Lying Donald Trump?

Who are we to argue with Ted Cruz? Ok, we argue with him frequently, but let's see if this time he may be on to something.

Throughout his Presidential campaign and since taking office, Donald Trump has made frequent..., well, let's call them unusual assertions when speaking at rallies, when answering questions and, of course, when tweeting. Some people actually believe everything he says, some people want to believe what he says (although they suspect otherwise), but it seems that most Americans are at a point where their first reaction is to question what he says.

(Image from huffpost.com)

This is not a healthy or desirable situation for the country to find itself in. If our President is regularly perceived as, at best, being an exaggerator, and, at worst, simply making things up to support what he wants to do, it can have impacts on both domestic and foreign policy, how the rest of the world perceives us, and the trust Americans place in their public institutions, the latter being of critical importance in a democracy.

So how truthful is Mr. Trump? In this article, we'll examine a variety of his public statements and judge the factual basis for them. Those statements we have examined so far and whose analyses you'll find below this introduction include:

• Did Trump Get the "Veterans Choice" Health Care Program Passed?
• Trump's Electoral College Win: A Landslide? The Biggest Since Reagan? First Republican to Win Wisconsin Since Eisenhower?
• Did the Obama Administration Wiretap Trump's Phones During the Presidential Campaign?
• Did Senator Bob Corker Support, and Help Pass, the Obama-era Iran Agreement?
• Is Trump Right About US Nuclear Capabilities?
• Did Thousands of New Jersey Arab-Americans Celebrate the Twin Towers Collapse on 9/11?
• Did Ford Keep Its Louisville Assembly Plant in Kentucky Because of Trump?
• Did Ford Cancel Moving Focus Jobs to Mexico Because of Trump?
• Is There Massive Voter Fraud in the United States?
• Is the Real U.S. Unemployment Rate Not Really 5%, but 23%...or Maybe 42%?
• Was Ted Cruz' Father Involved in the JFK Assassination?

One other preliminary note: Most politicians can get carried away at times and say things they regret or subsequently back away from. We'll ignore these one-time, spur of the moment comments from Mr. Trump and focus on those statements that were made in writing and/or repeated on multiple occasions. If you have any others you would like us to examine, let us know and we'll add them to the list for future review.

Did Trump Get the "Veterans Choice" Health Care Program Passed?

Donald Trump repeatedly has stated that he is responsible for having passed the Veterans Choice health care program. Veterans Choice allows military veterans to receive government medical payments for health care provided outside of the government's Veterans Administration system.

News sources estimate Mr. Trump has taken credit for this legislation anywhere from dozens to 150 times. Most recently, Mr. Trump made this claim at an August 8, 2020, news conference in New Jersey: "They've been trying to get that {Veterans Choice} passed for decades and decades and decades, and no president's ever been able to do it, and we got it done."

(image from the V.A.)

Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, his claim is easy to disprove. The Veterans Choice program was passed in 2014 and signed into law by Barack Obama. In addition, probably to Mr. Trump's chagrin, it was sponsored in the U.S. Senate by two Senators that Mr. Trump repeatedly is nasty towards: Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) and John McCain (R-Az).

We suspect that Mr. Trump does know the credit for Veterans Choice belongs to others. At the aforementioned news conference, Mr. Trump's statement was challenged by CBS journalist Paula Reid: "Why do you keep saying that you passed Veterans Choice? It was passed in 2014." After Mr. Trump tried to move on, Ms. Reid followed up with "It's a false statement, sir." Mr. Trump's response? "OK. Thank you very much, everybody" and walked away, ending the news conference.

It does make one wonder, though: if Mr. Trump has to repeatedly give himself credit for bi-partisan Obama-era legislation, what exactly has Mr. Trump accomplished during the past four years?

Trump's Election: Landslide? Biggest Since Reagan? First Wisconsin Win Since Eisenhower?

Since his election, Donald Trump regularly likes to reminisce about the 2016 campaign and his Electoral College victory. Maybe it's because, like most other Americans, he still is amazed that he actually won.

Regardless, and even though the election is a source of pride to him, the stories he frequently tells about those election results don't hold up to simple research. Let's examine three of those assertions:

• His Electoral College win was a massive landslide victory
• His Electoral College vote total was the largest since Reagan
• He was the first Republican Presidential candidate to win Wisconsin since Eisenhower

None of these assertions is accurate:

With respect to the first, not only did he lose the popular vote convincingly (by over 2.8 million votes), his electoral vote performance was not particularly impressive either. Looking at the last 100 years, which included 25 Presidential elections, Mr. Trump's total of 304 electoral votes ranks him only the 19th highest in those 25 elections. And he barely edged the next three winners on the list who received 303, 303, and 301 electoral votes.

Looking at Mr. Trump's second assertion, there have been eight Presidential elections since Mr. Reagan's last election. Mr. Trump's electoral vote total is sixth highest on that short list, ahead of only the two George W. Bush elections. He is behind George Bush Sr,. both of Bill Clinton's wins, and both Barack Obama victories.

As to his Wisconsin claim, following Dwight Eisenhower's victory there in 1956, Republicans Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan both won Wisconsin twice.

Did the Obama Administration Wiretap Trump's Phones During the Presidential Campaign?

We've held off discussion of this topic in the hope that his advisors would persuade Mr. Trump either to back off of this accusation or to provide evidence of it having taken place. While either of those possibilities may still happen, Mr. Trump is making it more difficult for himself by continuing to repeat this charge without providing any proof. At this point, we feel comfortable describing it as a wholly unsubstantiated charge. We say that for the following reasons:

• Law enforcement and intelligence officials have denied any knowledge of such activity
• Numerous Obama administration officials have categorically refuted the allegation
• Republican-led Congressional committees charged with oversight of such matters have seen no evidence of this wiretapping having happened and have pleaded with the Trump administration to provide the evidence that will support these charges

Did Senator Bob Corker Support, and Help Pass, the Obama-era Iran Agreement?

After being one of the few Republican Senators to overtly give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt in 2016 and early 2017, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee has become increasingly disenchanted with Mr. Trump during the course of 2017. And in his typical thin-skinned fashion, Mr. Trump has been ignoring the substance of Senator Corker's criticisms and responding with personal attacks against the Senator.

On October 24th, however, Mr. Trump tried to include some "facts", rather than the usual schoolyard drivel, in his latest anti-Corker tweet: "Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran deal,…"

(Corker image from huffpost.com)

Ignoring whether the Iran agreement was or was not a good deal for the United States, Mr. Trump's assertion that the Senator supported the agreement is so easy to disprove you wonder just how ignorant Mr. Trump must think the American public really is.

As former GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough pointed out on his morning talk show when discussing this tweet:

• Mr. Corker wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Post opposing the agreement and urging that it be rejected
• During Senate hearings on the agreement, Mr. Corker argued against the deal with then Secretary of State John Kerry
• Mr. Corker voted against the Iran agreement when it was brought up for a vote in the Senate

These three facts are a matter of public record and easily verifiable through basic online searches.

The saddest part of Mr. Scarborough's commentary, though, was the following statement, which he voiced more than once during that October 24th broadcast: "We could spend three hours a day just on his (Trump's) lies."

Is Trump Right About US Nuclear Capabilities?

In early August, 2017, shortly after another of the West's periodic flare-ups with North Korea, Mr. Trump tweeted the following: "My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before."

Here are the inaccuracies in those two sentences:

• A week after taking office, Mr. Trump issued a Nuclear Posture Review to determine what the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. security strategy should be (which we understand each of his recent predecessors also had done when they first took office). This was not Mr. Trump's first order, though; he had issued more than a dozen other directives prior to this one.
• The modernization of our nuclear arsenal was ordered by President Obama in 2014, not by Mr. Trump. It will cost $400 billion through 2024 and close to $1 trillion over the next 30 years. Mr. Trump's Nuclear Posture Review has not been completed yet and there have been no known actions taken this year beyond those of the Obama modernizations.
• Because this modernization work will take so long to complete, it is unclear what specific work may have been done during the past seven months that would lead Mr. Trump to feel our nuclear arsenal is stronger and more powerful today than in the past.
• In fact, due to the deterioration in some of our weapons and our facilities, and the fact that the 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty has required that both Russia and America reduce the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles and the number of nuclear warheads, our nuclear arsenal cannot be "far stronger and more powerful than ever before".

Americans who don't follow these types of stories closely enough, or who get their news and commentary from Fox, may have believed Mr. Trump's tweet, but if they did...unfortunately, they were fooled again.

{Our source for this analysis was an article by W.J. Hennigan, award winning Pentagon/national security reporter from the Los Angeles Times.}

Did Thousands of New Jersey Arab-Americans Celebrate the Twin Towers Collapse on 9/11?

We first remember Mr. Trump making this claim during the fall of 2015. When questioned about it, he replied that this story was widely reported in the press at the time and that he personally saw video of the celebrations.

Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, his recollection is in error. No such celebrations occurred. Here are some facts that we have gathered, mostly from The Fact Checker:

• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, New York Governor George Pataki, Jersey City Mayor Stephen Fulop, and Paterson, N.J., Police Commissioner Jerry Speziale all responded to the claims made by Mr. Trump. Each of them called the allegations untrue, occasionally using very colorful language.

  
  

  
  (Fulop/Christie, Pataki, Speziale images from hudsoncountyview.com, abcnews.com, nypost.com)
  
• Various news organizations have reviewed their files and found no evidence, film or otherwise, of any large-scale celebrations having taken place, on rooftops (as some Trump supporters claim) or anywhere else.
• No videos are known to exist of any such celebrations. Video does exist of some Muslims in the Middle East cheering the Twin Towers collapse. It is possible that this video has been confused in some people's minds to have taken place in northern New Jersey.
• Rumors and even reports to police of small celebrations (6-8 people) did occur at the time, and there were some reports of a handful of people being detained by police, but no one was prosecuted. New Jersey authorities, including various police departments and the state Attorney General's office, could find no evidence of more than a few small groups (mostly teenagers) being noisy; no different than on most summer nights.
• There is no evidence of Mr. Trump having made these claims prior to the fall of 2015. For example, The Fact Checker reports that eight days after 9/11 Mr. Trump was interviewed in the New York Post - he made no mention of the alleged celebrations. In the forward for a book titled "Where Were You on 9/11?", Mr. Trump also makes no mention of the alleged celebrations.

Did Ford Keep Its Louisville Assembly Plant Open Because of Trump?

In November of 2016 Donald tweeted yes, after having talked with Ford CEO Bill Ford. That conversation had nothing to do with Ford keeping the Louisville plant open, though. Here's why: In their 2015 contract with the United Auto Workers, Ford agreed to invest $700 million over four years in the Louisville Assembly Plant; there never were any plans to close the plant, which produces the Ford Escape and the Lincoln MKC.

The reason Mr. Trump thought he could get away with misleading people on this one is because, last year, Ford announced it was looking for another location to build the MKC so it could increase production of Escapes at the Louisville plant. Mexico was one possibility, but Ford decided to keep the MKC in Kentucky. Whether the MKC went to Mexico or stayed in Kentucky, Ford said there would be no impact on Kentucky jobs and, per the UAW contract, the MKC decision had zero impact on whether Ford was going to keep the Louisville plant open.

Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, Al Gore had a better claim to starting the internet than Donald Trump has in claiming he saved the Louisville Assembly Plant.

Did Ford Cancel the Move of Focus Jobs to Mexico Because of Trump?

In early January of 2017 Mr. Trump tweeted yes and much of the media initially jumped on board as well. Unfortunately for Donald and the US auto workers, though, Ford still is sending those production jobs to Mexico. In a clever PR move, Ford announced multiple decisions at the same time, leaving the impression that 700 Ford Focus jobs slated to go to Mexico were, in fact, staying in the Detroit area. Here's the actual story, though:

• In April 2016 Ford announced plans to build a new $1.6 billion factory in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and to move production of the Ford Focus from Detroit to that new Mexican facility.

  
  In its early January 2017 announcement, Ford indicated the following:

  
  

• Ford is canceling its plans to build a new factory in San Luis Potosi. Rather, it will produce the Ford Focus in another Mexican plant located in Hermosillo. The latter factory has seen a drop in its utilization and now has the capacity to produce the Focus also.
• Unrelated to the Focus decision or to Mexico, Ford will invest $700 million in Flat Rock, Michigan, to develop self-driving and electric cars, which may create 700 jobs over time.

Is There Massive Voter Fraud in the United States?

During the latter stages of the 2016 Presidential campaign, when it appeared that Mr. Trump was going to lose the election, he began suggesting that the election was being rigged against him and that voter fraud was very, very common. At that time he and his surrogate, Rudy Giuliani, talked mostly about voter impersonation: dead people voting, busloads of people going from poll to poll voting multiple times, etc.

Following his Electoral College victory, when the size of his popular vote defeat was making news, apparently Mr. Trump's ego couldn't leave well enough alone and be content with just having won the Electoral College. He had to make the claim that the only reason he lost the popular vote was due to massive voting by non-citizens.

(Arizona voting line image from thenation.com)

No one who has studied the issue of voter fraud in the United States believes any of these claims or takes any of these charges seriously. For example, with respect to voter impersonation, factcheck.org writes that:

• Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt has been tracking allegations of voter fraud for years, including any "credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix." So far, Professor Levitt has found roughly 30 different incidents between 2000 and 2014. That's 30 out of more than a billion votes that were cast during that time period.
• In 2012, Arizona State University students working with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication reviewed 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000. They concluded that "while fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal, and in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent."
• Richard L. Hazen is a professor of law and political science at the University of California-Irvine School of Law and author of a 2012 book called "The Voting Wars". He is on record as having stated that he "could not find a single instance anywhere in the U.S. from the 1980s onward where massive impersonation fraud was used to try to steal an election."

• A 2015 report from the conservative Heritage Foundation documented less than a dozen individual cases of noncitizens convicted of registering or actually voting since 2000.
• Even the authors of the controversial Richman and Ernest study that Mr. Trump likes to refer to have summarized their findings by saying that, while they found low levels of non-citizen voting, the study does not prove massive voter fraud.
• Furthermore, after reading critiques of their study, Richman also conceded that "response errors could have biased our estimates upwards."

Finally,

• In 2002 the Bush Justice Department began targeting voter fraud. Between late 2002 and late 2005, only 38 cases were filed nationally and 14 of those ended in dismissal or acquittal.
• After Mr. Trump began questioning the integrity of U.S. elections, election officials around the country unanimously disagreed with Mr. Trump. One of the most widely reported quotes came from Ohio's Secretary of State, Jon Hustad. Mr. Hustad, a Trump supporter, not only refuted Mr. Trump's claims but added, "Leaders should - if there's a problem - tell us where the problem is and help us fix it. But you can't make a sweeping generalization about voter fraud when you're a leader without having evidence or facts to back up that claim."
• Following his defeat for re-election this fall, North Carolina's Republican Governor Pat McCrory claimed that voter shenanigans caused his narrow defeat. Local election officials, most of whom were Republicans, all disagreed with the Governor. McCrory eventually conceded.

As of late 2015 and early 2016, Mr. Trump is on record as having claimed both the 42% and the 23% figure reflected the true U.S. unemployment rate. Here is how Donald inaccurately came up with his numbers:

In an interview with Time magazine, Mr. Trump stated, ""I saw a chart the other day, our real unemployment - because you have ninety million people that aren't working," he said. "Ninety-three million to be exact. If you start adding it up, our real unemployment rate is 42 percent."

If you start with the ~93 million people who were not in the labor force in December of 2015 and add in the standard measure of the unemployed at that time, U-3 (see below), you get to about the 42% figure. Unfortunately for Mr. Trump's analysis, the 93 million Americans not working includes retirees, students, stay-at-home parents, the independently wealthy, etc., all of whom do not need to work and are not looking for work. Hence, you cannot include these people in the unemployment number.

With respect to his 23% number, Mr. Trump has claimed, without support, that there are "60, 70, 80 million people out there who want to work that aren't getting jobs." 60 million Americans would equate to roughly a 23% unemployment rate. But even economists' broadest measure of unemployment, U-6 (see below), only can find 25 million people to be unemployed. This equated to a rate of 9.9% as of December 2015. Who and where are the other 35 million Citizens that Donald claims can't find work? Neither the economic community nor anyone on the Trump team have an answer for that question.

(U-3 is green line; U-6 is blue line)

It's apparent to us that, on this one, Mr. Trump was simply pandering to audiences that did not want to give President Obama credit for having returned the country to a normal employment level following the Republicans' Great Recession of 2007-2009.

{For those of you interested in how economists calculate the unemployment rate, here is a brief explanation: There are 6 common measures of unemployment, the most frequently used being U-3, which tracks people who are not working but are available to work and actively looking for work. This is the measure you typically see quoted in the press, is reported monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and is used on a comparative basis over time to determine how strong our economy is.

Broadening the U-3 measurement is U-5, which includes those Citizens who are available and would like to work, but have given up looking for work. An even broader measure is U-6, which also includes Americans who are working part-time but are available and would like to work on a full-time basis.

As of December 2015, around the time Mr. Trump first made his unemployment claims, these three unemployment rates were: U-3: 5.2%, U-5: 6.1%, U-6: 9.9%. None of these come close to the Trump claims.}

Coming...

Was Ted Cruz' Father Involved in the JFK Assassination?

Did the Bush Administration Try to Silence Trump Over the Iraq War?

More 'Right Wing Myth-Busting'