Donald Trump's CPAC speech overflowed with 'wildly dishonest' claims: fact-checker
Donald Trump couldn't fill the CPAC hall on Saturday, but that doesn't mean he didn't fill the weekend for fact-checker Daniel Dale, who listed a number of "wildly dishonest" claims that the former president made.
Writing for CNN on Sunday, Dale cited 23 lies.
Trump is known for hyperbole and exaggerations, but in the part of his speech about crime in New York City, Trump claimed, "killings are taking place at a number like nobody's ever seen, right in Manhattan." Dale explained, "it isn't even close."
In 2022, by this time, there were 43. In 1990 there were 379. In total in 2022, there were 438 homicides, and in 1990 there were 2,252, CNN cited.
Trump is still desperately trying to win his attacks on the late George Floyd, who was murdered by police officers in Minneapolis in 2020, leading to a summer of protests and outrage around the country.
According to Trump, he almost sent the National Guard into Seattle. Then he pivoted to claim he saved Minneapolis.
"The thing is, we’re not supposed to do that," Trump told the audience. "Because it’s up to the governor, the Democrat governor. They never want any help. They don’t mind – it’s almost like they don’t mind to have their cities and states destroyed. There’s something wrong with these people.”
Dale called this an outright "reversal of reality." Gov. Tim Walz deployed the Minnesota National Guard, not Trump. Trump wouldn't have been legally able to deploy a state guard, only a national guard to "suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion," according to the Insurrection Act of 1807.
Then Trump claimed he passed and signed an executive order. Executive orders aren't passed, just signed, which is why they're called "executive" orders. Trump claimed that it made a mandatory minimum of 10 years in jail for anyone who destroys a monument or statue.
Trump then fact-checked himself: "it’s not '10' but it turns into three months."
He reiterated again that they "passed it," and again, executive orders aren't passed. Then claimed that it wasn't passed, it was a law they "found."
"It was a very old law, and we found it – one of my very good legal people along with [adviser] Stephen Miller, they found it." rambled Trump. "They said, ‘Sir, I don’t know if you want to try and bring this back.’ I said. ‘I do.’”
As it turns out, Trump's executive order didn't even increase the sentence.
During his four years in office, Trump lied over 30,500 times, the Washington Post calculated.
He went on to claim that there weren't even storefronts in Portland, Oregon anymore because stores keep being "burned down every week." While the downtown area has struggled with commercial vacancies, Dale called it a "major exaggeration." Due to COVID-19, there have been a number of downtown areas that have faltered because so many companies realized they could move to virtual work. That means lower traffic in the area, killing restaurants, bars and shops.
There were a slew of lies about Russia, Ukraine, and NATO, namely that he made other countries pay into NATO, and before they were "delinquent." It's a lie he's repeated for years. While it's something he's ranted about for some time, there were always other countries paying into NATO. Not everyone is meeting the target and Trump never changed that. The goal set by NATO in 2014 was to reach a 2 percent GDP in 10 years. He also lied that NATO spent $3 billion on it's headquarters. While it was pricey to buy an entire building in Belgium, it was less than half of Trump's claim.
“Actually, NATO wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t get them to pay up," Trump claimed. In reality, aides revealed in 2019 that Trump tried to withdraw the United States from NATO.
There were rants about things Trump said "nobody ever heard of" before he came along, false comments that Joe Biden tried to bribe Ukraine. Then a wildly false claim that he had the "greatest jobs history of any president ever," when he actually had the worst jobs record for any president ever. There were lies about China.
ISIS, Afghanistan, his so-called border wall, deportations, and of course, his 2020 election "win."
Read the full report at CNN.com.
