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He made 15 false claims.
That would be remarkably high for many other politicians, but it was exceptionally low for Trump. Before last week, Trump had been averaging about 62 false claims per week since we started counting at CNN on July 8.
Trump is now up to 1,555 false claims since July 8, an average of about nine per day. The last two weeks’ totals have been his two lowest weekly totals since July 8.
The most egregious false claim: Pete Buttigieg’s faith
“All of a sudden he’s become extremely religious. This happened about two weeks ago,” Trump said.
The most revealing false claim: Military spending
Threatening Iran with retaliation for any attack on “an American Base, or any American” in response to the killing of Soleimani, Trump warned, “The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment.”
It hasn’t. While total US military spending for the last three years was about $2 trillion, about $420 billion of that total was on equipment procurement, explained Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Trump either knowingly exaggerated, got mixed up, or didn’t know and didn’t care enough to check.
The most absurd false claim: An impeachment…win?
Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives. Therefore, he obviously lost the impeachment battle in the House.
He meant, it seems, that there were no Republican defections on impeachment-related votes, which he lost 232-196 (on a vote to approve the rules for the impeachment inquiry) and then 230-197 and 229-198 (on the actual articles of impeachment).
He is free to tout the loyalty of Republican legislators, but claiming “we won,” without any further explanation, is pure nonsense.
Here is this week’s full list of false claims, starting with the ones we haven’t previously checked in one of these roundups:
The crowd outside Trump’s event
“They have thousands of people outside trying to get in.” — January 3 speech to Evangelicals for Trump coalition launch
A federal judge
Boasting about the youth of the judges he has appointed to the federal bench, Trump said, “We have a judge in Texas, I believe he’s 38 years old. He went to Harvard, he was the top student. I believe he went to Oxford or something like that. He’s 38 years old.” — January 3 speech to Evangelicals for Trump coalition launch
We might be inclined to let that claim slide if Trump did not have a history of wrongly claiming that his appointees were the top student at Harvard Law. He has made the same false claim about Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The impeachment vote and witnesses
“We didn’t even have a witness, and we won 196 to nothing. Okay? We didn’t have a witness. That was all the Democrats’ witness(es).” — December 31 exchange with reporters at a New Year’s Eve party
Facts First: This claim is absurd. Trump did not win any vote related to impeachment, let alone win “196 to nothing.” In fact, he had decisively lost a key process vote and then the two votes to actually impeach him. He appeared to be referring to the fact that no Republican voted against him on these three occasions, but he wasn’t clear at all that this is what he meant.
As for witnesses, the House Intelligence Committee heard testimony from three former officials whom Republicans had formally asked Democrats to call as witnesses: Kurt Volker, the former special representative for Ukraine; Tim Morrison, former National Security Council senior director for Europe and Russia; and David Hale, undersecretary of state for political affairs.
Military equipment
In an email to CNN, Harrison added that the defense bill for the 2020 fiscal year includes about $134 billion in procurement and about $104 billion for research and development. So even if you include money that has not yet been spent — the 2020 fiscal year just began in October — total Trump-era spending still isn’t close to $2 trillion on equipment.
Buttigieg’s faith
Trump claimed that Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is trying to “pretend” that he is “very religious.” Trump said, “All of a sudden he’s become extremely religious. This happened about two weeks ago.” — January 3 speech to Evangelicals for Trump coalition launch
Facts First: We can’t fact check the sincerity of anyone’s faith, but it’s not even close to true that Buttigieg suddenly started proclaiming himself a devoted Christian “about two weeks ago.”
Here are the repeat false claims we have previously fact checked in one of these roundups:
Joe Biden and Hunter Biden
Military
Veterans Choice
NATO spending increases
“I was able to get, recently, at NATO — and you have to speak to Secretary General Stoltenberg — $530 billion additionally, over a very short period of time; $130 billion immediately.” — December 31 exchange with reporters at New Year’s Eve party
Facts First: Trump’s math was wrong: the $130 billion current increase in military spending by non-US NATO members (over 2016 levels) cannot be added to the $400 billion increase expected by 2024; the $400 billion figure includes the $130 billion.
Mexican soldiers and the border
“We right now have 27,000 Mexican soldiers on our southern border.” — January 3 speech to Evangelicals for Trump coalition launch
The supposed war on Christmas
“Even a thing like Merry Christmas. Remember I used to go around — in the summer, I’d say, we’re going to say Christmas again. We’re going to say Christmas again. And now they’re all saying Merry Christmas again, right? They’re all saying it. You’d go to these big department stores three years ago four years ago and they’d have the snow and they’d have the red and the white, they’d have everything, but they wouldn’t say Christmas. I said where’s Merry Christmas and they said we can’t say it They’re all saying it again. They’re saying it proudly.” — January 3 speech to Evangelicals for Trump coalition launch
Facts First: There is no evidence that people are now saying “Merry Christmas” any more frequently than they did under previous presidents, nor that all stores that declined to use the phrase before Trump’s presidency have changed their policies.
It’s hard to measure this stuff, but one metric is the socially conservative American Family Association’s annual list of retailers that it considers “naughty” or “nice” when it comes to its willingness to use the word “Christmas” in promotional materials. Not one of the 17 “naughty” companies the AFA listed in a press release in December 2015, the year Trump launched his presidential campaign, had been promoted to “nice” on the 2019 list, though two had moved from “naughty” to “marginal.”
Obama’s judicial vacancies
“Because of President Obama, we have 142 slots. Never happened before. The most anyone’s ever had is like one, maybe none.” And: “I don’t know what happened, but I had 142.” — January 3 speech to Evangelicals for Trump coalition launch
Facts First: Trump exaggerated. According to Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution who tracks judicial appointments, there were 103 vacancies on district and appeals courts on Jan. 1, 2017, just before Trump took office, plus a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
The visa lottery
“We have lottery. Put your name in a hat, lottery. Do you think that their governments put their best people in the lottery? No, they don’t put their best people. Common sense.” — January 3 speech to Evangelicals for Trump coalition launch
Facts First: Foreign governments don’t enter people into the green card lottery conducted by the State Department, let alone deliberately enter their countries’ bad apples. Individuals enter on their own because they want to immigrate.
The people whose names are selected are subjected to an extensive vetting process that includes a criminal background check.
“Treason”
Facts First: Nothing about the Russia investigation comes close to meeting the definition of treason.
Under the Constitution, treason is narrowly defined: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed and supervised by a Republican whom Trump appointed as deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. There is no evidence of any behavior that could even possibly qualify as treason.
Trump’s popularity
“The Bay of Pigs Award”
“Two years ago they gave me the Bay of Pigs Award — Cuba. They gave me the Bay of Pigs Award. Meaning people formerly from Cuba, in Miami. And that was a big thing.” — January 3 speech to Evangelicals for Trump coalition launch
Approval among Republicans
Facts First: Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is very high, regularly in the 80s and sometimes creeping into the 90s, but it has not been 95% in any recent major poll we could find.
The CNN poll at which he was at 90% with Republicans had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points, and the Quinnipiac poll at which he was at 92% had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points, so those polls found that it’s possible Trump’s true number is somewhere around 95% — but it’s not accurate to make leaps from the numbers the polls actually found.
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