Iranian hard-liner's explosive claim winds up in Trump tweetPresident Trump often tweets explosive claims without evidence. But they rarely come from Iranian clerics who offer no...
| |  | | Democracy Dies in Darkness | | | | | | | | | | The truth behind the rhetoric | | | | | | Iranian hard-liner's explosive claim winds up in Trump tweet President Trump often tweets explosive claims without evidence. But they rarely come from Iranian clerics who offer no proof. Trump tweeted, "Just out that the Obama Administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians – including to government officials. How big (and bad) is that?" We found no evidence to support this eye-popping allegation that President Barack Obama's administration secretly offered citizenship to 2,500 Iranians during negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. The Trump administration didn't offer any proof, and senior Obama administration officials said Trump's claim was hogwash. So, how did this huge, unverified allegation wind up on the president's Twitter feed? It started with an Iranian lawmaker, Mojtaba Zonnour, a hard-liner opposed to the Iran nuclear deal who was interviewed by a newspaper. That interview was picked up by Fars, Iran's semiofficial news agency. Then Fox News picked it up in the United States. It quickly spread to other conservative media and popped up on @realDonaldTrump. You might say this is one of the downsides of globalization. We gave Trump's tweet Four Pinocchios. |  | | Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this e-mail was forwarded to you, sign up here for the weekly newsletter. Hear something fact-checkable? Send it here, we'll check it out. | | North Korea still a threat, despite Trump's repeated assurances Since he signed a short joint statement with Kim Jong Un on June 12, Trump has been claiming on a near-daily basis that North Korea no longer poses a nuclear threat, that it halted its nuclear research, or that it's blowing up multiple nuclear facilities. These claims should be taken with a mine's worth of salt. Although North Korea apparently demolished an underground site where it had tested six nuclear bombs over the years, experts say it's not clear that the damage is irreversible. North Korea has stopped testing rockets, but it could resume those tests at any time. The June 12 joint statement doesn't bar missile tests. Whether or not Trump succeeds on North Korea will depend on negotiations that are still ongoing. For now, the president is getting ahead of himself and his constant assurances could lull his audiences into a false sense of security. We gave him Three Pinocchios. | | | Getting to know you … In the fact-checking world, we keep away from opinions. But it's impossible to miss how polarized conversations about politics, government and the press have become. How deep is the divide between Americans? How does each side see the other? We wanted to share two polls that got us thinking about these perceptions and its effect on democratic debate. | | Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. — Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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