A blizzard of literal and contextual falsehoods from Trump

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People, Trump and/or his supporters, claim that pointing out the factual inaccuracies in Trump's statements is a matter of political badgering. It is not. It's a matter of accuracy and wanting to arrive at the point whereby when the POTUS says something, one doesn't have to "fact check" what he says. It's about trust of a person's words. It doesn't matter who says a thing, but POTUS job one for which part of the job is to at the very least be factually and contextually accurate the overwhelming majority of times one says something. The burden, like it or not, is far higher not just on a POTUS, but also on SCOTUS jurists, appointed government officials, experts speaking on their topic of expertise, and members of Congress. That just comes with being a professional.

Trump's lying about things when there's neither point or push to do so is what I find most disturbing about his false statements. Most of the time, the falsehoods he utters are one's that come unsolicited. The ones from today's press conference are the most recent examples (unless he's said something since then that I haven't yet heard.). Here's the video from the conference

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The following is an an analysis of the remarks Trump made before reporters began to ask questions. So it's just the stuff Trump felt like he wanted to say. The point of my presenting the remarks below is to call attention to just how much stuff the current POTUS says that's just wrong factually or contextually misleading or wrong, or both. I have emboldened and italicized the false and/or contextually misleading claims.

• "He's [Alex Acosta is] a member of the National Labor Relations Board.
  
  • False: He was a member in 2002-2003. He is no longer on the NLRB. Would it have been so hard to simply say "former member of...?" Or if not that, "was" would do just fine as well.
• "A little while ago, Mick Mulvaney, former congressman, has just been approved weeks late, I have to say that, weeks, weeks late, Office of Management and Budget."
  • False: The Senate allowed 30 hours of debate on the appointment. The full 30 hours was used. The choice of time allotted and when debate begins is up to the majority party. There was no need to say anything about "late," but if he wanted to, sure, he could have said, "after 30 hours of debate, the Senate confirmed...." But that's not what he did. Trump wanted to take a jab at someone and he got the details wrong when he did.
• "A new Rasmussen poll just came out just a very short while ago, and it has our approval rating at 55 percent"
  • True. That is what the Rasmussen poll indicated; however, it's an outlier among polls. That poll is an outlier from other recent polling, including a poll from Pew that shows Trump with a 39 percent approval rating.
    
    
    
    
    A new Gallup Poll shows a 40 percent approval rating. A Fox News poll out this week showed Trump with a 48 percent approval rating with 47 percent disapproval, the only other major poll this week showing him more approval than disapproval, but even there the approval is not above 50%. Given that pretty much all polls were wrong about his election win, it's curious that Trump cites polls at all, much less a poll that got it wrong.
• "People came out and voted like never seen before."
  
  • False: There have, since 1916, been ten elections that had higher voter turnout rates.
    • Here again we have a fine example of Trump lying of his own volition. Nobody asked about the election.
    • Here again we have an example of Trump lying when he didn't need to. There was no need to mention anything having to do with the election.
• "To be honest, I inherited a mess. It's a mess. At home and abroad, a mess. Jobs are pouring out of the country; you see what's going on with all of the companies leaving our country, going to Mexico and other places, low pay, low wages, mass instability overseas, no matter where you look." Trump "cited" two areas (nothing specific) as evidence of the so-called mess he inherited: the Middle East and N. Korea.
  • False: The Middle East and N. Korea, even taken together or individually and counted do not in any way suggest there is "mass instability" overseas. There are 190 or so countries on the planet.
  • False: Jobs are doing anything but "pouring out of the country." The Jan. 2017 jobless report shows 200K+ jobs added to the economy.
  • False: Trump is hardly inheriting a mess. For one thing, he's not taking office at the start of a recession, much less the biggest one since the Great Depression. For each category below, the first figure is from when Obama took office and the second is from when he left it, thus what Trump inherits from him. Is "everything coming up roses?" No, but a mess? No, not that either. Economically speaking:
    • Unemployment rate: 7.8%; 4.7%
    • GDP: - 3.5; +1.7
    • Household income: $55,375; $56,516
    • Avg income for the top 5%: $324,431; $350,870
    • Wage growth: +3.6%; +2.9%
    • Inflation: -0.01%; +2.1%
    • Poverty: 13.2%; 13.5%
    • Women's wages as a % of men's: 77.1%; 79.9%
    • Blacks' wages as a % of whites': 75.8%; 76.4%
    • Latinos' wages as a % of whites': 65%; 65.7%
    • Asians' wages as a % of whites': 105.3%; 109.1%
    • Violent crime rate: 454.5/100K; 372.6/100K
    • Income inequality: 0.466; 0.479
    • Times the 90th rank's income is greater than the 10th rank's: 11.37; 12.23
    • S&P 500: 930.72; 2266.72
    • Fed. deficit as a % of GDP: 3.1; 2.4
    • National debt as a % of GDP: 77.4%; 104.8%
    • Labor force participation rate: 65.7%; 627%
• "I've ordered plan to begin building for the massive rebuilding of the United States military. Had great support from the Senate, I've had great from Congress, generally."
  • Half-false, thus also half-true, at best.
    
    There is indeed wide support in Congress for increased military spending. But there is no consensus whatsoever about how to pay for it. Under the Budget Control Act, an agreement reached in 2011 to avoid a default on the nation's debt, caps were imposed on both defense and nondefense domestic spending aimed at reaching $917 billion in spending cuts over the next decade. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was a chief proponent of the BCA. He would likely oppose its repeal, leaving Congress two options:
    1. Congress could cut domestic spending by the amount defense spending (already at 80% of individual income tax revenue) is increased to stay within the budget caps. This would be fiercely opposed by congressional Democrats. (budget measures require 60 votes)
    2. Congress could increase tax revenues to pay for more military spending. This would be fiercely opposed by Republicans, and many Democrats as well; moreover, it's not doable with the tax cuts Trump has promised.
• "We got 306 [electoral votes] because people came out and voted like they've never seen before so that's the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan. Now if he'd have said, "..biggest electoral college win since 2012," he'd have been right. He could have repeated the statement on his own biography page in the WH website that says he "won the election on November 8 of 2016 in the largest electoral college landslide for a Republican in 28 years." But neither of those things is what he said; neither is even close to what he said.
  • False on both counts:
    Why did he even need to even make a comment (1) about the election and (2) that compared his electoral win with someone else's? What value did that serve? None for people in the audience once they find out he lied about it.
    • Voted like never before: Ten elections since the early 1900s have had higher voter turnout than the 2016 election.
    • Biggest electoral win:
      • All Presidential elections
      • Since Ronald Reagan:
        Trump won enough states to give him 56.9% or 306 Electoral College votes. That places him 45th out of 58 US presidential campaigns in the ranking of winning percentages going all the way back to George Washington’s victory in the election of 1789. Several presidents have won more electoral votes since Reagan than did Trump, including Barack Obama, who won 365 votes in 2008, and George H.W. Bush -- a Republican -- who took in 426 in 1988.
        
• "I turn on the T.V., open the newspapers and I see stories of chaos. Chaos. Yet it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine, despite the fact that I can't get my cabinet approved."
  • False
    No matter how much he wants to say otherwise, the Trump administration in this first month has been the very picture of chaos. Those stories of chaos, backbiting and infighting are coming from somewhere -- they’re not just made up “fake news,” as Trump likes to call it. And Trump might do well to look at the people in his own White House who are the sources for many of the stories.
    
    For example, in the Feb. 15 NPR Politics Podcast, NPR national security correspondent Mary Louise Kelly quoted a White House official, who said this White House, at present, was “an effing train wreck.” On Feb 14, 2017, speaking a conference on special operations and low intensity conflict, a prominent four-star general, General Raymond A. Thomas, who leads the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, told his audience, “Our government continues to be in unbelievable turmoil."
• "You go to other countries and you look at industries they have and you say "let me see your regulations" and they're fraction, just a tiny fraction of what we have. And I want regulations because I want safety, I want environmental - all environmental situations to be taken properly care of. It's very important to me.
  • False.
    I presume he figured most people don't know where to look to find out whether the statement is true or false.
    
    The World Bank issues an annual report comparing business regulation around the world. In the rankings for “Ease of Doing Business,” the U.S. comes in eighth out of 190 countries, trailing only New Zealand, Singapore, Denmark, Hong Kong, South Korea, Norway and the United Kingdom.
• "[The 9th Circuit] has been overturned at a record number. I have heard 80 percent, I find that hard to believe, that is just a number I heard, that they are overturned 80 percent of the time. I think that circuit is -- that circuit is in chaos and that circuit is frankly in turmoil. But we are appealing that, and we are going further."
  • False, literally and contextually.
    • A review of the Supreme Court reversal rate for the 13 federal circuit courts of appeal over the past five years shows that contrary to Trump’s assertion, the 9th Circuit’s reversal rate is not the highest. According to SCOTUSblog, it came in second last term, 10th in the 2014-15 term, third in the 2013-14 term, tied for fifth in the 2012-13 term, and in the 2011-12 term, it came in fourth.
      
      In sheer numbers, the Supreme Court reviews more cases from the 9th Circuit because it is the largest in area and population, handling by far more cases than any other circuit. In the last fiscal year, it decided 11,798 cases, compared to the next largest, the 5th Circuit, based in Texas, which decided 7,899 cases. At best, the SCOTUS overturns ~80% of the 9th Circuit cases it hears. It doesn't hear and never has heard enough cases in a year to overturn 80% of 9th's cases.
• "Jobs have already started to surge. Since my election, Ford announced it will abandon its plans to build a new factory in Mexico, and will instead invest $700 million in Michigan, creating many, many jobs. Fiat Chrysler announced it will invest $1 billion in Ohio and Michigan, creating 2,000 new American jobs. They were with me a week ago. You know you were here. General Motors likewise committed to invest billions of dollars in its American manufacturing operation, keeping many jobs here that were going to leave. And if I didn't get elected, believe me, they would have left. And these jobs and these things that I'm announcing would never have come here. Intel just announced that it will move ahead with a new plant in Arizona that probably was never going to move ahead with. And that will result in at least 10,000 American jobs."
  • False
    Trump is taking credit for job creation and investment that, to a large extent, were in the works before he won the election. One exception is Ford’s decision to cancel plans for a $1.6 billion plant in Mexico and instead invest $700 million to expand a plant in Michigan adding 700 jobs.
    
    • GM: GM announced in mid-January that it would invest $1 billion in U.S. factories in the coming years and create or retain 7,000 jobs. A GM executive said the moves the company announced had been in the works for some time.
      
    • Fiat Chrysler: Fiat Chrysler, announced at the Detroit Auto Show in January that it would spend $1 billion on plants in Michigan and Ohio and create 2,000 jobs in the process. Fiat Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne said the decision had been in the works for a long time. He said it was only “coincidental” that the company’s announcement had come after Trump had criticized the company in a tweet.
    • Intel: In announcing a $5 billion investment in a plant to build a new computer chip in Chandler, Ariz., Intel was repeating a pledge it had made in 2011 during a visit to by President Obama to another Intel site in Oregon.

As you look over the list of statements I've noted are false, just ask yourself whether the emboldened comments were necessary for Trump to say. Almost all of it is fallacious self-flattery. And the thing is that Trump, like most flatters, doesn't realize that if he'd just skip stating the self-aggrandizing falsehoods, people would focus on the policy aspects of his speeches, mainly because there'd be nothing else to focus on. That's really what it should be.

Ask yourself if they truly add anything to his statement. If, like me, you think they don't, then ask yourself why a presumably smart man of integrity would make those comments when they add nothing and aren't factually and contextually true. What adding those comments does is introduce a reason for people to doubt the speaker.