Year in Review: Lies, Exaggerations and The Donald
June 16th, 2015, is a day that will live in infamy. That’s the day that Donald Trump formally announced he was staking his claim on the presidency. It’s been downhill ever since.
The Donald’s announcement speech, alone, helped spring into action an army of fact-checkers — never before unleashed in the annals of modern fact-checking.
“They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people,” Trump claimed about the Mexican government’s concerted effort to flood the United States with nefarious illegal aliens.
Just about every journalist in America who covers presidential politics is fully aware that Republicans have been admonished to tread lightly on the sensibilities of Latinos and their less than enthusiastic support of Republicans.
Trump didn’t care. When asked why he held Mexicans in such low esteem, he claimed he wasn’t talking about Mexicans. You don’t really need a fact-checker to conclude that if Mexico is sending people northward, they aren’t Norwegian.
But Trump was just getting started. In June, he claimed there are no jobs to be had. False. The official statistics, at the time, indicated that there were more job openings than in the previous 15 years — 5.4 million.
Trump makes continuous, and questionable, claims about things he’s “heard.” During one speech, he announced that he’d heard the Obama administration is planning to accept 200,000 Syrian refugees. False. The only number anybody from the Obama administration has ever used is 10,000.
Much of Trump’s campaign prowess stems from his off-the-cuff remarks in front of his ever-adoring crowds. It doesn’t seem to matter that Trump’s speeches frequently drift into the realm of outright fantasy. He knows bold, if completely inaccurate, chest-thumping attracts potential voters.
At a rally on Nov. 21, he claimed that he’d watched “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11. No such video has ever been revealed that would support that claim. Trump refuses to admit that he was simply conjuring up “thousands and thousands” of people who would delight in the tragedy of their fellow Americans.
He’d prefer to instill fear in his potential voters. To them, Muslim means evil. And Trump is the man who can erase that evil from America.
So, the nation’s two leading (non-partisan) fact-checkers — PolitiFact.com (a Pulitzer Prize winner), and FactCheck.org, have both named Trump their biggest liar of 2015.
FactCheck.org’s announcement came with the headline “The ‘King of the Whoppers:’ Donald Trump.” To FactCheck.org, Trump isn’t some garden variety prevaricator. He’s somebody who happily thumbs his nose at the truth.
“In the 12 years of FactCheck.org’s existence, we’ve never seen his match,” FactCheck.org wrote about Trump.
Trump bristled when he didn’t become Time’s “Person of the Year.” He did win PolitiFact.com’s less-than-honorable “Lie of the Year” award.
I sorta feel sorry for PolitiFact.com. They had so many of Donald Trump’s lies to choose from, their editors must’ve worked overtime. Of the 77 Trump statements they’ve rated, they only found ONE they called “True.” A full 76 percent of his statements were rated “Pants on Fire,” “False” or “Mostly False.”
PolitiFact.com can’t be accused of being an appendage of the Democratic Party, by the way.
It rated President Obama’s 2013 claim that “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” that year’s “Lie of the Year.”
But this year, PolitiFact.com didn’t rate any single Trump lie as the winner. They gave him the “Lie of the Year” for his full body of lies.
He’s undoubtedly a rich man, thanks to his prolific career as a world class builder. He’s now embarked on another career. He builds falsehoods.
But he’s already telegraphed his strategy. In his 2004 book “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” he wrote, “You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”
I’m wondering when?
Edward A. Owens is a three time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.