New year, same old TrumpHappy new year! President Trump wasted no time kicking off 2019 with a televised Cabinet session chock-full of false and misleading claims. His 90-minute...
| |  | | Democracy Dies in Darkness | | | | | | | | | | The truth behind the rhetoric | | | | | | New year, same old Trump Happy new year! President Trump wasted no time kicking off 2019 with a televised Cabinet session chock-full of false and misleading claims. His 90-minute stream of consciousness promises to add dozens of new entries to our Trump database, which, as of Dec. 30, reached a staggering 7,645 untruths. It will take us some time before we finish fact-checking the whole event. In the meantime, we rounded up some of the Trump whoppers that we heard for the first time at this Cabinet gathering. He gave a false tally of the number of people crossing the border illegally. He falsely said Democrats tried to add $12 billion in foreign aid to the budget. He falsely claimed Russia was upset that he's pulling U.S. troops from Syria. He falsely said India's contribution to rebuilding Afghanistan was just a single library. He spouted Russian propaganda about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Et cetera. Et cetera. |  | | 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. How much money is being spent on the border? Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has a new talking point that has caught on in recent weeks. Why does Trump want more money for his promised border wall, Democrats argue, when his administration has spent only 6 percent of what it got last year for border security? Leahy's 6 percent figure has a factual basis — but it's highly misleading. Congress appropriated $1.7 billion over the two most recent fiscal years for border security measures, including new fencing. It has spent only $100 million or so, or roughly 6 percent. But what's crucially missing from this discussion is that almost all the money — $1.6 billion, or 93 percent — has been "obligated." That means the money, although it hasn't been spent, is already committed through "an order placed, contract awarded, service received, or similar transaction during a given period that will require payments during the same or a future period," according to the Senate's definition. Moreover, the federal government has five years to spend this money. So although Leahy makes a somewhat defensible point (even if Congress gives more money, it wouldn't be spent right away), he gets Three Pinocchios for leaving out the fact that obligations are above 90 percent. | | | We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can also reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @mmkelly22, @rizzoTK or use #FactCheckThis), or Facebook (Fact Checker). Read about our rating scale here, and sign up here for our weekly Fact Checker newsletter. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. — Salvador Rizzo | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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