Donald Trump tells a lot of lies — but he's just building on a long Republican tradition by Salon
-- It's an established fact: President Donald Trump is a shameless, relentless liar. He rarely makes it through a public appearance without uttering deliberate, outrageous falsehoods. Lies defined his campaign, creating a cottage industry of journalists listing and even cataloging his lies.
-- The recent attacks on Planned Parenthood, for instance, have been justified by the claim that the venerated health organization “sells baby parts.” This is a lie. In the recent Supreme Court case Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt, the state of Texas argued that many abortion restrictions were necessary to protect women's health. That was a lie, which the court saw right through. In the Hobby Lobby v. Burwell case challenging the Affordable Care Act's contraception coverage requirement, the anti-choice side argued that certain forms of birth control work not by preventing but by terminating pregnancies. That's a lie.
Fact Check: Trump Blasts ‘Fake News' and Repeats Inaccurate Claims at CPAC by The New York Times
-- Mr. Trump criticized the news media for distorting his criticism.
“They did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people. They dropped off the word fake.”
False. Mr. Trump tweeted on Feb. 17, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
All of the news organizations Mr. Trump named actually quoted the tweet in its entirety or specified the outlets he called “fake.”
-- Mr. Trump said the Affordable Care Act took health care coverage away from people.
“Obamacare covers very few people. And remember, deduct from the number all of those people who had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them.”
False. About 20 million people have gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and the uninsured rate has dropped to a record low of 10.9 percent.
The left-leaning Urban Institute estimated that 2.6 million plans were canceled because they did not meet minimum requirements set by the act. But fewer than one million people ended up with no insurance at all, and it is not clear that this was entirely attributable to health care law.
-- Mr. Trump again invoked Sweden as an example of the detriments of immigration.
“The people over there understand that I'm right. Take a look at what's happening in Sweden.”
False. Mr. Trump referred to a nonexistent terrorist attack in Sweden during a Feb. 18 campaign rally in Florida, baffling an entire nation.
If he was referring to crime in a country known for taking in large numbers of refugees, the data does not support him, either. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention found no significant increase in overall crime rates from 2015 to 2016.
-- Mr. Trump suggested that crime and terrorist attacks have hurt tourism to Paris.
“I said, ‘Jim, let me ask you a question, how's Paris doing?' ‘Paris? I don't go there anymore, Paris is no longer Paris.' That was four years — four or five years, hasn't gone there. He wouldn't miss it for anything. Now he doesn't even think in terms of going there.”
This is misleading. Anecdotes aside, tourism in Paris has not suffered despite the 2015 terrorist attacks. The city reported a “moderate” 1.1 percent drop in hotel arrivals that year.
That is less than the 1.4 percent drop experienced in 2014. Paris did have steady increases in tourism from 2010 to 2013, but that occurred after a 4.4 percent decline in 2009 during the global financial crisis.
Paris was named the third-most-visited city in the world in 2016 by MasterCard.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault tweeted in response, “3.5 million American tourists visited France in 2016, they will always be welcome #Trump #Paris #Nice #Survivor Tree.”
@RealDonaldTrump 24 Feb 2017, 7:09pm
FAKE NEWS media knowingly doesn't tell the truth. A great danger to our country. The failing @nytimes has become a joke. Likewise @CNN. Sad!
@RealDonaldTrump 26 Feb 2017, 3:33am
The race for DNC Chairman was, of course, totally "rigged." Bernie's guy, like Bernie himself, never had a chance. Clinton demanded Perez!