Three years in, here's how Trump's promises hold up President Trump has become fond of boasting: "I've completed more promises than I've made." But that doesn't make it accurate. Suffice it to say, if the president made a to-do list of campaign promises for his first term, he has a lot left to do before November. The president made more than 280 promises during the 2016 campaign, though many were contradictory or just uttered in a single campaign event. But on Oct. 22, 2016, Trump issued what he called his "Contract with the American Voter." This was a specific plan of action that would guide his administration, starting from the first day, and listed 60 promises. He even signed it with his distinctive signature. That document became the basis for our Trump Promise Tracker, which first launched in Dec. 2016. Since then, we have diligently tracked the progress of each pledge and whether Trump has achieved his stated goal. After nearly three years in office, here are the results: Trump has broken about 43 percent of 60 key promises — and kept about 35 percent. He settled for a compromise on 12 percent. Here's a sampling: Promises kept: Announce the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership; Announce the U.S. intention to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement or withdraw from the deal; Change visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying; Require that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated. Promises broken: Make Mexico reimburse the United States for the full cost of the border wall; Expand the economy 4 percent a year; Fully repeal and replace Obamacare; Make sure the $1 trillion infrastructure plan will be revenue-neutral. For the full fact check, click here. 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. Unwinding the facts at the January Democratic debate The seventh Democratic presidential debate of the 2020 campaign, hosted by CNN and the Des Moines Register, had six candidates, lasted a little over two hours — and although sparks flew, it did not have many statements that merited fact-checking. Instead, it was a bit like deja vu. Candidates repeated the same false claims we've seen in previous debates — mostly covering the Iraq War and health care. Here's a sampling from the eight claims that caught our attention. Former vice president Joe Biden: "It was a mistake to trust that they weren't going to go to war. They said they were not going to go to war." This is false. The language of the resolution was clear: 'The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.' " Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.): "We are now spending twice as much per person on health care as the people of any other country. That is insane." Recent estimates by the Organization fro Economic Cooperation and Development show the United States spent $10,586 per person on health care, compared with Switzerland ($7,317 per person), Norway ($6,187 per person) and Germany ($5,986 per person). All of those are more than half of U.S. spending, though the OECD average was just under $4,000. So Sanders would have been correct if he spoke about the average or median of other developed countries Biden: "You know, I was a single parent, too. When my wife and daughter were killed, my two boys I had to raise. ... I was making $42,000 a year. I commuted every single solitary day to Wilmington, Delaware — over 500 miles a day, excuse me, 250 miles a day — because I could not afford ... child care. It was beyond my reach." Adjusted for inflation, Biden's $42,500 salary as a senator in 1972 would be almost $260,000 in today's dollars. Meanwhile, the average cost of child care in Delaware today runs $9,000 to $11,000 per year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. For the full fact check, click here.  | Visual misinformation is growing. Here's a way to classify it. The Washington Post's guide to manipulated video outlined the different kinds of false and misleading visuals being developed. It has now become the bedrock for a new project by Due Reporters' Lab, schema.org and Google called Media Review. Nieman Lab described the project, which is still a work in progress as something that, "would define the structure of a visual fact-check, with fields for the identification of the object in question as well as a taxonomy of potential ratings. (The current proposal, for instance, allows images or videos to be 'Authentic,' 'MissingContext,' 'Cropped,' 'Transformed,' 'Edited,' or 'ImageMacro,' each with its own definition.)" | By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly ● Read more » | | | | 
Email 
No comments:
Post a Comment