Donald Trump wants America to be more unpredictable in its foreign policy. We’ll prove our reliability by never doing what’s expected! But unpredictability is hard to achieve when you’re bound by those pesky facts. Thank goodness Trump doesn't have that problem.
Donald Trump is now closer than ever to clinching the Republican nomination on the first ballot. But what hasn’t changed since he entered the presidential race is his propensity for Pinocchios and Pinocchio recidivism.
Trump supporters asked to name their candidate’s best quality repeatedly say “he tells it like it is,” but the truth is, Trump simply says whatever the hell he wants. Truth. Lies. Misremembered stories from Drudge that were debunked in 1998. Casual speculation at a cocktail party. It’s all the same to Trump.
Tracking every repeated falsehood by Trump would be a full-time job. But we couldn’t help but notice that in a roughly 16-hour period after his sweeping victories in the I-95 primaries, Trump repeated numerous untruths, like a “Best of” citation of his Pinocchio ratings.
I’m not sure that “best” is the right descriptor, but here are a few of those repeat Pinocchio winners.
“I was asked a question recently by Wolf Blitzer on CNN, and he talked about NATO. I gave a great answer. I gave an answer that at first people didn’t like, and then they said, ‘You know what, Trump is right,’ experts said. I said it’s obsolete and too many people are getting a free ride because we’re funding 72, 73 percent of NATO.”
The actual US contribution to NATO is about 22 percent. And Trump’s suggestion that we drop out of the organization because NATO didn’t work against terrorists ignored the fact that other countries had sent troops to Afghanistan expressly because they were part of the NATO alliance. But mostly Trump’s NATO talk was about easing up on poor old Russia and his pal Putin.
“I’ll stick with my feelings on immigration. If you look at what’s going on with immigration, and just look at the record numbers of people right now that are pouring across the borders of this country.”
And of course, illegal immigration is not just down, it’s been trending downward for years. Meanwhile our borders, which Trump dismisses are open, are patrolled by a greater number of forces than ever before, aided by drones, remote cameras and other tools.
There are more on the Washington Post list—a lot more—and a special page created just to hold onto Trump’s record number of four-Pinocchio whoppers, but these two contain the seeds of everything that Trump says:
I gave a great answer. …
I’ll stick with my feelings…
When you’re convinced that you’re right, just because you’re you, and you is the bestest that has ever been, then you can just open your mouth and let the gold pour forth.