When is enough — enough? In the case of Donald Trump, a human being of excessive delusions of grandeur, there is no end to what he will claim, all at the same time that he accuses the media of putting out ‘fake’ news. Well, let’s take a look at who’s talking, Mr. Trump!
How far back do we have to go to identify the ‘lies’ that Donald Trump has made a part of his talking points when addressing his rally troops? We could start with his claim that he knew hundreds of people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks. There is no one individual he has ever named that was a friend who died in these attacks, based on the Daily Beast’s request that he name one, which was ignored. There were numerous funeral masses held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, only six blocks from Trump Tower, yet he was never seen at any of these masses or for that matter at any funeral services for the 343 lost firemen. He even made a similar claim to Sarah Palin being able to see Russia from her house — “Many people jumped and I witnessed it, I watched that. I have a view — a view in my apartment that was specifically aimed at the World Trade Center.” That claim is also unlikely to be true.
Probably the next bogus news that Donald Trump reiterated in the Spring of 2011 was that then President Barrack Obama was not born in the United States. After years of doubling down as the main provocateur of birtherism, with nonsense claims that his investigators were uncovering information in Hawaii that would prove his claim, in September, 2016, Mr. Trump admitted that the President was born in the United States. This was an ugly, hurtful lie that was intended to delegitimize the authenticity of Barrack Obama’s place in history as the first African American President, yet many of Trump’s followers continue to believe what he claimed for years instead of his statement that negated those years of false claims.
Never mind all the false claims he made to those who would vote for him, which will most likely never come to fruition, such as how he will build a wall along the Mexican Border and get Mexico to pay for it, as well as that he will bring the coal industry back. Those have not been proven to be false claims, but they are also unlikely to ever see the light of day, despite all his rhetoric, for reasons that are becoming apparent as he issues his executive orders. Mexico refuses to pay for it and Congress will not authorize payment, estimated to cost in the billions of dollars. With tracking and natural gas being the flavor of the day for American energy generation, coal isn’t coming back.
So let’s jump to Trump’s opening day statements when he announced he was running for President. He focused on those coming across the boarder illegally from Mexico — “ When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” By his own calculations when he won the election, he clarified that he would go after the million or so dangerous criminals, which amounts to less than 10% of the total estimate for illegals here (over 14 million). Thus, his claim that “some, I assume, are good people” was a racist lie meant to appeal to the ugliest instincts of those who voted for him, making it seem that the majority of the illegals were “bringing crime” and that they were “rapists.” Law enforcement estimates indicate that the number of criminals in the ‘illegal’ communities is less than those in the average American population!
Looking at another of Donald Trump’s campaign lies, remember when he claimed he would never settle the Trump University lawsuits? All it took was an electoral victory to change that statement into fiction, as he then settled those cases for some $25 million. Let’s move on to his victory and inauguration.
When Donald Trump realized that he didn’t win the popular vote, he turned the narrative in two directions to diffuse the idea that a lack of the popular vote takes away his mandate. First he claimed, if he would have campaigned in California and other places, he would have won the popular vote. The simple logic of this notion defies any advantage to Donald Trump, as had he campaigned elsewhere to gain votes in California, etc., then he would have lost the votes he would have gained by campaigning in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, probably giving the electoral victory to Hillary Clinton! Then, to certify his claim that he probably did win the popular vote, he alleged that there were some three million illegal immigrants that had voted in the election, all for Hillary Clinton — without one iota of proof! Let’s wait for his ‘investigation’ to see the truth of that fish story.
Regarding the inauguration crowds, Donald Trump can’t handle the truth that Barrack Obama had bigger crowds at both of his inauguration events. The pathetic display of Sean Spicer lecturing the press with pictures and claims that Trump’s was the biggest inauguration spectacle ever, only proved the lie that they were attempting to perpetrate. Washington, DC is home to a largely black population, so to cite those inaccurate Metro statistics of ‘number of rides’ was of no consequence to prove that white was bigger than black, as those people were able to walk to the events. The crowd of the next day’s protest was arguably even greater than that for Donald Trump’s inauguration, to further humiliate a person who is so fixated on the size of things.
Then we have the lie of his false claim at a recent press conference about how he had the largest electoral victory since Ronald Reagan, which an NBC reporter called him out about and Trump’s paltry response was that he was given the statistics by someone and assumed they were accurate. Yet, even after having this pointed out to him, he continued to make the same flat out lie of a claim at his Melbourne, FL rally a few days later. How can this man call out the media as the purveyor of FAKE NEWS, when he is the King of FAKE NEWS?
Just today, he tweeted again about how Russia is just a FAKE NEWS story “put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!” If there was nothing to the so called FAKE NEWS story that is Russian hacking into the American election process, why wouldn’t Donald Trump want it to come out by an unbiased non-media investigation (Congress or the intelligence community)? Protesting against any such investigation — and having his Chief of Staff contact the FBI to get them to claim it was ‘fake news’ — just makes it appear more and more that there is something to hide. There are some in the know about what’s out there who claim it is going to be bigger than Watergate. Let’s wait for the smoking gun!
The most disturbing aspect of these truths is that many of Trump’s followers don’t know fact from fiction unless it comes from the mouths of their favorite FOX News commentator, or the likes of Rush Limbaugh. Sadly, the truth meter for Mr. Limbaugh is not a gauge of reliability, as in his first book, Limbaugh claimed that the pharmaceutical companies were the best example of capitalism at its finest, citing their greater than 40% return on investment as evidence. When it came time to feed his opiate addiction, that same Mr. Limbaugh, did not patronize those companies he praised to get his drugs, choosing rather to purchase them from the black market to get a better discount and evade the capitalistic system he lauded so much in his writings. Based on this one episode, how can anyone trust anything that Limbaugh claims to be true?