News Reporter: Fact Checker: How many inaccuracies can Donald Trump fit in 140 characters?

Friday, 9 December 2016

Fact Checker: How many inaccuracies can Donald Trump fit in 140 characters?

The truth behind the rhetoric

Fact-checking President-Elect Donald Trump’s tweets on Air Force One and SoftBank

With 17 million Twitter followers, President-Elect Donald Trump disseminates his message directly to the public, 140-character tweet at a time. As Trump holds meetings with potential Cabinet members, his tweets have essentially become pithy news releases.

This week, we fact-checked several claims Trump made on Twitter, including about Boeing’s contract to design a replacement for the aging pair of Air Force Ones used by the president. Trump tweeted: “Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!”

Except not really. We found a number of inaccuracies in this tweet. Boeing is not actually building the jet; it has a $170 million contract to design a replacement. And at minimum, there would be two Air Force Ones. You need a spare in case there is a problem with one. The jets generally have a life cycle of 30 years.

A $4 billion estimate is not completely out of line for the design, testing and manufacture of at least two jets. But costs have not been set yet; the actual cost of the plane will depend on the equipment that goes into it. And Congress obviously would have a say in the final price tag. And nothing has been ordered yet — though the program could be eliminated.

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Trump’s dubious tweets about SoftBank’s investment in the U.S.

Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank in Japan, met with Trump this week and announced that he would invest $50 billion of its $100 billion investment fund into the U.S. technology industry. Trump claimed full credit, tweeting after the meeting: "Masa (SoftBank) of Japan has agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S. toward businesses and 50,000 new jobs. … Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!"

Except there are questionable aspects to this claim, as analysts in Japan and the U.S. have noted. SoftBank announced its technology-investment fund three weeks before the U.S. elections, when Trump faced a narrow bath to victory. And given that the U.S. leads the world in venture capital investments and has some of the most promising tech companies and start-ups, it’s likely that Son already had planned on investing in U.S. companies, no matter who won the presidential election.

Still, Trump’s election, and proposals for deregulation, may have cheered Son. Neither Trump nor Son has revealed all the details of their conversation. There are too many unknowns right now to issue Pinocchios, so we issued a Verdict Pending rating and will update it if more information emerges.

But readers should be wary of this spin by Trump and/or Son; it’s too fishy to take it at face value.

We’re always looking for suggestions. If you hear something fact-checkable, fill out this form, e-mail us or tweet us: @myhlee, @GlennKesslerWP or using #FactCheckThis. Read about our rating scale here, and sign up here for our weekly Fact Checker newsletter.

Scroll down for this week’s Pinocchio roundup.

— Michelle Ye Hee Lee