OUR PATHOLOGICAL “LIAR-IN-CHIEF”

…President Donald J. Trump, telling another falsehood.

 

Most of the president’s lies rate the highest of four Pinocchio’s.

 

Apparently, if you are a “pathological liar”, it is impossible for you to stop lying.  Our latest president seems to be proving that case as he has now stated a lie publicly 14 different times.  That lie being: “I saved $725 million on the 90 planes. Just 90. Now there are 3,000 planes that are going to be ordered. On 90 planes I saved $725 million. It’s actually a little bit more than that, but it’s $725 million.”

 

The truth is, well before Trump met with Lockheed’s head of the Defense Department’s F-35 Joint Program Office, they had already announced costs would be coming down “significantly”. The cost savings for the latest batch of planes was projected to be between $549 million and $630 million, just for the first lot of 90 planes.  The Pentagon since announced that the total cost savings for the whole program will be $728 million.

That lie rated the president Four Pinocchio’s from The WaPost’s Fact Checkers.

 

The next lie was: “China, from the time I took office, they have not been currency manipulators.”

 

Throughout his campaign, Trump repeatedly blamed China as being a “world champion” of devaluing their yuan.

First, the Chinese haven’t been a yuan devaluation nation for a number of years.  That outdated claim also rated Trump Four Pinocchios.  As president, Trump has now flip-flopped on this matter and he decided he would no longer label China a “currency manipulator”. The WaPost rated this key economic campaign promise “Broken” in their new Trump Promise Tracker.

 

Lie #3 is that Trump likes to claim undue credit for corporate decisions that were made before he was elected president. And Trump exaggerates the number of jobs created since he became president; the number of net new jobs since January 2017 is 317,000.

 

But per the president: “You live by the sword, you die by the sword, to a certain extent. But we create a lot of jobs, 500,000 jobs as of two months ago, and plenty created since. Five hundred thousand. … As an example, at Ford & General Motors. I’ve had cases where the gentleman from China, Ma, Jack Ma [chairman of Alibaba Group], he comes up, he says, ‘Only because of you am I making this massive investment.’ Intel, only because of you. … The press never writes that.”

 

Here’s the truth: Ford’s decision to expand in Michigan rather than in Mexico had more to do with the company’s long-term goals than with the administration. Ford outlined these goals in a contract it negotiated with the United Auto Workers in 2015.  General Motors announced jobs plans in January and March 2017, and the company did not credit Trump or his election. Intel Corp. announced it would create at least 10,000 jobs at a “new” plant in Arizona. The company announced its investment in this factory way back in 2011, but due to slacking demand, the plant never opened.

 

The Chinese e-company Alibaba, its founder Jack Ma has been pitching his company as a “US job creator” since as early as 2015.

 

Lie #4 was when Trump said: “It will be bigger, I believe, than any tax cut ever. Maybe the biggest tax cut we’ve ever had.”

 

First, the Trump tax cut is still only a one-page proposal.  It is highly doubtful that it will be the “biggest”, but we’ll have to see. The biggest tax cut since World War II as of today appears to have been Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, which was valued at 2.89% of the gross domestic product (GDP), that is according to the US Treasury department. Assuming a $20 trillion GDP in 2018, Trump’s tax cut would need to be valued at least at $580 billion a year in order to exceed the size of the Reagan tax cut.  We won’t know the tax cuts actual size for probably 6 months to a full year.

Lie #5 was when candidate Trump said: “When WikiLeaks came out … never heard of WikiLeaks, never heard of it. When WikiLeaks came out, all I was just saying is, ‘Well, look at all this information here. This is pretty good stuff.’”

 

The truth is as CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski found out, Trump had publicly denounced WikiLeaks as early as 2010.

 

Lie #6 was also during the presidential campaign, when Trump used to claim that he could build 1,000 mile-long wall, made of precast concrete slabs 40 feet high, for $8 billion. The construction experts instead received estimates as high as $25 billion. A report issued by Senate Democrats in April came up with a higher estimate of nearly $70 billion, that's before paying for the necessary land acquisition. The report said that maintenance costs would run about $150 million a year.

 

But according to the president: “Oh, I’m seeing numbers — $24 billion [for a border wall], I think I’ll do it for $10 billion or less. That’s not a lot of money relative to what we’re talking about. If we stop 1 percent of the drugs from coming in — and we’ll stop all of it.”

 

Trump’s claim that the wall would halt the flow of drugs is dubious. The experts say that most of the drugs are actually shipped through the border on the underside of vehicles that have permits to cross the border. “As long as the US remains the world’s largest consumer of coke, and as long as Mexico continues to provide it, no wall will ever be able to stop the trade,” wrote reporter, Roberto Saviano in Newsweek magazine.

Lie #7 was this baby: “Because the hundred days is just an artificial barrier. The press keeps talking about the hundred days.”

 

No, it wasn’t the press. In a speech on Oct. 22, 2017, Trump issued a detailed 100-day-plan of action, which he called the “Contract with the American Voter.”  Trump then told the AP that “somebody put out the concept of a hundred-day plan”.  But that was Trump himself that offered the 100 day plan, with a list of promises that will not be accomplished in those 100 days.

 

Lie #8 was regarding NATO when candidate Trump said: “It’s not fair that we’re paying close to 4% and other countries that are more directly affected are paying 1% when they’re supposed to be paying 2%. And I’m very strong on it and I’m going to be very strong on it when I go there in a month.”

 

The truth is that United States spends about 3.6% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense spending , far more that NATO’s guideline of 2%. The median spending level in 2016 for the 28 NATO countries is 1.53% of GDP, according to NATO, though NATO members were not expected to reach the 2% level until 2024.

 

Meanwhile, the United States has defense responsibilities around the world, especially in Asia, which accounts for why US defense spending is higher. In fact, US bases in Europe are often used to redeploy forces in other theaters, such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa.

Lie #9 was the following whopper: “You know, back when they did NATO there was no such thing as terrorism.”

 

When NATO was founded in 1949, terrorism had long existed in Europe, often by separatist groups such as the Irish Republican Party or other anarchists. A bombing back in 1867 in London by the Irish Republican Brotherhood killed 12 people and injured 120.

 

Lie #10: “The electoral college is so skewed in favor of a Democrat that it’s very, very hard [for Republicans].”

 

This one is more complicated, but is still very false.  Actually, Republicans have the advantage not Democrats because they have an edge in the small, rural states, which the electoral college system requires fewer votes per elector. As an example, in Wyoming, there are 143,000 people for each electoral vote, compared to 500,000 people in a state like California. Since Democrats tend to be concentrated in the larger cities, the impact of those votes is less. This is one reason why in two recent elections — 2000 and 2016 — the Democrat decidedly won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college vote to the Republican candidate.

 

Lie #11:  Trump:  “On any, on air, [CBS ‘Face the Nation’ host John] Dickerson had 5.2 million people. It’s the highest for ‘Face the Nation’ or as I call it, ‘Deface the Nation.’ It’s the highest for ‘Deface the Nation’ since the World Trade Center. Since the World Trade Center came down. It’s a tremendous advantage.”

 

Trump is way off on the numbers. Then-presidential candidate Trump’s Jan. 3, 2016, interview with host John Dickerson on CBS’s “Face the Nation” had an audience of 4.6 million. Of the total audience, about 1 million of them were adults aged 25 to 54, the coveted demographic among advertisers. The overall audience was the largest since Sept. 16, 2001, and the rating among adults 25 to 54 years old was the best since Nov. 17, 2013, this is according to CBS News.

 

Lie #12: Trump: “I am very upset with NAFTA. I think NAFTA has been a catastrophic trade deal for the United States, trading agreement for the United States. It hurts us with Canada, and it hurts us with Mexico. Most people don’t even think of NAFTA in terms of Canada. You saw what happened in my statements, because if you look at the dairy farmers in Wisconsin and upstate New York, they are getting killed by NAFTA.”

 

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service in 2015 concluded the “net overall effect of NAFTA on the US economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily because trade with Canada and Mexico accounts for a small percentage of US GDP”.  As for farmers in Wisconsin being “killed” by NAFTA, Canadian dairy products are actually not covered by NAFTA, as that industry is protected from US exports and remains under “supply management” (price controls) which results in high retail prices in Canada.  Canadian consumers basically subsidize their farmers, where American dairy producers receive subsidies from the US government, not the consumers.

 

So, I’m going to stop for now, but there are many, many more examples from our ”Liar-In-Chief” out there.

 

Joe Scarborough, a former Republican US Representative of a Florida district and the current host of the “Morning Joe” political program on MSNBC, along with Mika Brzezinski, the daughter of former President Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Joe has properly stated that in reference to this president, “As long as he continues to tell lies, we will continue to report on them.”

 

I’m with you Joe, I’m with you!

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017