Washington
CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump is littering his public remarks with fictional tales.
This isn’t run-of-the-mill political spin, the type of statistic-twisting and accomplishment-exaggerating that political candidates of all stripes interact in. Quite, the Republican presidential nominee is telling colourful lies which can be fully untethered to actuality.
Trump’s inflammatory assertion about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom he baselessly accused on the September presidential debate of consuming folks’s canine and cats, has acquired probably the most consideration. However Trump’s lower-profile latest public appearances, like rallies and interviews, have additionally featured wholly imaginary tales.
Listed here are 11 further examples from the previous month alone.
Harris and the navy draft
At a rally in Las Vegas final week, Trump claimed his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is speaking about forcing People to serve within the navy: “She’s already speaking about bringing again the draft. She desires to deliver again the draft, and draft your little one, and put them in a battle that ought to by no means have occurred.”
That’s absolute bunk. Harris is not talking at all about bringing again the draft.
Trump claimed throughout a Fox Information occasion in Pennsylvania in early September that Harris “had notes” to help her through the tv interview she did with CNN in late August. He even carried out an impression by which he portrayed Harris supposedly wanting down at these notes.
She didn’t actually have any notes.
Transgender youngsters and faculties
At an occasion held by a conservative group in late August, Trump claimed that faculties are sending youngsters for gender-affirming surgical procedures with out their mother and father’ data. He said, “The transgender factor is unimaginable. Consider it. Your child goes to high school and comes dwelling a number of days later with an operation. The college decides what’s going to occur along with your little one.”
Trump’s marketing campaign subsequently made clear to CNN that it may not find a single example of such a factor having occurred wherever in america. Parental consent is required for gender-affirming operations; faculties haven’t carried out or authorised these surgical procedures for minors behind their mother and father’ backs.
Even after Trump’s marketing campaign demonstrated that it couldn’t substantiate the story, he repeated it days later at a Wisconsin rally in early September.
Harris and the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Trump told a vivid story on Fox Information in late August about how President Joe Biden supposedly despatched Harris to barter with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022 in an effort to forestall an invasion of Ukraine. Trump claimed Harris was despatched “to see Putin in Russia three days earlier than the assault. She went. She mentioned – she gave her case. He attacked three days later. He attacked three days later. He laughed at her. He thought she was a joke.” Trump also told a version of the story at the September debate.
However this story, too, is wholly false.
Biden by no means despatched Harris to barter with Putin – the truth is, the Kremlin said in July that Harris and Putin have by no means spoken – and Harris didn’t journey to Russia simply previous to the invasion. Quite, Harris traveled to a conference in Germany to fulfill with US allies, together with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky.
Trump claimed at a conference of Black journalists in late July that Harris used to “solely” promote her Indian heritage, then “swiftly” made a “flip” and “grew to become a Black individual.” Defending the declare, Trump reiterated on the September debate that Harris had “put out” sooner or later that “she was not Black.”
None of that’s true.
Harris – who was raised in a Black community and graduated from a historically Black university – has embraced her Black id since her youth. Whereas she has additionally fondly mentioned her South Asian heritage, she by no means “put out” that she wasn’t Black.
Trump has repeatedly claimed over the past month that Harris was so unpopular when she beforehand ran for the presidency, in 2019, that she was the very first candidate to drop out of the crowded Democratic major. “She was certainly one of 22 those that ran. She was the primary one to give up,” he mentioned at a Pennsylvania rally in late August.
The truth is, 13 different Democratic candidates dropped out of the race earlier than Harris did – together with the sitting or former governors of Washington, Montana and Colorado; the sitting mayor of New York City; and sitting or former members of the Home of Representatives and Senate.
Dealing with heavy criticism from Harris and others for appointing three of the Supreme Court docket justices who overturned the Roe v. Wade abortion rights choice in 2022, Trump concocted a story that this unpopular choice fulfilled the needs of “all people” – together with “each Democrat.”
“Each Democrat, each Republican, all people wished Roe v. Wade terminated and introduced again to the states,” Trump said on Fox Information in late August.
That is not even remotely accurate.
Roe was persistently supported by a majority of the American public, and it was overwhelmingly standard amongst Democrats – with 80% assist or higher amongst Democrats in lots of polls.
At a September press convention in California, Trump claimed that “if I ran with an sincere vote counter in California I might win California, however the votes usually are not counted actually.” He had delivered an much more colourful model of the declare in an interview in late August, saying, “If Jesus got here down and was the vote counter, I might win California, okay?”
Extra garbage.
The votes are counted actually in California, as they’re in each different state; Trump loses California as a result of it’s an overwhelmingly Democratic state that has not chosen a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. He misplaced the state in 2020, truthful and sq., by more five million votes and more than 29 percentage points.
Since 2016, Trump has informed a lie that he was named “Man of the 12 months” in Michigan earlier than he entered politics. Media retailers together with CNN have repeatedly famous that Trump by no means received such an award and that the award doesn’t even appear to exist. However Trump claimed at a Michigan occasion on Tuesday that he has now been vindicated.
“The press mentioned, ‘Oh, it by no means occurred.’ Effectively, then it did occur. They discovered the place it was,” Trump mentioned. “Nevertheless it was like 15 years in the past, a stupendous space, however no one remembered it; no one remembered all of it. Swiftly, like by means of a miracle, they discovered it did exist.”
That’s a lie on prime of a lie. The media has not found proof that Trump received a Michigan Man of the 12 months award.
His marketing campaign didn’t reply Wednesday to a request to clarify what he was speaking about.
Migrants, prisons and ‘the Congo’
For months, Trump has informed a narrative about how “the Congo” has intentionally emptied prisons to someway get its criminals to come back to america as migrants. “Many prisoners let go from the Congo in Africa, tough prisoners,” he said at an August occasion in Arizona. At an August rally in Pennsylvania the week after, he said, “Within the Congo, in Africa: 22 folks deposited into our nation. ‘The place do you come from?’ ‘The Congo.’ ‘The place within the Congo?’ ‘Jail.’”
However Trump has introduced zero proof that “the Congo” has truly emptied any prisons for migration functions. Representatives for the governments of each the Democratic Republic of Congo and the neighboring Republic of Congo have told CNN on the file that the declare is fiction, specialists on the 2 international locations say they’ve seen no proof it’s true, and Trump’s marketing campaign has ignored requests to supply any substantiation.
After the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics introduced in August that its annual revision of jobs knowledge found that the financial system added about 818,000 fewer jobs than initially reported for the 12 months ending in March, Trump told a story about how the federal government had been planning to announce this downward revision “after November fifth,” Election Day, however was pressured to take action earlier than the election due to “a whistleblower” – “a patriot leaker.”
One other fabrication. The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly releases the preliminary revised knowledge in August, and it had disclosed the exact date of this specific knowledge launch – August 21 – weeks upfront.
William Seashore, a conservative economist who was appointed by Trump to guide the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wrote on social media: “For individuals who assume the massive revision to the BLS jobs numbers ‘leaked’ and was meant to come back out after the election, keep in mind that BLS at all times declares its draft revisions in August and introduced this 12 months’s date, August 21, many months in the past. It is very important verify your info.”