much more so than January 6," he said.
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MMA
On January 6, 2021, as a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and halted Congress’ counting of electoral votes, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade dashed off a desperate text to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
“Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished,” he wrote of Trump, who had summoned the enraged crowd to Washington, D.C., and incited it with lies that the 2020 election had been stolen as part of a plot to subvert that election.
Kilmeade expressed a drastically different view on Monday, as a new Congress prepared to count the electoral votes that would return Trump to the Oval Office.
In one of Fox & Friends’ few references to the January 6 insurrection that morning, he mocked Democrats who “want to point out how different” today’s events will be “from four years ago” when “democracy was in danger.”
Kilmeade added that the American people think that January 6, “as bad as that day was, it’s a small part of the Donald Trump story” and that it would be “put to bed even further after today happens.”
The Fox & Friends host is one of an array of right-wing media figures who said at the time that the January 6 insurrection was a calamity, that the rioters were criminals, and that Trump himself bore responsibility for their actions. But over the past four years, they have participated in the right’s Great Forgetting, making their peace with Trump’s attempted coup and supporting his return to the presidency.
- ### When the right said January 6 was “deplorable” and its participants “criminals”
“Remember what yesterday’s attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol was like. Very soon, someone might try to convince you that it was different,” The Atlantic’s David Graham wrote the next day. “The health of the republic depends both on what swift consequences come—for Trump and for others—and also on how people remember the participants’ actions later on.”
Graham’s warning proved prescient. As the attack unfolded and in its immediate aftermath, many media figures on the right joined those on center and left in condemning the attack — and Trump’s work to incite it — in the strongest possible terms. But they did not sustain their initial response.
“Shoot the protestors,” influential commentator Erick Erickson wrote that afternoon. He added that Trump should receive immediate consequences that would end his political career: “Waive the rules, impeach. Waive the rules, convict. Waive the rules, deny the ability to run for election again.”
Four years later, Erickson offered this take: “First, Happy January 6th to all who celebrate. Note to the media: The exit polling in November showed that most voters do not care. That you will try to make them care today is another reason trust in the media is beneath that of Congress itself.”
Fox chief political analyst Brit Hume likewise denounced Trump at the time for having “fueled the worst suspicions of his supporters with wild claims that the election was stolen. And now we see the result.” But on Election Day 2024, he declared this “a BS issue” because “the thing was over in a matter of hours.”
Erickson and Hume are among a long list of right-wing media notables who condemned January 6 — and even Trump for bringing it about — but came around to implicitly or explicitly support his return to the presidency, even as he showed no remorse for his own actions and valorized the rioters.
Rupert Murdoch, whose right-wing media empire is one of the most potent forces in Republican politics, wrote in an email to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on Inauguration Day 2021 that Trump’s election lies had been “pretty much a crime” that made January 6 “inevitable.” He added: “Best we don't mention his name unless essential and certainly don't support him."
On Fox, numerous hosts condemned the criminal acts of the mob and said its members deserved punishment, with some even describing such denunciations as morally necessary.
“Those who truly support President Trump, those that believe they are part of the conservative movement in this country, you do not — we do not support those that commit acts of violence,” offered Fox host and Trump adviser Sean Hannity. “Every good and decent American, we know, will and must condemn what happened at the Capitol.”
“The actions at the United States Capitol three days ago were deplorable, reprehensible, outright criminal,” Jeanine Pirro likewise declared. “Anyone watching this must condemn it.”
Fox contributor Mark Thiessen was among the few to single out Trump on the network’s airwaves, saying the then-president had been “responsible for what happened,” and he went much further in a Washington Post column.
“It was one of the darkest moments in the history of our democracy. And Trump is responsible for it,” he wrote. “Trump formed and incited the mob. He stoked their anger with self-serving lies. He betrayed his followers. He betrayed his office. And now he has blood on his hands.”
The organs of the upper-crust right were united in blaming Trump for the attack.
Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal wrote in a January 7, 2021, editorial that Trump should resign the presidency after committing “an assault on the constitutional process of transferring power after an election.” The New York Post editorial board wrote that “while the roots of this madness were many, with some blame across the spectrum, it’s fundamentally on President Trump.” And the editors of National Review said Trump “found a new low” by having “whipped up and urged on a mob toward the U.S. Capitol, where it breached the building and forced his vice president and lawmakers to flee.”
The hosts of the All-In podcast, which became a key venue of the MAGA tech right, were even more scathing at the time, describing Trump as “a complete piece-of-shit fucking scumbag” who had engaged in “insane, deranged, criminal, lunatic behavior” and had “disqualified himself from being a candidate at a national level.”
- ### The Great Forgetting and what comes next
These comments reflected the widespread initial consensus that January 6 had been horrific — and that Trump had been responsible for it. In the first days following the attack, politicians of both parties, corporate leaders, and the public at large responded with revulsion and demands for consequences.
But that unity ultimately proved fragile. A coterie of Trumpists, led by former Fox host Tucker Carlson, worked diligently to unwind it, reframing the sacking of the U.S. Capitol as either unimportant — or a conspiracy driven by Democrats and the media in which the assailants were the real victims of a crackdown on “political dissidents,” as Fox’s Rachel Campos-Duffy put it last week.
As this fraudulent counternarrative became increasingly widespread, most other conservative media figures eventually chose to join the right’s Great Forgetting. They pretended that a president who they knew had tried to overturn the republic was fit to return to that office. And in so doing, they helped power Trump from his post-January 6 position of disgrace back to the GOP nomination and the presidency.
Trump’s return to office sets the stage for more authoritarian acts. He never repudiated his election lies or the attack they incited, instead valorizing the January 6 “hostages” and promising they will receive pardons as one of his first acts in office. And he is assembling a team to carry out the “retribution” he has promised to inflict on his political foes, including an FBI director who proposed legal action against the conspirators, “not just in government but in the media,” who he claimed “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”
Trump’s authoritarian impulses may ultimately come to nothing. But with their actions after January 6, the leading lights of the right have already signaled their willingness to accept whatever he does.
//
01/06/21
They did it and will do it again – if no one stops them
07/22/22
05/21/24 MMA
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an 1 25
CNN host refuses to back down from GOP rep claiming Trump denounced January 6 violence
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RWW 12/10/2024
by
- Edith Olmstead @ The New Republic: Trump’s Defense Pick Is Now Denying Things He Said on Tape
Pete Hegseth is straight-up lying about his past now.
- Kristen Holmes @ CNN: Matt Gaetz to join One America News as an anchor, source says
Former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz is expected to announce he is joining One America News Network (OAN) as an anchor, a source familiar told CNN.
- William Vaillancourt @ The Daily Beast: Trump Gives Anti-Woke Warrior Key Civil Rights Role
President-elect Donald Trump nominated Harmeet Dhillon as assistant attorney general for civil rights, he announced Monday.
- Warren Throckmorton @ The Throckmorton Initiative: No, the Founders Didn't Debate the Bible During the Constitutional Convention
Now, this is a doozy. Reconstructionist pastor and author George Grant was on The "Reformation Red Pill" podcast yesterday (12/8/24) and did what Christian nationalists often do with history — make it up.
- Media Matters: Far-right conspiracy theorist Ann Vandersteel says she's had “private conversations” with Trump “border czar” Tom Homan about mass deportations
Vandersteel: Homan “has been very clear to me in private conversations that it is going to take a network of law enforcement.”
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an 12 24
Trump made history earlier this year as the first former U.S. president to be convicted of felony crimes. But now as president-elect, he's arguing that his 34 felony convictions should be dismissed ahead of his impending return to the White House. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg came out hard against Trump's argument in a recent filing.
Lawfare correspondent Anna Bower recently posted Bragg's filing to Bluesky, noting the Manhattan DA's office argued Judge Juan Merchan "should deny Trump’s request to immediately vacate and dismiss the jury’s guilty verdicts against him in New York." In the 82-page filing, Bragg called it "particularly brazen" for Trump's lawyers to suggest that the Constitution's Supremacy Clause means that state court convictions should be thrown out to accommodate an incoming administration.
Trump's attorneys cited the Supreme Court's July 2024 Trump v. United States ruling that grants presidents absolute broad immunity from criminal prosecution for all "official acts" to argue that their client's felony convictions should be thrown out. But Bragg countered that the jury already agreed that Trump's actions were all carried out in his capacity as a private citizen, and not part of any official presidential act.
READ MORE:'Crowned Trump king': Experts warn SCOTUS immunity decision 'death knell for democracy'
"The importance of preserving a President’s ability to be held criminally accountable after the expiration of his term has led the Supreme Court to reject applications of presidential immunity that would 'forever thwart' the public’s interest in enforcing its criminal laws," Bragg wrote.
Bragg further reminded Merchan that in the 1974 United States v. Nixon case, the Supreme Court "rejected a sweepingclaim of absolute immunity that would have allowed a sitting President to disregard a criminal subpoena probing into his official acts." He used the Court's conclusion that quashing that subpoena "would mean that a pending 'criminal prosecution may be totally frustrated'" to pivot to a larger point that "such permanent interference with the criminal process was an intolerable result given that presidential immunity is supposed to protect a President’s official decision-making only while in office, not to forever insulate the President from criminal liability — especially for his unofficial conduct."
The Manhattan DA acknowledged that as president, Trump has the right to not allow the business of governing to be disrupted by a criminal sentence. However, he posited that there were fixes to this unprecedented scenario that didn't involve striking his 34 felony convictions.
"The extreme remedy of dismissing the indictment and vacating the jury verdict is not warranted in light of multiple alternative accommodations that would fully address the concerns raised by presidential immunity," Bragg wrote in the filing. "For example, if judgment has not been entered before presidential immunity attaches, the Court could at that point stay further proceedings for the duration of defendant’s presidency... Given the availability of these alternatives to dismissal, this Court should deny defendant’s request to dismiss the indictment and vacate the jury verdict."
READ MORE:Manhattan DA rips Trump's effort to 'improperly circumvent' NY State courts'
Click here to read the full filing.
mult gop say no retal tho he constantly says yes and will not give up on kash and bondi
mma
December 9, 2024, edition of Fox News' Outnumbered
LARRY KUDLOW (CO-HOST): I just want to go back inside the church for a minute, Molly. Take a careful look at that. That wasn't a nice conversation. That was outright flirtation. It was almost —
HARRIS FAULKNER (CO-HOST): Oh my goodness!
KUDLOW: That was almost heavy — that was almost heavy-duty petting at the G7 level. I've been there. I've seen these things before. So I'm just saying the evidence is mounting.
...
KAYLEIGH MCENANY (CO-HOST): Trump said, Harris, his response was that she could not have been nicer. I would also note, to Kristen Welker, he said that he has not interest in putting a prosecutor on the Bidens. He wants to look forward, not the past. He is magananimous.
FAULKNER: Look, I mean, politics is a blood sport. And Larry what you were pointing out, you know, outside of some of the extracurricular activity you described, I do believe that in these moments you do want to gravitate — I mean clearly she gravitates to power. You're not in a White House with a husband who really could have sat down long before that debate on June 27. Yeah, I'm just going to say it, because it's the truth. So she's gravitating to power and the shiniest object in the room at that moment, the one with the really good lighting, Molly, is Donald Trump. So she goes over and kind of soaks that lightning up.
KUDLOW: This fondness for power is what I metaphorically called heavy-duty petting at the G7!
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12/04/2024
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- Ian Millhiser @ Vox: The horrifying implications of today’s Supreme Court argument on trans rights
The Court appears likely to uphold bans on gender-affirming care, and may gut the rules barring all forms of sex discrimination in the process.
- Colby Hall @ Mediaite: Trump Announces He Will Attend Fox Nation’s Patriot Awards to Receive ‘Patriot of the Year’ Award
President-elect Donald Trump announced he would be in person to receive the “Fox Patriot of the Year Award” at Thursday night’s Patriot Awards in Long Island.
- Steven Monacelli and Tristan Lee @ Texas Observer: Revealed: the Operators Behind Four Major Neo-Nazi X Accounts
Anonymity has long been a tactic used by extremists to spread their ideology while avoiding social consequences, from Klansmen hoods to online pseudonyms.
- Logan M. Davis @ Colorado Times Recorder: Colorado-Based Christian Nationalists are Rewriting Recent History
With Trump returning to the presidency, though, Truth & Liberty no longer seems content to parrot Barton’s rewriting of the nation’s founding. Now, they are extending [David] Barton’s tactics to subjects far more recent – they are rewriting the history of the last four years, and they are doing it for the exact same reason they cling to their rewritten version of the founding: to justify what they plan to do next.
- David Badash @ The New Civil Rights Movement: Pete Hegseth’s Mom Urges ‘Female Senators’ to Ignore Media Reports, Confirm Him as SecDef
Penelope Hegseth, the mother of Donald Trump’s current and embattled nominee for U.S. Secretary of Defense, appeared on the cable network where her son Pete works, to urge the U.S. Senate, and especially “female Senators,” to disregard media reports—which include allegations of sexual misconduct, excessive alcohol abuse, financial mismanagement of two veterans’ organizations, and tattoos suggesting a link to Christian nationalism. She insisted her son is a changed man and should be confirmed.
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Far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been a highly divisive figure in Lone Star State politics, often drawing vehement criticism not only from Democrats, but also from fellow Republicans. Nonetheless, Paxton survived an impeachment trial in the Texas State Senate, where he was acquitted on 16 articles. And the Donald Trump ally hasn't become any less combative.
Paxton, a Baptist who embraces a severe brand of Christian fundamentalism, is known for picking fights with churches he considers impure. And his latest religious target, according to Chron.com reporter Eric Killelea, is a church in Austin that helps the homeless.
Killelea reports that on Tuesday, November 26, Paxton announced a lawsuit against Austin's Sunrise Community Church in response to their activities on behalf of the city's homeless.
READ MORE:['Encouraging decision': Here are the Trump Cabinet picks Russia is most excited about
The Texas attorney general declared, "By operating a taxpayer-funded drug paraphernalia giveaway next to an elementary school, this organization is threatening students' health and safety and unjustly worsening daily life for every single resident of the neighborhood. We will shut this unlawful nuisance behavior down."
In Austin, Sunrise operates a nonprofit called the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center.
Paxton, in the lawsuit, describes the church as a "magnet" for people with drug problems and alleges that the Navigation Center encourages them to commit crimes.
The lawsuit alleges, "Sunrise homeless clients break into residents' homes. They menace residents with machetes. They routinely urinate and defecate in the streets. They masturbate in public, while trying to grab passing women. They wake up residents with high-pitched screams in the middle of the night."
READ MORE:['Do we advise the president to look elsewhere?' GOP senators uneasy about Tulsi Gabbard
According to the Sunrise Community Church, however, the Navigation Center has helped many homeless Texans overcome homelessness.
Killelea reports, "Sunrise Community Church, which is part of the Reformed Church in America — a generally liberal denomination within the Protestant faith — has described the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center as the largest provider of homelessness services in Travis County. The Center, founded in 2015, provides meals, showers and computer access to people experiencing homelessness, per reporting by the Austin American-Statesman's Skye Seipp. The church claims to have helped more than 4275 people move into housing through the ministry.
mma
MAGA propaganda machine helped carry Trump back to the White House — and it’s not done poisoning America
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 11/07/24
Donald Trump was reelected president on Tuesday, four years after fomenting a coup which saw a mob of his supporters storm the U.S. Capitol and then leaving the White House in disgrace. He owes his return at least in part to a rankly dishonest right-wing information ecosystem that helped carry him through countless scandals that would have ended the careers of most politicians, driving his comeback to the pinnacle of power.
Conservative audiences are dependent on a right-wing media complex that bombards them with falsehoods and grievances while dissuading them from consulting any alternative sources of information, be they legacy news outlets or government officials or medical experts.
Once Trump captured the GOP and ascended to the presidency in 2017, that bubble served him and his interests. Within it, for example, his supporters were convinced by a sprawling conspiracy theory portraying the then-president as the victim of a shadowy “deep state” cabal that justified vast retribution.
The January 6 insurrection presented Trump’s propagandists with a crossroads. Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire includes right-wing bastions like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Post, privately sought for him to become a “non person.” But Tucker Carlson and his allies at Fox and elsewhere instead went to work creating a counternarrative in which Trump was blameless. People who knew better either played along or actively participated in the whitewashing of that day.
Trump’s various indictments for a host of crimes provided additional hinge points. Right-wing media figures who could have used evidence of his abject criminality as a rationale for cutting him loose instead rallied to him and sought to delegitimize those seeking to bring him to justice.
The right-wing media bubble’s eagerness to excuse Trump’s actions gave him a dominant position in the Republican primary. As he romped to the nomination, his opponents complained that they were unable to gain traction because the party’s propaganda wing had united behind him.
Trump again became the nominee of one of the two major parties. He selected Ohio Sen. JD Vance, a Carlson favorite, as his running mate, and demonstrated the importance of the right-wing echo chamber by giving Carlson himself a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention.
With the general election set between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, right-wing propagandists went to work holding the GOP base together with a combination of grievance-mongering and silence.
They flooded the zone with a bogus narrative of “migrant crime” while ignoring evidence that violent crime was actually plummeting from its Trump-era high.
They instructed their audiences to treat immigrants as a scapegoat, falsely claiming that federal disaster aid desperately needed to respond to hurricanes had been siphoned off to benefit migrants and ginning up grotesque lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets.
They lashed out at the press, urging the Republican base to treat Trump’s poor showing in his debate against Harris as the result of media bias.
When an unprecedented string of former Republican officials and Trump’s own former administration aides came forward with dire warnings of what Trump did in his first term and could do in a second one, they hid the news from their audiences.
And they kept quiet on a host of unpopular aspects of Trump’s policy agenda, from Social Security to reproductive rights, while beating back burgeoning scandals over his alleged January 6 crimes, communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a political event at Arlington National Cemetery.
Journalists and political strategists will spend the next weeks and months grappling for explanations as to how Trump returned to the White House. But without the support of the right-wing propaganda machine, he would not have been in position to sweep his party’s nomination in the first place — and in an evenly divided country amid a global anti-incumbent wave, that provided a strong position to win the presidency.
Now, the same propagandists who helped him back to power are poised to help him carry out his extreme agenda of destruction and retribution.
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TRUMP? COMPLAINS ABOUT DEMS FLYING ILLEGALS AROUND?!
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The Oath Keepers were among the far-fight groups involved in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building. And on May 25, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that two prominent figures in the militia group — founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and Kelly Meggs — had been sentenced to federal prison on seditious conspiracy charges.
But the Oath Keepers remain active in 2024. During an early November interview with Wired, Oath Keepers ally Jim Arroyo described preparations for a possible civil war.
Arroyo told Wired, "The election can certainly trigger a civil war, no different than it happened in any number of countries around the world. I'm training people to survive a civil war, to get out of the way, to stay home, stay off the grid, have enough supplies."
READ MORE:[Inside a Georgia election official’s months-long push to make it easier to challenge the 2024 results
Jim Arroyo and his wife Janet Arroyo operate the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, an Oath Keepers spinoff in Arizona. And both of them, according to Wired reporters David Gilbert and Tess Owen, believe that Democrats are planning to steal the 2024 election from GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Jim Arroyo told Wired, "They want to take him out so that he can't get back in the White House."
During the interview, Jim Arroyo claimed that the left is uniquely violent in the United States — and the Wired reporters noted the violence of January 6, 2021. But Jim Arroyo believes the debunked conspiracy theory that the January 6 rioters were undercover leftists.
Jim Arroyo told Wired, "The main concern right now is the potential of civil unrest because of the election. Whoever wins, one side's going to be pissed off, and the other side, the radical-left side, is going to be more pissed, and they're more known for burning cities to the ground when they don't get their way."
READ MORE:['Trump is toast': Why Michael Moore is 'confident' Harris will win
*Read Wired's full interview with Jim Arroyo at this link (subscription required).
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Charlie Kirk warns that if Democrats get power "we will have never before seen crusade and jihad against our nation's children." vid]
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an 11 24see wallnau anno
n September, theologian Robert P. Jones noted in a *Time* op-ed that Donald Trump' "nostalgic diatribes about reclaiming a lost white Christian past fueled his rise to presidential power, and he has continued this strategy in 2024."
Following the 2020 election, Gallup reported that the AP VoteCast survey revealed "that 81% of White evangelical Protestant voters went for Trump," while 18% supported President Joe Biden. Furthermore, "The Edison exit polls estimate that 76% of White evangelicals voted for Trump, 24% for Biden," the analytics company added.
Gene Bailey — the host of a YouTube show called FlashPoint —is determined to help Trump keep the support of Christians this election.
READ MORE:'They don’t see it coming': Christian nationalists’ 'Trojan horse' election plot exposed
In a Sunday, November 3 article, The Atlantic's Stephanie McCrummen reports that "hundreds of thousands of viewers" – three times a week — "stream their news directly from God" on the show, which "has emerged as the premier outlet for the most trusted prophets with the largest followings."
Having "watched hours and hours of episodes going back to its launch in September 2020" The Atlantic staff writer notes that "from the beginning, the show has framed politics as a great 'spiritual war,' launching "on the Victory Channel, a streaming platform and satellite-television network that is part of the well-funded empire of Kenneth Copeland, an old-guard televangelist in the multifaceted world of charismatic Christianity."
McCrummen adds, "Copeland himself never exactly belonged to the apostle-and-prophet crowd. But he was part of the broader mobilization of charismatic Christians behind Trump, and provided the most prominent prophets with the platform they needed to build a movement they likened to a new Great Awakening," like "Lance Wallnau, the chief marketer of the idea that God anointed Trump."
Wallnau likened "the march to the Capitol" on January 6 "as a 'giant Disney parade,' and said the violence had been carried out not by 'our people' but by antifa and Black Lives Matter, calling them 'the devil’s people,'" according to McCrummen.
READ MORE:[How Trump duped Christian nationalists: scholar
McCrummen reports:
*One of the many signs that FlashPoint is a departure from the usual televangelism is that the o in its logo looks like the view through a rifle scope. Another is that the audience is referred to as the 'FlashPoint Army.' A third is that the red phone is a hotline to Donald Trump. A fourth is that, sometimes, heaven sends not just news of the End Times, but earthly instructions. This was the case during the run-up to January 6, when FlashPoint was getting millions of views, and the prophets told the FlashPoint Army to claim the U.S. Capitol for God’s kingdom.
The Atlantic writer also notes:
*Bailey has interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Trump himself. Most important, the show has become a kind of command center for the people Trump refers to as 'my Christians.' In a sense, FlashPoint is where God’s memo goes out, which makes it all the more noteworthy that, in recent weeks, the prophecies have become more apocalyptic.
One pastor who appeared on the show, McCrummen writes, "cast himself as a reporter," and claimed "he confirmed that the FBI had a busload of antifa people come in and infiltrate the rally."
Hank, Kunnemen, who McCrummen report is "a prophet from Omaha," said during his appearance: "We have a responsibility to report what we hear from heaven."
READ MORE:[Have pro-Trump evangelicals have ditched 'theology' for 'identity'?
Bailey asked the Omaha prophet, "What’s God showing you?"
Kunnemen replied: "Big God, little devil. Big God, little corrupt Democrat rat. Big God, little Republican pathetic person that cannot stand for their democracy."
McCrummen notes, "People clapped. 'Here are your orders from heaven: Be strong, fear not … Your God will come with a vengeance,' Kunneman said, declaring FlashPoint to be 'part of the new spirit of truth in media that’s going to rise in the land.'"
READ MORE:[Even 'devout Christians' are appalled as OK mulls $3.3 million bid on 'Trump Bibles' for schools
*The Atlantic's full report is available at this link (subscription required).
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October 28, 2024, edition of Fox Business' Mornings with Maria Bartiromo
MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): Liz Peek, your reaction?
LIZ PEEK (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Well, I thought it was an extraordinary event, Maria, not just in terms of the crowd size because, by the way, there were also hundreds, if not thousands of people outside the arena who couldn't get in; so it really was an extraordinary thing.
And having the Democrats deride this event as a Hitler-like event really was so incredibly stupid after so many Democratic presidents have actually announced and accepted their nomination in Madison Square Garden and by the way, banners, flags of Israel were flying in this event; there were a lot of Hasidic Jews who showed up. So I mean — the reporting — I did flip back and forth to see what the liberal TV stations were showing about this, of course, it was all negative, it was all about racism and so forth but you know what? It was a great moment and I think people watching it on Fox News last night, which they could do throughout, came away thinking this is the party of inclusion.
Media Matters has reported:
During former President Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe attacked Puerto Rico, claiming it’s “literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean."
Although the remarks sparked outrage, numerous right-wing media figures have defended him. Some attacked critics for allegedly not having a sense of humor; others agreed that Puerto Rico is trash or dismissed Puerto Rico’s electoral relevance.
Here are numerous examples from the hours after Hinchcliffe made those racist remarks.
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Trump campaign troll Brenden Dilley is calling upon his "meme team" to "unleash their absolute dankest memes" in the closing days of the presidential campaign.
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see rod annot
a broad range of Christian Right, antigovernment and other far-right extremists will appear at the gun-toting, anti-LGBTQ Sanctuary Church’s Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in Greeley, Pennsylvania, from Oct. 8-10.
The event showcases a widening coalition intent on destabilizing democracy, with Pastor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, who in 2013 founded the Sanctuary Church, playing a prominent role, experts tell Hatewatch. Steve Bannon, Joey Gibson of the far-right Patriot Prayer group, former Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Saccone and pastors Dan Fisher and Gary Haskell, who want to revive a “Black Robed Regiment” of clergy to fight for “liberty,” are scheduled to speak.
People attend the “Rod of Iron Freedom Festival” on Oct. 12, 2019, in Greeley, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
John Lott, a discredited researcher who briefly served in the Justice Department and uses dubious research to claim undocumented immigrants commit more crime, and Richard Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association – a group that claims sheriffs have more power than the federal government – will also speak.
Steve Bannon, former political strategist for the Trump administration, departs from federal court in New York in August 2020. (Photo by Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
According to local news reports, thousands attended last year’s festival.
Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at social justice think tank Political Research Associates (PRA), told Hatewatch the Rod of Iron festival shows Moon’s influence, in spite of the spectacle of his church and concerns about it being a cult.
But the festival speakers list shows “it’s an organization with clout and influence,” Clarkson said.
‘Spiritual battle’
Rev. Hyung Jin "Sean" Moon poses with his gold AR-15 "rod of iron" at his home in Matamoras, Pennsylvania, in 2018. (Photo by Bryan Anselm/Redux for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Moon made inroads with the antigovernment movement and the far right thanks to his pro-Trump rhetoric and stance on firearms.
Rod of Iron is a staunchly pro-Second Amendment group. Moon made headlines in 2018 when he oversaw a blessing ceremony for Sanctuary Church members and their assault rifles, which Moon views as Biblical “rods of iron” to rule the coming heavenly kingdom built by his followers on earth.
Moon wears camouflage suits and a crown of bullets. During a 2018 interview, Moon told VICE News his appearance was “a little wacky” but “a fun way to talk about serious issues.”
These issues include calling left-wing politics “political Satanism,” telling his followers godly people “have to fight” communism, focusing on the “spiritual nature of the battle" to re-elect former President Donald Trump and claiming Capitol police and antifa made a deal to “instigate and try to make the Trumpers look bad” on Jan. 6.
Saccone will speak at the festival, but his topic is not stated on the festival’s website. Both Moon and Saccone attended the Jan. 6 protest that became an insurrection.
“We are storming the capitol,” Saccone said in a now-deleted Facebook post. “Our vanguard has broken through the barricades. We will save this nation. Are u with me?”
Former Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Saccone (left) waves to the crowd as former President Donald J. Trump speaks to supporters in 2018 in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
Saccone also posted a Jan. 6 photo with Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano, who has also appeared at Rod of Iron events, according to VICE.
None of the men face charges for attending the Jan. 6 protest.
Mastriano signed a letter in December 2020 asking the delegation to object to the state’s Electoral College votes cast in favor of President Joe Biden. Mastriano also traveled to Arizona to observe the Republican-controlled state Senate’s audit of ballots in the 2020 presidential election.
“Politics makes strange bedfellows sometimes,” Clarkson continued. “They need allies to go forward with undermining and seeking to discredit the validity of democratic institutions, making people lose confidence.”
Pro-Trump members of the Oath Keepers militia and Three Percenters also attended the insurrection. PRA said before the insurrection that militias’ “near lockstep support for Trump” could fashion them into a pro-Trump, anti-democratic paramilitary.
Moon leads his own group known as the Peace Police Peace Militia and trains followers in deadly force. Its political positions – including Patriot movement talking points about smaller government and local sovereignty – align with the broader antigovernment movement.
“They are organization with connections and significant power and able to play a pivotal role as an armed faction in the ongoing effort to destabilize democracy,” Clarkson said.
Cults and Christians
The speakers list also shows Rod of Iron’s reach into the Christian Right, in spite of its theological foundation.
The Sanctuary church is an offshoot of the Unification Church, which Moon’s father, Sun Myung Moon, founded in 1954. That church is based on unorthodox interpretations of Biblical texts. Sun Myung believed Christ did not complete his role as the Messiah because he died without starting a family, a necessary part of humanity’s path to salvation.
Sun Myung said Jesus passed him the role of savior. He married his second wife, Hak Ja Han, in 1960. Unification Church members refer to them as the “True Parents” who will redeem humanity.
Many consider the Unification Church a cult due to its control over members’ lifestyles. Teddy Hose and Lisa Kohn, both former Unification Church members who grew up close to the Moon family, told Hatewatch they consider it a cult.
Sun Myung chose Sean as his successor in 2010, two years before his death. Moon separated from the main church in 2012 over disagreements with his mother, Hak Ja Han, who took leadership of the Unification Church. However, Moon still holds his father as a returned Messiah.
Janja Lalich, a cult expert and professor emeritus of California State University, Chico, told Hatewatch she considers the Sanctuary Church “a cult” and Rod of Iron Ministries a “troublesome movement.”
That has not stopped conservative Christian pastors from associating with Moon. Fisher and Haskell are both pastors at churches that hold Christ as the Messiah.
They call for a revival of the “Black Robed Regiment,” a group of New England pastors who fought the British in the American Revolution. The calls mirror present-day antigovernment extremist remarks about tyrannical government.
Fisher’s biography on the Rod of Iron website calls the original Black Robed Regiment “Patriot Pastors … who preached the biblical principles of liberty and government.”
Moon supports the regiment and wears a Black Robed Regiment patch on his vest.
Haskell’s biography says, “Our American Revolution would have never happened if it were not for the pastors in New England.”
The mixture of Christian pastors and far-right, antigovernment groups under the Rod of Iron banner “is disturbing,” said Jonathan Den Hartog, a scholar who specializes in American political and religious history and serves as chair of the history department at Samford University, a private Christian university in Birmingham, Alabama.
Further, stories about the Black Robed Regiment have little grounding in reality, according to Den Hartog.
“There was no such thing as an official ‘Black Robe Regiment’ in the revolution. … There were individual pastors who were involved in various ways,” he told Hatewatch.
There were some who preached in favor of war, Den Hartog said. Still, pastors of the revolutionary era gave few sermons in direct opposition to the British, and apart from those, “There aren’t any other calls for violence,” Den Hartog explained. “In fact, it’s the exact opposite, that the solidarity in opposition should remain relatively peaceful.”
Former Oath Keepers chaplain and Black Robed Regiment supporter Pastor Chuck Baldwin delivered a sermon to antigovernment forces at the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014. Cliven Bundy and hundreds of armed antigovernment extremists held off federal agents who attempted to collect over $1 million in owed fees.
A federal grand jury indicted Bundy on 16 counts related to the 41-day standoff in 2016, including conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States. A jury found him not guilty on all counts on Oct. 27, 2016. The jury’s decision shocked court watchers.
At least one group scheduled to appear at the festival regularly participates in violence. Patriot Prayer – which considers itself a Christian group – regularly planned protests in the Pacific Northwest that devolved into clashes with left-wing counterprotesters.
Joey Gibson, leader of Patriot Prayer, leads a group of "alt-right" demonstrators in August 2019 in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
Gibson, the group’s leader, has said, “Everyone should be carrying around guns at all times.” Reggie Axtell, a Patriot Prayer associate, threatened Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, saying, “I promise you this, Ted Wheeler: I’m coming for you, you little punk.” Skylor Jernigan, an attendee of several Patriot Prayer events, made threats toward antifa on a Facebook video: “You’re gonna be getting knives put into your throat. You’re going to be getting bullets put into your head.”
Moon claims his militia and arms are only for self-defense.
But Den Hartog expressed concern over Rod of Iron’s armed training, along with the other speakers at the festival, given their antigovernment beliefs.
He concluded: “Are they talking about violence, are they talking about armed resistance? If you begin to see those types of discussion, that’s where I would be very concerned.”
Hatewatch sent a request for comment to the Sanctuary Church. Regis Hanna, media coordinator for the Freedom Festival, responded.
Hanna said festival speakers were “PRO-democracy.” Regarding concerns about Moon and attendees attending the Jan. 6 protest, Hanna said the actions of thousands of rioters “should not reflect poorly on those who attended and behaved in a respectful, peaceful and honorable manner.”
Hanna declined to comment on accusations that the Sanctuary Church is a cult.
Pastors Fisher and Haskell did not respond to Hatewatch’s request for comment, sent via email and through the website of the church where Haskell preaches.
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10/23/24 MMA
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Right-wing media falsely suggest Donald Trump chartered a plane for Nelson Mandela out of the goodness of his heart
Trump’s airline was already up for sale due to financial troubles, and he charged Mandela $130,000 to use one of his jets
Written by Courtney Hagle
Published 10/18/24 mma
In an October 18 interview with Donald Trump, Fox host George “Tyrus” Murdoch praised the former president for chartering a plane for the late South Africa President Nelson Mandela in the 1990s, adding that it’s “hard” for Trump to “talk about the good things you’ve done.” Some others in conservative media joined in, suggesting that Trump assisted Mandela for the sake of generosity and goodwill.
In reality, as Washington Post columnist Glenn Kessler explained, the plane chartered for Mandela was not Trump’s personal private jet but a Boeing 727 from Trump Shuttle, “an airline that Trump briefly owned before it was essentially seized by the banks because he failed to make payments on his loans.” Kessler noted that Mandela was charged $130,000 to use the plane by Trump Shuttle, which was already in financial trouble and was preparing to be sold.
Speaking to Trump in an OutKick vid] titled “Manhood is under ATTACK!” Tyrus said Mandela “was trying to come to the United States. The United States government wasn’t helping him, no one was helping him. You chartered a 727 plane for the entire trip. … Why is it hard for you to talk about the things you've done?”
Trump responded humbly: “I love doing it. I don't need praise for it.”
“I just like helping people,” he added. “I help a lot of people, and I enjoy doing it, and I never talk about it. … It's not a narrative the press likes to talk about.”
Some right-wing media joined in, lauding Trump’s generosity after the Trump campaign pushed the clip.
Turning Point USA co-founder and podcaster Charlie Kirk claimed that Trump helped Mandela “when the US Government wouldn’t,” adding, “He doesn’t go around bragging about his good deeds, but there are endless such stories.”
Students for Trump Chair Ryan Fournier wrote: “I had no idea Trump chartered a plane for Nelson Mandela to come to the United States when our own government wouldn't even help him. Trump is a good man.”
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Image: Audience reacts to Donald Trump at town Hall meeting; Univision
Donald Trump isn't used to stepping outside of his fawning MAGA bubble. And he most likely thought Univision viewers were a sycophantic subset of his adoring inner circle. But yikes, the disgusted reactions coming from his mostly Latino audience last night told a different story.
Responding to a 56-year-old construction worker and former Republican who asked Trump to "win back my vote," the ex-president did quite the opposite.
Watch the expressions of contempt and disbelief coming from the folks at the Univision-hosted town hall meeting as Trump repeated his standard pandemic, election fraud, and J6 lies — including the preposterous line that January 6 was "a day of love." With arms crossed, eyebrows raised, and looks of sheer skepticism, I'd say this was certainly not a night of love. (See video below, posted by Meidas Touch.)
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total shameless rubber projection
mma 10 24
October 7, 2024, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
JESSE WATTERS (HOST): What drives them crazy is that they can't control you. And it's why they're trying to silence Donald Trump by any means necessary because his success is an indictment of them, their incompetence, their sedition, their authoritarianism. This election's a battle for survival. It's not just about Trump. It's about the future of the country and whether it will remain free and fair as it was founded.
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CNN 19 24
A North Carolina man was arrested over the weekend for allegedly threatening harm against FEMA employees responding to Hurricane Helene, according to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office.
William Jacob Parsons, 44, was arrested and charged with Going Armed to the Terror of the Public, a misdemeanor, Capt. Jamie Keever said in a news release issued Monday.
“Parsons was armed with a handgun and a rifle,” Keever said.
William Jacob Parsons
Rutherford County Sheriff's Office
The sheriff’s office began investigating Saturday after receiving a call that a man “made the comment about possibly harming FEMA employees working after the disaster of Hurricane Helene in the Lake Lure and Chimney Rock area.”
Parsons was found later that day after investigators received information about the color and license plate of his vehicle, according to the sheriff’s office.
Parsons was arrested in his car outside a grocery store that is functioning as a storm relief site, Keever said.
Parsons is now free on a $10,000 secured bond, the sheriff’s office said.
It was not immediately clear if Parsons had an attorney. CNN was unable to reach Parsons Monday at any of the phone numbers listed in his name.
Threat caused some FEMA offices to close
Aid to several communities impacted by Hurricane Helene was temporarily paused in parts of North Carolina over the weekend due to reports of threats against Federal Emergency Management Agency responders, amid a backdrop of misinformation about responses to recent storms.
Some FEMA teams helping disaster survivors apply for assistance in rural North Carolina are currently working at secure disaster recovery centers in counties where federal workers are receiving threats, a FEMA spokesperson told CNN on Monday.
“For the safety of our dedicated staff and the disaster survivors we are helping, FEMA has made some operational adjustments,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Disaster Recovery Centers will continue to be open as scheduled, survivors continue to register for assistance, and we continue to help the people of North Carolina with their recovery.”
[
Related articleHow to apply for FEMA aid after Hurricanes Helene and Milton](https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/11/politics/fema-aid-how-to-apply)
On Saturday, FEMA workers had to halt their work in Rutherford County due to reports National Guard troops saw “armed militia” threatening the workers, CNN affiliate WBTV confirmed after reviewing messages sent to employees of a FEMA contractor. The threats were first reported by the Washington Post.
In the announcement of Parsons’ arrest, Keever said, “It was determined Parsons acted alone and there were no truck loads of militia going to Lake Lure.”
Rutherford County is southeast of the hard-hit Asheville area, and part of the mountainous region slammed by deadly flooding and landslides as Helene carved a path of destruction through the Southeast after making landfall in Florida last month. More than 100 people were killed in North Carolina and thousands of others were left grappling with catastrophic damage.
“We are aware of significant misinformation online and reports of threats to response workers on the ground and the safety of responders must be taken seriously,” said Jordan Monaghan, deputy communications director for North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper. “The Governor has directed the Department of Public Safety to identify with local law enforcement the specific threats and rumors and coordinate with FEMA and other partners to ensure safety and security as this recovery effort continues.”
Some FEMA operations were also paused Sunday in Ashe County, near the borders of Tennessee and Virginia, out of an abundance of caution, Sheriff B. Phil Howell said on Facebook. This included in-person applications for aid in at least two locations “due to threats occurring in some counties,” according to the county’s emergency management office. Those locations reopened Monday, the sheriff and emergency management office announced.
Howell urged residents to “stay calm and steady during our recovery, help folks and please don’t stir the pot.”
FEMA interruptions delay aid to victims
The delays to in-person work by FEMA will only slow down aid from reaching those who need it, especially in the complex terrain of western North Carolina, former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate told CNN.
Disaster applicants can start the process online and receive partial aid, but FEMA officials need to see the damage in person to finalize the request and get money into the hands of disaster survivors faster.
“Ultimately, they’re going to have to get inspectors in there and that could slow things down for people,” Fugate said. “Getting into these areas to verify this is where people live, this is their home, validate the damages caused by the disaster.”
FEMA continues to assess potential threats to its staff in impacted areas and the agency is coordinating with local officials on the safety of its employees and will make future adjustments as needed, the spokesperson said.
There were more than 1,200 FEMA staff providing support in North Carolina as of Saturday, according to an update from the agency. More than 250 Urban Search and Rescue personnel remained in the field and had rescued or supported more than 3,200 survivors, the update said.
Misinformation ‘unlike anything we’ve seen before’
Misinformation circulating about the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton has hampered response efforts to the storms, CNN previously reported. President Joe Biden requested information last week on the federal government’s digital response, including how officials were remediating misinformation, an administration official said.
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Related articleInside the White House’s desperate scramble to swat down hurricane misinformation](https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/09/politics/white-house-hurricane-helene-misinformation)
“The contours of this misinformation are unlike anything we’ve seen before,” a senior Biden administration official told CNN.
Fugate said individual FEMA personnel have received threats in the past but on a much smaller scale.
“In the field, it’s rare,” Fugate said. “This is unprecedented. I know we’ve had individuals but not an area or a group that’s threatening FEMA.”
Senior US officials have instructed public affairs teams at federal agencies to ramp up social media posts from government accounts with photos illustrating how federal workers are clearing debris and dispensing aid, a US official familiar with the effort said.
Earlier this month, the public information officer for Rutherford County, Kerry Giles, told CNN, debunking the rumors “did consume resources that could have been more effectively utilized in the recovery efforts.” Rutherford and surrounding counties have been posting photos and information about aid efforts to combat the misinformation.
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if apply fema they will take your property, also musk
'This has to stop': FEMA administrator begs Trump to knock off 'completely false' rumors
an 10 24
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rs
...real* Florida family walking through floodwaters as they return home after Hurricane Helene. AP
There has been no shortage of gut-wrenching photographs from communities in the southeast devastated by Hurricane Helene, which caused extreme flooding and killed at least 215 people — pictures of houses destroyed, families trapped on rooftops, wreckage from mudslides and roads washed out by torrential rains. But rather than focus on the actual victims or damage, many right-wing influencers and politicians have extended their sympathies to a nonexistent girl and her puppy (who is also not real).
The AI-generated image they’re sharing depicts a crying girl in a boat, seemingly alone except for the little dog she’s clutching. She wears a lifejacket and appears to be adrift on floodwaters caused by a major storm. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah posted the picture on X on Thursday, writing “Caption this photo,” apparently inviting his followers to vent their outrage at the Biden-Harris administration for allowing American children to suffer such misery on their watch. After users pointed out that he’d fallen for AI slop, he deleted the picture. (The image originated on the Trump web forum Patriots.win, where several users immediately recognized it as the product of an AI model.)
Others, however, have left the misleading picture up on their social media accounts — and some are defending it as an accurate representation of Helene’s effects even though it’s fake. Far-right conspiracy theorist and Donald Trump associate Laura Loomer called the image “sad,” quote-tweeting a post from Buzz Patterson, columnist for the conservative blog RedState, who wrote of the picture: “Our government has failed us again.” Neither have taken their posts down as of press time. Amy Kremer, RNC National Committeewoman for the Georgia GOP and co-founder of Women for Trump, tweeted on Thursday that the image had been “seared into my mind.”
Informed that she was not looking at an authentic photo, Kremer doubled down. “Y’all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter,” she replied. “There are people going through much worse than what is shown in this pic. So I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now.”
A large anonymous blue-check account on X that routinely attacks Democrats did remove the picture but similarly argued: “Even though that image was AI, it spoke a truth about the disregard Harris and Biden have for ordinary Americans, as evidenced by their criminal non-response to Helene.” Another X user posted a since-deleted screenshot of a more succinct response from an apparent family member advised that the image was bogus. “Who cares,” they answered.
The little girl and her puppy — there are AI-generated variants of the more viral image floating around as well — have been widely presented by MAGA world as evidence of a failed disaster response in the aftermath of Helene. Similar fake images depict girls or women clutching Bibles as floods rage around them. Trump himself is pushing lies about the U.S. government not being able to fund relief efforts, adding an overtone of racism with the groundless claim that the White House “stole” money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and “spent it all on illegal migrants.” (The irony being that in 2019, the Trump administration itself redirected millions in disaster funds, during hurricane season, to pay for detention centers at the border.)
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an 10 24
a longtime supporter and former adviser to Donald Trump was admonished "Don't do this" and to stop "yelling" when he want off on a rant about the Jan. 6 insurrection.
With the Jan. 6 riot taking center stage once again in the wake of a filing from special counsel Jack Smith accusing the former president of criminal acts, host Jim Acosta, Democratic strategist Karen Finney and conservative David Urban ended up engaging in a contentious debate that went off the rails when Urban claimed MAGA fan Ashli Babbitt was "murdered."
After Urban was told he was "moving the goalposts" to justify Trump's loss to President Joe Biden, Acosta bluntly told the conservative, "The last election was fine – he lost."
ALSO READ:The secret weapon Republicans use to win elections
When Finney added, "There are dangerous consequences because the president lied. People died on Jan. 6," Urban fired back.
"The only person who died on Jan. 6 was Ashli Babbitt who was murdered," he accused. "That's the only person who died, let's be straight, Karen, on Jan. 6."
When both Finney and Acosta attempted to push back, Urban shouted, "I'm not trying to minimize it," as Acosta said, "C'mon, let's not do that one."
"Jim, Jim!" the conservative guest yelled. "It's terrible, right?"
"David, David, none of that would have happened if Donald Trump had just been a man and accepted the election results in 2020," Acosta explained as Urban talked over him. "Just man up, that's it – that's the whole ballgame."
"Do you accept personal responsibility is the key in life?" Urban asked as Finney looked on in puzzlement. "When you were a kid and your mom said when you were out with your friends and you did something, you said, 'Well, Billy made me do it, mom,' she would. have said, 'I don't care what Billy did.' You know better and your mom taught you better."
"The people who broke into the Capitol, they're responsible for their activities, not Donald Trump, not my dog made me do it," he ranted as Acosta tried to reply.
"Okay," Finney interceded as she reached out for Urban's arm. "We don't have to yell, we don't have to yell."
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mma
right-wing media falsely and dishonestly claim that Hurricane Helene survivors are only entitled to $750 in aid
According to FEMA, survivors can also qualify for “tens of thousands more dollars” in disaster-related financial assistance
Written by Alicia Sadowski & Isabella Corrao
Published 10/04/24
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, right-wing media falsely claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration are ignoring millions of Americans impacted by intense flooding. Media personalities and MAGA influencers have falsely and dishonestly claimed that victims are only entitled to $750 in aid, when in reality that is just the start of federal benefits.
FEMA can provide assistance for victims of Hurricane Helene, but chronic underfunding and climate change, not undocumented migrants, threaten future aid availability
- In addition to FEMA providing residents of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia with “a one-time $750 payment to help with essential items like food, water, baby formula and other emergency supplies,” victims can also qualify for “disaster-related financial assistance to repair storm-related damage to homes and replace personal property.” After visiting the wreckage in Georgia, Harris reiterated that “FEMA is also providing tens of thousands more dollars for folks to help them be able to deal with home repair, to be able to cover a deductible when and if they have insurance, and also hotel costs.” The White House, [10/2/24, 10/2/24]
- After President Joe Biden signed a stopgap spending bill in September, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said FEMA can properly respond to Helene recovery efforts. FEMA spokesperson Daniel Llargués said that FEMA is in a “good position” to respond to Hurricane Helene relief efforts after the agency received $20.3 billion under the spending bill. Biden has suggested bringing lawmakers back to Washington to provide additional funding for disaster relief, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has claimed “there’s no necessity for Congress to come back”. The New York Times, [9/26/24, 10/2/24; Roll Call, 10/3/24; FEMA, 10/3/24]
- Future concerns for FEMA’s funding are attributable to chronic underfunding by Congress and increased costs associated with extreme weather disturbance as a result of climate change, not aid given to undocumented immigrants. Mayorkas warned that FEMA “does not have the funds to make it through the [hurricane] season.” A DHS spokesperson clarified, however, that aid provided to undocumented immigrants through the Shelter and Services Program is “a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA's disaster-related authorities or funding streams." The Associated Press, [10/3/24; Axios, 7/14/23; Bipartisan Policy Center, 7/23/24; Newsweek, 10/3/24]
- ### Fox News personalities grossly misled viewers about federal aid that Helene survivors are entitled to
- Fox’s misleading coverage of $750 payment was “one of the more dishonest omissions ever seen on Fox News – which is saying something.” Mediaite columnist Michael Luciano wrote of the misleading attack by Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, and Laura Ingraham. Watters and Ingraham aired misleading clips from a speech by VP Kamala Harris suggesting that $750 was the only benefit survivors were entitled to, while Harris continued explaining that it was just the start of substantial federal aid. Hannity described the aid efforts in similarly dishonest terms:
To wit, on Thursday, Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters aired a clip of Vice President Kamala Harris speaking in hurricane-ravaged Georgia the previous day. As Harris spoke on Ingraham’s show, the Fox News chyron read, “Kamala: Here’s $750 that’ll do the trick.”
…
As X/Twitter super-poster Acyn Torbai noted in the video below, Fox News actually carried Harris’s speech live the previous day. The vice president explained that the $750 is just the beginning of the assistance available to impacted residents. Mediaite, [10/3/24]
- After cutting off the video of Harris in Georgia before her promise of “tens of thousands more dollars” in aid, Fox host Laura Ingraham claimed that all victims are “getting right now is a $750 check … from the federal government — the government you’ve been sending taxes to your entire life.” She asked, “Did Joe and Kamala care more about the millions of illegals coming across our border than the people struggling in the storm-ravaged Southeast?” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [10/3/24]
- Fox host Jesse Watters lamented that Vice President Harris is “tossing a few hundred bucks at people who lost everything.” He continued, “$750. Democrats sent checks for thousands of dollars during COVID. Thousands. None of those people had their homes swept away by floodwaters.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [10/2/24]
- Watters told Fox News guest and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that “Kamala Harris throwing $750 at people who lost everything — their homes, their family, their cats, their dogs, everything” is “insulting.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [10/2/24]
- Watters scoffed: “$750 per person in America after you lost your entire home, all of your belongings, and you have no food, power, or water.” He complained, “When American citizens — the ones who were born here and pay taxes — deserve help, Biden and Harris are saying, ‘Ah, sorry, we give it all away to the people who broke into the country.’” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [10/3/24]
- Sean Hannity blamed FEMA’s lack of funds on its provision of “free food, housing, health care, education, sex-change surgeries, debit cards, four-star hotels” to undocumented immigrants while Helene victims get “a lousy … $750.” “They've been completely abandoned by your border czar, who prioritized her unvetted illegal immigrants over the American people.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [10/3/24]
- On his radio show, Hannity claimed that Hurricane Helene victims are receiving “a mere $750 one-time payment from FEMA because they gave all of it to Harris-Biden unvetted illegal immigrants.” He continued, “What about the people whose entire lives have been upended here? And that’s all you’re going to offer them? Is a mere 750 bucks a week after the event happened?” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [10/3/24]
- Fox anchor John Roberts complained that the $750 payment would not be effective. He said, “If they really wanted to help people out, they’d be going up and down the street with hundred dollar bills and handing them out to folks that need to buy things immediately, and, as well, doing everything that they can to get supplies to them.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [10/3/24]
- ### MAGA media figures inaccurately blamed migrants for taking FEMA funds and lied about Helene victims only receiving a one-time $750 payment
* Anti-Muslim activist Brigitte Gabriel claimed that victims of Hurricane Helene would get “$750” but that a “criminal thug from South America” would get “a 4-star hotel with credit cards.” She posted, “If you lost your entire house during Hurricane Helene, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will give you $750. If you are a criminal thug from South America and cross the border illegally through Mexico, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will put you up in a 4-star hotel with credit cards.” Twitter/X, [10/3/24]
- The Federalist’s Sean Davis posted that victims are not receiving aid because FEMA is “refusing to provide because you spent all the money on illegals.” Twitter/X, [10/3/24]
- Former Trump adviser and frequent Fox guest Stephen Miller’s America First Legal posted that “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season” but “spent over $1 BILLION in taxpayer dollars on providing housing and services to illegal aliens.” The group also inaccurately wrote that, “Kamala announces victims of Hurricane Helene will get only $750.” Twitter/X, [10/3/24]
- Townhall’s Dustin Grage repeated, “FEMA is out of cash because of illegals.”Twitter/X, [10/3/24]
- Fox News contributor Sara Carter posted, “Yes, Harris and Biden did - they stole FEMA money from Americans and then abandoned them.” She called it “tragic and disgusting.” Twitter/X, [10/3/24]
- Right-wing conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich claimed Mayorkas “laundered all of the money to open borders NGO’s.” Twitter/X, [10/3/24]
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October 3, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Five
GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): They're trying to revive the corpse of January 6.
I have to say, though, this is an improvement over 2020, because in this case this election interference is done right in front of you, you know, from a combination of lawfare and the media embrace. You've got to go back to February 4th, 2021, when Time magazine published an article boasting of the conspiracy of business titans and left-wing activists to oppose what they called Trump's assault on democracy.
You know, they described it as a vast shadow effort, an organized collection of operatives that changed voting systems and laws, secured hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private funding. They recruited, you know, armies of poll workers, got millions to vote by mail. Then they went after disinformation, they pressured social media companies, they called that election protection.
So we -- Republicans, Independents, libertarians -- were suspicious when we're told that our side or the person we support is an existential risk. We were told that everything was on the table. That in fact, if you didn't cheat, that would be immoral. So what they did was they suppressed Hunter's laptop, which ushered in Joe's ill-gotten victory. So the suspicion of a rigged election is more than justified, because you told us that. You told us what you were going to do. So I think that's an important context when you approach January 6. It wasn't an attempt to overthrow the government, it was just like, 'We're just reacting to what you guys said.'
mma
ref
The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election
By Molly Ball xitter
February 4, 2021
A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing.
The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence.
Instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the response was not mass action but crickets. When media organizations called the race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the U.S. to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump’s ouster.
A second odd thing happened amid Trump’s attempts to reverse the result: corporate America turned on him. Hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, called on him to concede. To the President, something felt amiss. “It was all very, very strange,” Trump said on Dec. 2. “Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.”
In a way, Trump was right.
There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.
The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.
Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.
They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.
For Trump and his allies were running their own campaign to spoil the election. The President spent months insisting that mail ballots were a Democratic plot and the election would be “rigged.” His henchmen at the state level sought to block their use, while his lawyers brought dozens of spurious suits to make it more difficult to vote–an intensification of the GOP’s legacy of suppressive tactics. Before the election, Trump plotted to block a legitimate vote count. And he spent the months following Nov. 3 trying to steal the election he’d lost–with lawsuits and conspiracy theories, pressure on state and local officials, and finally summoning his army of supporters to the Jan. 6 rally that ended in deadly violence at the Capitol.
The democracy campaigners watched with alarm. “Every week, we felt like we were in a struggle to try to pull off this election without the country going through a real dangerous moment of unraveling,” says former GOP Representative Zach Wamp, a Trump supporter who helped coordinate a bipartisan election-protection council. “We can look back and say this thing went pretty well, but it was not at all clear in September and October that that was going to be the case.”
Biden fans in Philadelphia after the race was called on Nov. 7Michelle Gustafson for TIME
This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”
That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.
THE ARCHITECT
Sometime in the fall of 2019, Mike Podhorzer became convinced the election was headed for disaster–and determined to protect it.
This was not his usual purview. For nearly a quarter-century, Podhorzer, senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union federation, has marshaled the latest tactics and data to help its favored candidates win elections. Unassuming and professorial, he isn’t the sort of hair-gelled “political strategist” who shows up on cable news. Among Democratic insiders, he’s known as the wizard behind some of the biggest advances in political technology in recent decades. A group of liberal strategists he brought together in the early 2000s led to the creation of the Analyst Institute, a secretive firm that applies scientific methods to political campaigns. He was also involved in the founding of Catalist, the flagship progressive data company.
The endless chatter in Washington about “political strategy,” Podhorzer believes, has little to do with how change really gets made. “My basic take on politics is that it’s all pretty obvious if you don’t overthink it or swallow the prevailing frameworks whole,” he once wrote. “After that, just relentlessly identify your assumptions and challenge them.” Podhorzer applies that approach to everything: when he coached his now adult son’s Little League team in the D.C. suburbs, he trained the boys not to swing at most pitches–a tactic that infuriated both their and their opponents’ parents, but won the team a series of championships.
Trump’s election in 2016–credited in part to his unusual strength among the sort of blue collar white voters who once dominated the AFL-CIO–prompted Podhorzer to question his assumptions about voter behavior. He began circulating weekly number-crunching memos to a small circle of allies and hosting strategy sessions in D.C. But when he began to worry about the election itself, he didn’t want to seem paranoid. It was only after months of research that he introduced his concerns in his newsletter in October 2019. The usual tools of data, analytics and polling would not be sufficient in a situation where the President himself was trying to disrupt the election, he wrote. “Most of our planning takes us through Election Day,” he noted. “But, we are not prepared for the two most likely outcomes”–Trump losing and refusing to concede, and Trump winning the Electoral College (despite losing the popular vote) by corrupting the voting process in key states. “We desperately need to systematically ‘red-team’ this election so that we can anticipate and plan for the worst we know will be coming our way.”
It turned out Podhorzer wasn’t the only one thinking in these terms. He began to hear from others eager to join forces. The Fight Back Table, a coalition of “resistance” organizations, had begun scenario-planning around the potential for a contested election, gathering liberal activists at the local and national level into what they called the Democracy Defense Coalition. Voting-rights and civil rights organizations were raising alarms. A group of former elected officials was researching emergency powers they feared Trump might exploit. Protect Democracy was assembling a bipartisan election-crisis task force. “It turned out that once you said it out loud, people agreed,” Podhorzer says, “and it started building momentum.”
He spent months pondering scenarios and talking to experts. It wasn’t hard to find liberals who saw Trump as a dangerous dictator, but Podhorzer was careful to steer clear of hysteria. What he wanted to know was not how American democracy was dying but how it might be kept alive. The chief difference between the U.S. and countries that lost their grip on democracy, he concluded, was that America’s decentralized election system couldn’t be rigged in one fell swoop. That presented an opportunity to shore it up.
THE ALLIANCE
On March 3, Podhorzer drafted a three-page confidential memo titled “Threats to the 2020 Election.” “Trump has made it clear that this will not be a fair election, and that he will reject anything but his own re-election as ‘fake’ and rigged,” he wrote. “On Nov. 3, should the media report otherwise, he will use the right-wing information system to establish his narrative and incite his supporters to protest.” The memo laid out four categories of challenges: attacks on voters, attacks on election administration, attacks on Trump’s political opponents and “efforts to reverse the results of the election.”
Then COVID-19 erupted at the height of the primary-election season. Normal methods of voting were no longer safe for voters or the mostly elderly volunteers who normally staff polling places. But political disagreements, intensified by Trump’s crusade against mail voting, prevented some states from making it easier to vote absentee and for jurisdictions to count those votes in a timely manner. Chaos ensued. Ohio shut down in-person voting for its primary, leading to minuscule turnout. A poll-worker shortage in Milwaukee–where Wisconsin’s heavily Democratic Black population is concentrated–left just five open polling places, down from 182. In New York, vote counting took more than a month.
Suddenly, the potential for a November meltdown was obvious. In his apartment in the D.C. suburbs, Podhorzer began working from his laptop at his kitchen table, holding back-to-back Zoom meetings for hours a day with his network of contacts across the progressive universe: the labor movement; the institutional left, like Planned Parenthood and Greenpeace; resistance groups like Indivisible and MoveOn; progressive data geeks and strategists, representatives of donors and foundations, state-level grassroots organizers, racial-justice activists and others.
In April, Podhorzer began hosting a weekly 2½-hour Zoom. It was structured around a series of rapid-fire five-minute presentations on everything from which ads were working to messaging to legal strategy. The invitation-only gatherings soon attracted hundreds, creating a rare shared base of knowledge for the fractious progressive movement. “At the risk of talking trash about the left, there’s not a lot of good information sharing,” says Anat Shenker-Osorio, a close Podhorzer friend whose poll-tested messaging guidance shaped the group’s approach. “There’s a lot of not-invented-here syndrome, where people won’t consider a good idea if they didn’t come up with it.”
The meetings became the galactic center for a constellation of operatives across the left who shared overlapping goals but didn’t usually work in concert. The group had no name, no leaders and no hierarchy, but it kept the disparate actors in sync. “Pod played a critical behind-the-scenes role in keeping different pieces of the movement infrastructure in communication and aligned,” says Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. “You have the litigation space, the organizing space, the political people just focused on the W, and their strategies aren’t always aligned. He allowed this ecosystem to work together.”
Protecting the election would require an effort of unprecedented scale. As 2020 progressed, it stretched to Congress, Silicon Valley and the nation’s statehouses. It drew energy from the summer’s racial-justice protests, many of whose leaders were a key part of the liberal alliance. And eventually it reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans appalled by his attacks on democracy.
SECURING THE VOTE
The first task was overhauling America’s balky election infrastructure–in the middle of a pandemic. For the thousands of local, mostly nonpartisan officials who administer elections, the most urgent need was money. They needed protective equipment like masks, gloves and hand sanitizer. They needed to pay for postcards letting people know they could vote absentee–or, in some states, to mail ballots to every voter. They needed additional staff and scanners to process ballots.
In March, activists appealed to Congress to steer COVID relief money to election administration. Led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, more than 150 organizations signed a letter to every member of Congress seeking $2 billion in election funding. It was somewhat successful: the CARES Act, passed later that month, contained $400 million in grants to state election administrators. But the next tranche of relief funding didn’t add to that number. It wasn’t going to be enough.
Private philanthropy stepped into the breach. An assortment of foundations contributed tens of millions in election-administration funding. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative chipped in $300 million. “It was a failure at the federal level that 2,500 local election officials were forced to apply for philanthropic grants to fill their needs,” says Amber McReynolds, a former Denver election official who heads the nonpartisan National Vote at Home Institute.
McReynolds’ two-year-old organization became a clearinghouse for a nation struggling to adapt. The institute gave secretaries of state from both parties technical advice on everything from which vendors to use to how to locate drop boxes. Local officials are the most trusted sources of election information, but few can afford a press secretary, so the institute distributed communications tool kits. In a presentation to Podhorzer’s group, McReynolds detailed the importance of absentee ballots for shortening lines at polling places and preventing an election crisis.
The institute’s work helped 37 states and D.C. bolster mail voting. But it wouldn’t be worth much if people didn’t take advantage. Part of the challenge was logistical: each state has different rules for when and how ballots should be requested and returned. The Voter Participation Center, which in a normal year would have supported local groups deploying canvassers door-to-door to get out the vote, instead conducted focus groups in April and May to find out what would get people to vote by mail. In August and September, it sent ballot applications to 15 million people in key states, 4.6 million of whom returned them. In mailings and digital ads, the group urged people not to wait for Election Day. “All the work we have done for 17 years was built for this moment of bringing democracy to people’s doorsteps,” says Tom Lopach, the center’s CEO.
The effort had to overcome heightened skepticism in some communities. Many Black voters preferred to exercise their franchise in person or didn’t trust the mail. National civil rights groups worked with local organizations to get the word out that this was the best way to ensure one’s vote was counted. In Philadelphia, for example, advocates distributed “voting safety kits” containing masks, hand sanitizer and informational brochures. “We had to get the message out that this is safe, reliable, and you can trust it,” says Hannah Fried of All Voting Is Local.
At the same time, Democratic lawyers battled a historic tide of pre-election litigation. The pandemic intensified the parties’ usual tangling in the courts. But the lawyers noticed something else as well. “The litigation brought by the Trump campaign, of a piece with the broader campaign to sow doubt about mail voting, was making novel claims and using theories no court has ever accepted,” says Wendy Weiser, a voting-rights expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. “They read more like lawsuits designed to send a message rather than achieve a legal outcome.”
In the end, nearly half the electorate cast ballots by mail in 2020, practically a revolution in how people vote. About a quarter voted early in person. Only a quarter of voters cast their ballots the traditional way: in person on Election Day.
THE DISINFORMATION DEFENSE
Bad actors spreading false information is nothing new. For decades, campaigns have grappled with everything from anonymous calls claiming the election has been rescheduled to fliers spreading nasty smears about candidates’ families. But Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories, the viral force of social media and the involvement of foreign meddlers made disinformation a broader, deeper threat to the 2020 vote.
Laura Quinn, a veteran progressive operative who co-founded Catalist, began studying this problem a few years ago. She piloted a nameless, secret project, which she has never before publicly discussed, that tracked disinformation online and tried to figure out how to combat it. One component was tracking dangerous lies that might otherwise spread unnoticed. Researchers then provided information to campaigners or the media to track down the sources and expose them.
The most important takeaway from Quinn’s research, however, was that engaging with toxic content only made it worse. “When you get attacked, the instinct is to push back, call it out, say, ‘This isn’t true,'” Quinn says. “But the more engagement something gets, the more the platforms boost it. The algorithm reads that as, ‘Oh, this is popular; people want more of it.'”
The solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place. “The platforms have policies against certain types of malign behavior, but they haven’t been enforcing them,” she says.
Quinn’s research gave ammunition to advocates pushing social media platforms to take a harder line. In November 2019, Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home, where they warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked. “It took pushing, urging, conversations, brainstorming, all of that to get to a place where we ended up with more rigorous rules and enforcement,” says Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others. (Gupta has been nominated for Associate Attorney General by President Biden.) “It was a struggle, but we got to the point where they understood the problem. Was it enough? Probably not. Was it later than we wanted? Yes. But it was really important, given the level of official disinformation, that they had those rules in place and were tagging things and taking them down.”
SPREADING THE WORD
Beyond battling bad information, there was a need to explain a rapidly changing election process. It was crucial for voters to understand that despite what Trump was saying, mail-in votes weren’t susceptible to fraud and that it would be normal if some states weren’t finished counting votes on election night.
Dick Gephardt, the Democratic former House leader turned high-powered lobbyist, spearheaded one coalition. “We wanted to get a really bipartisan group of former elected officials, Cabinet secretaries, military leaders and so on, aimed mainly at messaging to the public but also speaking to local officials–the secretaries of state, attorneys general, governors who would be in the eye of the storm–to let them know we wanted to help,” says Gephardt, who worked his contacts in the private sector to put $20 million behind the effort.
Wamp, the former GOP Congressman, worked through the nonpartisan reform group Issue One to rally Republicans to the effort. “We thought we should bring some bipartisan element of unity around what constitutes a free and fair election,” Wamp says. The 22 Democrats and 22 Republicans on the National Council on Election Integrity met on Zoom at least once a week. They ran ads in six states, made statements, wrote articles and alerted local officials to potential problems. “We had rabid Trump supporters who agreed to serve on the council based on the idea that this is honest,” Wamp says. This is going to be just as important, he told them, to convince the liberals when Trump wins. “Whichever way it cuts, we’re going to stick together.”
The Voting Rights Lab and IntoAction created state-specific memes and graphics, spread by email, text, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, urging that every vote be counted. Together, they were viewed more than 1 billion times. Protect Democracy’s election task force issued reports and held media briefings with high-profile experts across the political spectrum, resulting in widespread coverage of potential election issues and fact-checking of Trump’s false claims. The organization’s tracking polls found the message was being heard: the percentage of the public that didn’t expect to know the winner on election night gradually rose until by late October, it was over 70%. A majority also believed that a prolonged count wasn’t a sign of problems. “We knew exactly what Trump was going to do: he was going to try to use the fact that Democrats voted by mail and Republicans voted in person to make it look like he was ahead, claim victory, say the mail-in votes were fraudulent and try to get them thrown out,” says Protect Democracy’s Bassin. Setting public expectations ahead of time helped undercut those lies.
Amber McReynolds, Zach Wamp and Maurice MitchellRachel Woolf for TIME; Erik Schelzig—AP/Shutterstock; Holly Pickett—The New York Times/Redux
The alliance took a common set of themes from the research Shenker-Osorio presented at Podhorzer’s Zooms. Studies have shown that when people don’t think their vote will count or fear casting it will be a hassle, they’re far less likely to participate. Throughout election season, members of Podhorzer’s group minimized incidents of voter intimidation and tamped down rising liberal hysteria about Trump’s expected refusal to concede. They didn’t want to amplify false claims by engaging them, or put people off voting by suggesting a rigged game. “When you say, ‘These claims of fraud are spurious,’ what people hear is ‘fraud,'” Shenker-Osorio says. “What we saw in our pre-election research was that anything that reaffirmed Trump’s power or cast him as an authoritarian diminished people’s desire to vote.”
Podhorzer, meanwhile, was warning everyone he knew that polls were underestimating Trump’s support. The data he shared with media organizations who would be calling the election was “tremendously useful” to understand what was happening as the votes rolled in, according to a member of a major network’s political unit who spoke with Podhorzer before Election Day. Most analysts had recognized there would be a “blue shift” in key battlegrounds– the surge of votes breaking toward Democrats, driven by tallies of mail-in ballots– but they hadn’t comprehended how much better Trump was likely to do on Election Day. “Being able to document how big the absentee wave would be and the variance by state was essential,” the analyst says.
PEOPLE POWER
The racial-justice uprising sparked by George Floyd’s killing in May was not primarily a political movement. The organizers who helped lead it wanted to harness its momentum for the election without allowing it to be co-opted by politicians. Many of those organizers were part of Podhorzer’s network, from the activists in battleground states who partnered with the Democracy Defense Coalition to organizations with leading roles in the Movement for Black Lives.
The best way to ensure people’s voices were heard, they decided, was to protect their ability to vote. “We started thinking about a program that would complement the traditional election-protection area but also didn’t rely on calling the police,” says Nelini Stamp, the Working Families Party’s national organizing director. They created a force of “election defenders” who, unlike traditional poll watchers, were trained in de-escalation techniques. During early voting and on Election Day, they surrounded lines of voters in urban areas with a “joy to the polls” effort that turned the act of casting a ballot into a street party. Black organizers also recruited thousands of poll workers to ensure polling places would stay open in their communities.
The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
About a week before Election Day, Podhorzer received an unexpected message: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wanted to talk.
The AFL-CIO and the Chamber have a long history of antagonism. Though neither organization is explicitly partisan, the influential business lobby has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns, just as the nation’s unions funnel hundreds of millions to Democrats. On one side is labor, on the other management, locked in an eternal struggle for power and resources.
But behind the scenes, the business community was engaged in its own anxious discussions about how the election and its aftermath might unfold. The summer’s racial-justice protests had sent a signal to business owners too: the potential for economy-disrupting civil disorder. “With tensions running high, there was a lot of concern about unrest around the election, or a breakdown in our normal way we handle contentious elections,” says Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer. These worries had led the Chamber to release a pre-election statement with the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based CEOs’ group, as well as associations of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, calling for patience and confidence as votes were counted.
But Bradley wanted to send a broader, more bipartisan message. He reached out to Podhorzer, through an intermediary both men declined to name. Agreeing that their unlikely alliance would be powerful, they began to discuss a joint statement pledging their organizations’ shared commitment to a fair and peaceful election. They chose their words carefully and scheduled the statement’s release for maximum impact. As it was being finalized, Christian leaders signaled their interest in joining, further broadening its reach.
The statement was released on Election Day, under the names of Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and the heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and the National African American Clergy Network. “It is imperative that election officials be given the space and time to count every vote in accordance with applicable laws,” it stated. “We call on the media, the candidates and the American people to exercise patience with the process and trust in our system, even if it requires more time than usual.” The groups added, “Although we may not always agree on desired outcomes up and down the ballot, we are united in our call for the American democratic process to proceed without violence, intimidation or any other tactic that makes us weaker as a nation.”
SHOWING UP, STANDING DOWN
Election night began with many Democrats despairing. Trump was running ahead of pre-election polling, winning Florida, Ohio and Texas easily and keeping Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania too close to call. But Podhorzer was unperturbed when I spoke to him that night: the returns were exactly in line with his modeling. He had been warning for weeks that Trump voters’ turnout was surging. As the numbers dribbled out, he could tell that as long as all the votes were counted, Trump would lose.
The liberal alliance gathered for an 11 p.m. Zoom call. Hundreds joined; many were freaking out. “It was really important for me and the team in that moment to help ground people in what we had already known was true,” says Angela Peoples, director for the Democracy Defense Coalition. Podhorzer presented data to show the group that victory was in hand.
While he was talking, Fox News surprised everyone by calling Arizona for Biden. The public-awareness campaign had worked: TV anchors were bending over backward to counsel caution and frame the vote count accurately. The question then became what to do next.
The conversation that followed was a difficult one, led by the activists charged with the protest strategy. “We wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street,” Peoples says. As much as they were eager to mount a show of strength, mobilizing immediately could backfire and put people at risk. Protests that devolved into violent clashes would give Trump a pretext to send in federal agents or troops as he had over the summer. And rather than elevate Trump’s complaints by continuing to fight him, the alliance wanted to send the message that the people had spoken.
So the word went out: stand down. Protect the Results announced that it would “not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate if necessary.” On Twitter, outraged progressives wondered what was going on. Why wasn’t anyone trying to stop Trump’s coup? Where were all the protests?
Podhorzer credits the activists for their restraint. “They had spent so much time getting ready to hit the streets on Wednesday. But they did it,” he says. “Wednesday through Friday, there was not a single Antifa vs. Proud Boys incident like everyone was expecting. And when that didn’t materialize, I don’t think the Trump campaign had a backup plan.”
Activists reoriented the Protect the Results protests toward a weekend of celebration. “Counter their disinfo with our confidence & get ready to celebrate,” read the messaging guidance Shenker-Osorio presented to the liberal alliance on Friday, Nov. 6. “Declare and fortify our win. Vibe: confident, forward-looking, unified–NOT passive, anxious.” The voters, not the candidates, would be the protagonists of the story.
The planned day of celebration happened to coincide with the election being called on Nov. 7. Activists dancing in the streets of Philadelphia blasted Beyoncé over an attempted Trump campaign press conference; the Trumpers’ next confab was scheduled for Four Seasons Total Landscaping outside the city center, which activists believe was not a coincidence. “The people of Philadelphia owned the streets of Philadelphia,” crows the Working Families Party’s Mitchell. “We made them look ridiculous by contrasting our joyous celebration of democracy with their clown show.”
The votes had been counted. Trump had lost. But the battle wasn’t over.
THE FIVE STEPS TO VICTORY
In Podhorzer’s presentations, winning the vote was only the first step to winning the election. After that came winning the count, winning the certification, winning the Electoral College and winning the transition–steps that are normally formalities but that he knew Trump would see as opportunities for disruption. Nowhere would that be more evident than in Michigan, where Trump’s pressure on local Republicans came perilously close to working–and where liberal and conservative pro-democracy forces joined to counter it.
It was around 10 p.m. on election night in Detroit when a flurry of texts lit up the phone of Art Reyes III. A busload of Republican election observers had arrived at the TCF Center, where votes were being tallied. They were crowding the vote-counting tables, refusing to wear masks, heckling the mostly Black workers. Reyes, a Flint native who leads We the People Michigan, was expecting this. For months, conservative groups had been sowing suspicion about urban vote fraud. “The language was, ‘They’re going to steal the election; there will be fraud in Detroit,’ long before any vote was cast,” Reyes says.
Trump supporters seek to disrupt the vote count at Detroit’s TCF Center on Nov. 4Elaine Cromie—Getty Images
He made his way to the arena and sent word to his network. Within 45 minutes, dozens of reinforcements had arrived. As they entered the arena to provide a counterweight to the GOP observers inside, Reyes took down their cell-phone numbers and added them to a massive text chain. Racial-justice activists from Detroit Will Breathe worked alongside suburban women from Fems for Dems and local elected officials. Reyes left at 3 a.m., handing the text chain over to a disability activist.
As they mapped out the steps in the election-certification process, activists settled on a strategy of foregrounding the people’s right to decide, demanding their voices be heard and calling attention to the racial implications of disenfranchising Black Detroiters. They flooded the Wayne County canvassing board’s Nov. 17 certification meeting with on-message testimony; despite a Trump tweet, the Republican board members certified Detroit’s votes.
Election boards were one pressure point; another was GOP-controlled legislatures, who Trump believed could declare the election void and appoint their own electors. And so the President invited the GOP leaders of the Michigan legislature, House Speaker Lee Chatfield and Senate majority leader Mike Shirkey, to Washington on Nov. 20.
It was a perilous moment. If Chatfield and Shirkey agreed to do Trump’s bidding, Republicans in other states might be similarly bullied. “I was concerned things were going to get weird,” says Jeff Timmer, a former Michigan GOP executive director turned anti-Trump activist. Norm Eisen describes it as “the scariest moment” of the entire election.
The democracy defenders launched a full-court press. Protect Democracy’s local contacts researched the lawmakers’ personal and political motives. Issue One ran television ads in Lansing. The Chamber’s Bradley kept close tabs on the process. Wamp, the former Republican Congressman, called his former colleague Mike Rogers, who wrote an op-ed for the Detroit newspapers urging officials to honor the will of the voters. Three former Michigan governors–Republicans John Engler and Rick Snyder and Democrat Jennifer Granholm–jointly called for Michigan’s electoral votes to be cast free of pressure from the White House. Engler, a former head of the Business Roundtable, made phone calls to influential donors and fellow GOP elder statesmen who could press the lawmakers privately.
The pro-democracy forces were up against a Trumpified Michigan GOP controlled by allies of Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chair, and Betsy DeVos, the former Education Secretary and a member of a billionaire family of GOP donors. On a call with his team on Nov. 18, Bassin vented that his side’s pressure was no match for what Trump could offer. “Of course he’s going to try to offer them something,” Bassin recalls thinking. “Head of the Space Force! Ambassador to wherever! We can’t compete with that by offering carrots. We need a stick.”
If Trump were to offer something in exchange for a personal favor, that would likely constitute bribery, Bassin reasoned. He phoned Richard Primus, a law professor at the University of Michigan, to see if Primus agreed and would make the argument publicly. Primus said he thought the meeting itself was inappropriate, and got to work on an op-ed for Politico warning that the state attorney general–a Democrat–would have no choice but to investigate. When the piece posted on Nov. 19, the attorney general’s communications director tweeted it. Protect Democracy soon got word that the lawmakers planned to bring lawyers to the meeting with Trump the next day.
Reyes’ activists scanned flight schedules and flocked to the airports on both ends of Shirkey’s journey to D.C., to underscore that the lawmakers were being scrutinized. After the meeting, the pair announced they’d pressed the President to deliver COVID relief for their constituents and informed him they saw no role in the election process. Then they went for a drink at the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. A street artist projected their images onto the outside of the building along with the words THE WORLD IS WATCHING.
That left one last step: the state canvassing board, made up of two Democrats and two Republicans. One Republican, a Trumper employed by the DeVos family’s political nonprofit, was not expected to vote for certification. The other Republican on the board was a little-known lawyer named Aaron Van Langevelde. He sent no signals about what he planned to do, leaving everyone on edge.
When the meeting began, Reyes’s activists flooded the livestream and filled Twitter with their hashtag, #alleyesonmi. A board accustomed to attendance in the single digits suddenly faced an audience of thousands. In hours of testimony, the activists emphasized their message of respecting voters’ wishes and affirming democracy rather than scolding the officials. Van Langevelde quickly signaled he would follow precedent. The vote was 3-0 to certify; the other Republican abstained.
After that, the dominoes fell. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and the rest of the states certified their electors. Republican officials in Arizona and Georgia stood up to Trump’s bullying. And the Electoral College voted on schedule on Dec. 14.
HOW CLOSE WE CAME
There was one last milestone on Podhorzer’s mind: Jan. 6. On the day Congress would meet to tally the electoral count, Trump summoned his supporters to D.C. for a rally.
Much to their surprise, the thousands who answered his call were met by virtually no counterdemonstrators. To preserve safety and ensure they couldn’t be blamed for any mayhem, the activist left was “strenuously discouraging counter activity,” Podhorzer texted me the morning of Jan. 6, with a crossed-fingers emoji.
Trump addressed the crowd that afternoon, peddling the lie that lawmakers or Vice President Mike Pence could reject states’ electoral votes. He told them to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” Then he returned to the White House as they sacked the building. As lawmakers fled for their lives and his own supporters were shot and trampled, Trump praised the rioters as “very special.”
It was his final attack on democracy, and once again, it failed. By standing down, the democracy campaigners outfoxed their foes. “We won by the skin of our teeth, honestly, and that’s an important point for folks to sit with,” says the Democracy Defense Coalition’s Peoples. “There’s an impulse for some to say voters decided and democracy won. But it’s a mistake to think that this election cycle was a show of strength for democracy. It shows how vulnerable democracy is.”
The members of the alliance to protect the election have gone their separate ways. The Democracy Defense Coalition has been disbanded, though the Fight Back Table lives on. Protect Democracy and the good-government advocates have turned their attention to pressing reforms in Congress. Left-wing activists are pressuring the newly empowered Democrats to remember the voters who put them there, while civil rights groups are on guard against further attacks on voting. Business leaders denounced the Jan. 6 attack, and some say they will no longer donate to lawmakers who refused to certify Biden’s victory. Podhorzer and his allies are still holding their Zoom strategy sessions, gauging voters’ views and developing new messages. And Trump is in Florida, facing his second impeachment, deprived of the Twitter and Facebook accounts he used to push the nation to its breaking point.
As I was reporting this article in November and December, I heard different claims about who should get the credit for thwarting Trump’s plot. Liberals argued the role of bottom-up people power shouldn’t be overlooked, particularly the contributions of people of color and local grassroots activists. Others stressed the heroism of GOP officials like Van Langevelde and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, who stood up to Trump at considerable cost. The truth is that neither likely could have succeeded without the other. “It’s astounding how close we came, how fragile all this really is,” says Timmer, the former Michigan GOP executive director. “It’s like when Wile E. Coyote runs off the cliff–if you don’t look down, you don’t fall. Our democracy only survives if we all believe and don’t look down.”
Democracy won in the end. The will of the people prevailed. But it’s crazy, in retrospect, that this is what it took to put on an election in the United States of America.
–With reporting by LESLIE DICKSTEIN, MARIAH ESPADA and SIMMONE SHAH
*Correction appended, Feb. 5: The original version of this story misstated the name of Norm Eisen’s organization. It is the Voter Protection Program, not the Voter Protection Project. The original version of this story also misstated Jeff Timmer’s former position with the Michigan Republican Party. He was the executive director, not the chairman.
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time magazine: Shadow 'cabal' secured Joe Biden's victory
Massive coalition pressed for mail-in voting, social-media censorship
By Art Moore Published February 5, 2021 at 4:53pm
A massive, coordinated effort by the left that pushed mail-in voting and other measures that have become associated with claims by the right of election fraud is the subject of an in-depth report published by Time magazine.
Time's Molly Ball describes it as a "conspiracy" between "left-wing activists and business titans. But she insists the objective of the "extraordinary shadow effort" was only to "protect" the 2020 presidential election from anticipated claims of fraud by Trump.
In "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election," she writes that the "handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election - an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted."
Ball writes that the effort "touched every aspect of the election":
- "They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding.
- "They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time.
- "They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.
- "They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump's conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction.
- "After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result."
Time says the participants want "the secret history of the 2020 election told," even though "it sounds like a paranoid fever dream - a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information."
The participants insisted they were not "rigging the election; they were fortifying it."
"And they believe the public needs to understand the system's fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures," Ball writes.
Leader of the pack
The leader of the "democracy campaigners" was Mike Podhorzer, a senior adviser to the president of the powerful AFL-CIO labor union, which endorsed Joe Biden.
Podhorzer worked his network of progressive contacts in the labor movement along with institutional giants such as Planned Parenthood and Greenpeace, resistance groups such as Indivisible and MoveOn, tech experts, donors, foundations, grassroots organizers and racial-justice activists.
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WND
Time magazine: Shadow 'cabal' secured Joe Biden's victory
Massive coalition pressed for mail-in voting, social-media censorship
By
Art Moore
February 5, 2021
TruthTweetShareGettrGabTelegram
President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump disembark Marine One upon their arrival Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020, on the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
A massive, coordinated effort by the left that pushed mail-in voting and other measures that have become associated with claims by the right of election fraud is the subject of an in-depth report published by Time magazine.
Time's Molly Ball describes it as a "conspiracy" between "left-wing activists and business titans. But she insists the objective of the "extraordinary shadow effort" was only to "protect" the 2020 presidential election from anticipated claims of fraud by Trump.
In "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election," she writes that the "handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election – an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted."
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Ball writes that the effort "touched every aspect of the election":
"They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding.
"They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time.
"They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.
"They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump's conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction.
"After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result."
Time says the participants want "the secret history of the 2020 election told," even though "it sounds like a paranoid fever dream – a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information."
The participants insisted they were not "rigging the election; they were fortifying it."
"And they believe the public needs to understand the system's fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures," Ball writes.
Leader of the pack
The leader of the "democracy campaigners" was Mike Podhorzer, a senior adviser to the president of the powerful AFL-CIO labor union, which endorsed Joe Biden.
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Podhorzer worked his network of progressive contacts in the labor movement along with institutional giants such as Planned Parenthood and Greenpeace, resistance groups such as Indivisible and MoveOn, tech experts, donors, foundations, grassroots organizers and racial-justice activists.
Significantly, the coalition pushed Congress to fund vote-by-mail and persuaded Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to contribute $400 million to "election administration funding." WND reported Zuckerberg targeted Democratic strongholds such as Detroit and Atlanta in key swing states, "causing havoc, confusion and lawlessness" that tipped the outcome in Joe Biden's favor, contends a report by the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society.
Ball writes that the coalition used a "nameless, secret project" to combat "disinformation" on social media. It sought to "pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation."
Certainly, social-media censorship of President Trump and conservative voices became a major issue in the 2020 campaign and its aftermath. Twitter's suppression of bombshell New York Times stories revealing evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter's influence-peddling possibly affected the outcome of the election, according to a survey.
Time's Ball writes that the shadow campaign also worked "to harness" for the election the "momentum" from the violent reaction to the death of George Floyd "without allowing it to be co-opted by politicians."
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She says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined in an unlikely alliance with the AFL-CIO and some Republicans to thwart claims by Trump of election fraud. And the coalition engaged in a behind-the-scenes effort to mobilize unrest on the streets if Trump were to win.
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Art Moore
Art Moore, co-author of the best-selling book "See Something, Say Nothing," entered the media world as a PR assistant for the Seattle Mariners and a correspondent covering pro and college sports for Associated Press Radio. He reported for a Chicago-area daily newspaper and was senior news writer for Christianity Today magazine and an editor for Worldwide Newsroom before joining WND shortly after 9/11. He earned a master's degree in communications from Wheaton College. Read more of Art Moore's articles here.
THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.
Congressman and NeverTrumper Zach Wamp Helped Remove Donald Trump from White House
Former Tennessee Congressman Zach Wamp is one of many people Time Magazinecited and quoted in a new article that brags about a bipartisan coalition of people who helped defeat former U.S. President Donald Trump.
As reported last year, Wamp has previously leveled harsh criticisms toward Trump.
The *Time* article, published this week, describes "a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information."
Time went on to say that this "loosely organized coalition of operatives" made "crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors." The magazine said these people changed voting laws, fought voter suppression lawsuits, and persuaded millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. Members of this coalition also convinced social media companies "to take a harder line against disinformation," Time reported.
Time described Wamp as someone who supported Trump. The magazine, however, quoted Wamp as saying "we can look back and say this thing went pretty well, but it was not at all clear in September and October that that was going to be the case."
Wamp advises a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, Issue One, that, according to its website, "unites Republicans, Democrats, and independents in the movement to fix our broken political system." The website lists former U.S. House Majority Leader and Democrat Richard Gephardt and former Republican Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge as two of several people who serve on Issue One's board.
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