Trump pumps up another Saudi deal
President Trump has a soft spot for Saudi Arabia, notwithstanding the CIA's conclusion that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In 2017, he falsely claimed the Saudis agreed to $350 billion in arms purchases and private sector investments in the United States. In 2018, he falsely claimed that $110 billion had been agreed to when looking only at arms sales. Now, after the administration announced Oct. 11 that it was sending to Saudi Arabia an additional 3,000 troops and nearly four dozen Air Force fighters and Patriot antimissile batteries, Trump claims: "Saudi Arabia is paying for 100 percent of the cost, including the cost of our soldiers. And that negotiation took a very short time — like, maybe, about 35 seconds." We were naturally skeptical, given the president's track record of exaggerating deals with the Saudis. Lo and behold, Trump's secretary of defense and the State Department both said that the agreement between the two countries encourages "burden-sharing." When you share a burden, you're shouldering some of it yourself. That's not compatible with saying one side is paying 100 percent of the cost. We gave Three Pinocchios to Trump.
The White House's mystery review of Ukrainian corruption
Trump and White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney say they held up $391 million in foreign aid for Ukraine this year because of concerns about corruption.
Congress approved $250 million of that total in September 2018 to fund military training and weapons. A top Defense Department official certified to congressional committees on May 23 that Ukraine had made sufficient progress on anti-corruption efforts to merit the security funds. The Pentagon announced the $250 million aid package June 18. That's how it typically works. But, on Trump's orders, the White House informed the Pentagon on July 18 that Ukraine's aid was being frozen, and didn't release the funds until Sept. 11, weeks before the deadline. If the Defense Department certified in May that Ukraine had made enough progress on corruption to merit the security assistance funds, what was left for the White House to investigate? We asked the White House, experts and relevant congressional committees what the review consisted of, and how it differed from the Defense Department's. No one could say. Meanwhile, the Pentagon and USAID, an arm of the State Department, have released a series of reports and legal certifications documenting Ukraine's progress in combating corruption in recent years. Ukraine reformed its military procurement process and put a civilian in charge of defense, they trained judges on how to spot corruption, they continue to decentralize power by creating and consolidating new local governments, they're working on bank and energy-sector reforms to curb corruption. And on and on it goes. We found the information in one day, so it's unclear why the White House held up the aid package for Ukraine for nearly two months while it conducted this supposed review of corruption. The claim makes no sense. We gave Four Pinocchios to the president and his chief of staff. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this e-mail was forwarded to you, sign up here. Hear something fact-checkable? Send it here, we'll check it out.
Fake news watch
They look like local news websites. They're cropping up in communities across the country. But these outlets are not what they seem. They're pushing stories with a political viewpoint and disguising it as local news. The Lansing State Journal in Michigan (a real local news website) wrote about the Lansing Sun (a right-wing website made to look like a local news outlet while publishing stories with a conservative bent). "Political information outlets aren't new, he said, but presenting them as non-biased local news sources is," the Lansing State Journal's Carol Thompson reported. And when the real news outlet tried to reach anyone at the fake news outlet, there was no response whatsoever. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can also reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @mmkelly22, @rizzoTK, @SarahCahlan or use #FactCheckThis), or Facebook (Fact Checker). Read about our rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here.
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