Trumps "20,000 lies"

The following is a response to a YouTube comment after one user, "Spyke 0511 1", kept talking about Trump and his 20,000 lies. This user, despite many times of asking, never once provided a source for this fact. So, I decided to look it up myself and came across an interesting article, which was rather easy to pull to pieces. Here is what I had to say to this user, edited slightly to make it more readable on this platform.

So, after you not providing a link, I decided to do a search for these "20,000 lies of Donald Trump" and I came across this from the Washington Post (which is hugely anti-Trump, so no surprises there).

They only have a few of the "lies" there, but if these are the "highlights" then they are not particularly good.

Firstly, it's worth noting that it's not just straight lies, it also includes "misleading statements"... well, all politicians deliberately make misleading statements, so you can probably find a whole stack for every leader of every country. But regarding the ones on the article above, in order:

- "did not want" I suppose implies Trump knew Obama's motive. Such a statement was based of the action of scaling back the program, which could certainly give the impression of not wanting to give the surplus to the police, and could well have been a pretext for something more. I guess we'll never know. It's an implied inference at best, but not a lie.

- "tremendous support" from the African American community. Well, what counts as "tremendous support"? Is there a line? Is there a particular number? The article says "no polling shows this". Well, just because polling doesn't show it, doesn't make it false. A lot of the black community do, in fact, support Trump. Have a watch of the movie "Uncle Tom" (2020) and you'll see a bunch of blacks supporting Trump. But does "tremendous support" imply numbers? Even one person doing a big thing could be considered "tremendous support". Washington Post is plain wrong on this one.

- The media is desperate to prove that Trump is a liar. Could it possibly be that the local officials are lying, in order to appeal to their base? I've heard speeches from Trump where he says the National Guard is ready to act if needs be. Maybe the local officials don't watch his speeches? (Maybe because CNN doesn't air them??) Sounds to me more like the local officials are either lying themselves, or they are uninformed. Considering they keep calling the riots "peaceful protests", either is a realistic option. Added to the fact that they don't want their authority to be seen to be undermined. Hence they want people to think they weren't forced to act, but did so "on their own".

- A "per capita" or "per million" coronavirus testing rate is not a particularly reliable metric as it only gives the proportion of the country that is tested. You could test the whole population of Vatican City in an afternoon. Monaco has "973,180 tests per million people" (that's 97.3% of the population), yet it only has a population of 39,262. The size of the country and availability of testing kits is also a huge factor. The truth is that the US has tested more than any other country (with the exception of China, but their stats are rather dodgy and they are currently trying to do everything possible to look good and humane). What Trump says about this is true and can be verified with basic maths skills. But the media hope that if they shove enough stats down people's throats, then people won't bother to fact-check the maths. Data mentioned above can be found here.

- The "2016 Russia collusion" narrative is slowly falling apart: the Steele dossier is now proved to be false; operatives in the CIA are proved to have known this, and Obama and Biden were known to have been involved in the issues regarding Michael Flynn. Fox seems to be the only News media to report this, likely because the other channels don't want their viewers to realise that they've been misled for the last few years. Every week that goes by shows that there is more evidence to show that Trump was right.

- "disgraceful" is an opinion. The only "fact-checking" you can do on an opinion is whether the person holds the opinion. "Spyke0511 1" may think this comment is "disgraceful" (because it supports Trump and knocks back the sources he holds dear). It would be idiotic for me to claim that such an opinion is a "lie". That's dishonesty from the Washington Post.

- a "private, self-contained living unit" is an interesting description. I don't think "solitary confinement" is too far removed (it's far more dishonest to call immigration detention facilities "concentration camps", but the hypocritical media loves to give AOC a pass on that one), and anyway, Washington Post says "according to some reports" Capone was in solitary. Which reports? Fake media loves anonymous sources (Ukraine whistleblower, anyone??). The only thing I could find was a very brief statement by Capone's niece that his treatment of syphilis made him violent and angry and apparently had to be put in solitary confinement. That's one, secondary, anecdotal source. Not hugely reliable. Would love to know more about that. At best, Trump's statement could be seen as an exaggeration, but certainly nowhere near the exaggeration of certain Democrat statements.

- "In 2020 no records have been set" is a dishonest statement... we're only part-way through the year and lots of stats for this years hasn't been released yet. However, 2017 had the lowest number of foreigners apprehended since 1971 (remember that back then and before, freedom of movement was much more limited). 2018 had the highest number of foreigners determined to be inadmissible (meaning, border protection were doing their job and making sure people were entering the country legally) certainly since 2005. Data can be found here and here.

I, myself, am a legal immigrant, and I feel rather strongly about people entering countries illegally, especially if they then go on to commit other crimes ("other" because the first crime is to enter the country illegally).

In order to prove Trump a "liar", Washington Post would need to provide facts/statistics. They have not. That's dishonest.

- "Trump frequently suggests" is the media putting their own spin on it. The only quote of Trump they have here is: "We've rebuilt the military, 2.5 trillion dollars." It's disingenuous to take his (factual) statement and put spin on it to make out that he was implying more than what was actually there.

- By what metric are we measuring the economy? Need some clarity here. Sure, Trump may well be being hyperbolic, as all politicians. To call it a lie? Possibly a bit far-fetched. But here's where the Washington Post does their selective fact-checking: in amongst their big explanation is a brief statement that "the president once could brag about the economy". This is an admission that Trump did have a great economy. But the "fact-check" they do isn't about the US economy in isolation, but regarding his comparison to "the history of the world". In other words, they take his most extreme statement, "fact-check" that part, then use it to convince their readers that the whole statement is false. The article also says "by just about any important measure" but unless they state what metric they are using, it's a disingenuous statement. This is the same economy that Bill Maher admitted was good and needed to collapse in order to hurt Trump.

- Border wall "fact-check" is hugely disingenuous as well. Washington Post even links to another article that they published regarding how people get through the barrier. Their anonymous "senior administration official" mentions there have been breaches (which forms the vast majority of the narrative), and also states that it's only "a few instances" and that the fencing "significantly increased security and deterrence". So is the wall a failure? It seems the media views it as a failure if there's even one single breach. That's not how it works, and the media are disingenuous for making people believe it. If there are only "a few breaches" then perhaps Trumps statement of "virtually impenetrable" is actually true. The article they linked to is here.

Another part of this supposed "lie" is that there are only 3 miles of border wall on ground that previously didn't have a wall. Anyone with a brain would know that you put the initial resources to where the biggest problems are. Why did some of the border have a wall previously? Could it be because that's where the issues were? And people found a way to get through, so they needed to reinforce that area first? The media assumes their readers can't think logically about the situation. And they get away with it because their readers (a) hardly ever read the whole article, and (b) don't fact-check them but believe everything they say!

- Regarding the "biggest tax cut", I'm out of "free articles" on the Washington Post website, and I'm certainly not paying to keep a fake news site running, so I can't access the article they link to to verify what they are saying (a nice little gimmick to force people to pay to find out they are disingenuous fakers). However, they "fact-check" according to a percentage of the GDP. If Trump was just talking about a straight dollar-for-dollar cut, he may be right (as I said, unfortunately I can't verify this). Whilst there is some benefit to "fact-checking" using a different metric than the one used in the original statement, it is disingenuous to then call him a "liar". At best, "misleading", but that's why the headline is "false or misleading" but most people emphasise the "false" part because the readership is predominantly Trump-haters who don't want to admit that all politicians make misleading statements, as it would send the message that Trump isn't actually any worse than other leaders.

Trump's "penchant for repeating false claims"... only because the anti-Trump media have decided something is false and Trump has repeated it. Showing the fake news media to be fake regarding one statement Trump makes means that they are also fake every time they repeat that Trump has repeated a "false" statement. Hence, of these "500 instances", only one needs to be disproved for them all to be disproved. But by saying Trump has repeated the statement 500 times, it makes the readership think that Trump has made 500 other false statements. That is incorrect. He has made one statement 500 times, which needs to be determined to be true or false. It's clever and deceptive reporting.

This false logic is then confirmed with the "Fact-Checker" (I'd be interested to know what this is... Snopes is a very biased "fact-checker") which is stated to have given Trump a "Bottomless Pinocchio" because he said the same thing multiple times. It's just dishonest. It's based on taking advantage of the fact that the level of logic and mathematical ability is slowly diminishing, putting out "stats and figures" to sound authoritative and hoping the audience isn't smart enough to work it out for themselves. Anyone who says "we've done this so you don't have to" (a tag-line from Huckabee on Fox, amongst others) is essentially wanting you to believe them without checking up. It's dishonest. It's demeaning. It's disgusting.

I'm not going to go through all "20,000 lies" (many of which are likely repeats, from what I've said above). If those mentioned here are the highlights, then the rest will only get worse, more far-fetched and more dishonest.

This is why I get fed up with people quoting News media as their sources for information. You want to convince me? Quote a statement Trump has made, along with the actual data (e.g. as I did above regarding immigrants) to show that what he said was false. News media is twisted and biased. Don't even quote Fox at me.