Counting Trump's lies does matter. Trump's support among his base seems bullet-proof right now, thanks largely to a pretty healthy economy and Fox's willingness to support those lies and regurgitate them to that base. But that support will not last forever and documentation of his lies now will prove later to Americans disillusioned with Trump that he was a lying sham all along.
Take a look at the trajectory of GW Bush's popularity. Bush started his presidency at around 60% approval rating. That number slipped to around 50% before 9/11. Shortly after the WTC attack, his approval rating shot up to 85% and peaked around 92%.
As we're all painfully aware, things really fell apart for Bush after that. Americans eventually wised up to the fact that
* there was no active WMD program in Iraq
* we'd been duped into invading Iraq
* we had too few troops in country and no plan for getting out or stabilizing Iraq
* we were pointlessly torturing prisoners and getting no real intelligence from them
* our intelligence agencies had created massive and largely unregulated surveillance programs directed at us
* our supposed homeland security and disaster relief programs failed and a major city drowned
* our federal government's incredibly lax oversight of mortgage and Wall street practices brought our economy to the point of very near collapse in a very short period of time
etc. Many of the lies foisted on us by the Bush administration were so contradicted by facts that many of his supporters woke up and abandoned him. Towards the end of Bush's second term, opinions had changed: Bush's approval rating was down to 25%. And there's this factoid from Wikipedia:
In an August 2008 Rasmussen poll, likely voters were asked the question "Will history rate George W. Bush as the worst President ever?"— 50% responded "no", 41% said "yes" and 9% were "unsure".<8>
If President Trumpâs torrent of words has seemed overwhelming of late, thereâs a good reason for that.
In the first nine months of his presidency, Trump made 1,318 false or misleading claims, an average of five a day. But in the seven weeks leading up the midterm elections, the president made 1,419 false or misleading claims â an average of 30 a day.
Combined with the rest of his presidency, that adds up to a total of 6,420 claims through Oct. 30, the 649th day of his term in office, according to The Fact Checkerâs database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.
The flood of presidential misinformation has picked up dramatically as the president has barnstormed across the country, holding rallies with his supporters. Each of those rallies usually yields 35 to 45 suspect claims. But the president often has tacked on interviews with local media (in which he repeats the same false statements) and gaggles with the White House press corps before and after his trips.
So that adds up to 84 claims on Oct. 1, when he held a rally in Johnson City, Tenn.; 83 claims on Oct. 22, when he held a rally in Houston; and 78 claims on Oct. 19, when he held a rally in Mesa, Ariz.
Put another way: September was the second-biggest month of the Trump presidency, with 599 false and misleading claims. But that paled next to October, with almost double: 1,104 claims, not counting Oct. 31.
The burden of keeping track of this verbiage has consumed the weekends and nights of The Fact Checker staff. We originally had planned to include Oct. 31 in this update, but the prospect of wading through 20 tweets and the nearly 10,000 words Trump spoke that day was too daunting for our deadline.
Brilliant legal scholars they're not. Trump was probably blowing smoke anyway, throwing some red meat to his base before the election...
I think that's more of what he was trying - another one of his pie-in-the-sky spasms, like the 10% tax cut being worked on by the out-of-session Congress. You all get a pony!!!
In the interview with Axios, Trump falsely claimed: âWeâre the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits.â He added: âItâs ridiculous. Itâs ridiculous. And it has to end.â
In fact, dozens of states around the world, including Canada and Brazil, endow the same right. Countries such as the UK and Australia endow a restricted version.
(...)
Constitutional amendments cannot be overridden by the president and can only be altered by a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress or support from two-thirds of state governments.
Nonetheless, attempts to curtail the right to citizenship at birth have long been pursued by hardliners in the Republican party. Legislation has been proposed in both the Senate and the House in recent years but has never passed a vote.
On Tuesday, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham said he would introduce legislation to support Trumpâs plan. In a statement, he said his measure would be âalong the same linesâ as the executive order. He did not give any details or timeline
Brilliant legal scholars they're not. Trump was probably blowing smoke anyway, throwing some red meat to his base before the election, but there is an argument that's been tossed around right-wing circles for a while claiming that the 14th amendment doesn't say what it plainly does. This article is a compact shredding of that argument.
If they try this in Congress it would likely die the slow, lingering death it deserves in the Senate. If it's tried as an executive order it would be instantly challenged in court and would fail very quickly. If it makes it as far as the Supremes we can be grateful that Trump's appointments have been textualists/originalists.
When rooting for judges be careful what you wish for.
In the interview with Axios, Trump falsely claimed: âWeâre the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits.â He added: âItâs ridiculous. Itâs ridiculous. And it has to end.â
In fact, dozens of states around the world, including Canada and Brazil, endow the same right. Countries such as the UK and Australia endow a restricted version.
(...)
Constitutional amendments cannot be overridden by the president and can only be altered by a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress or support from two-thirds of state governments.
Nonetheless, attempts to curtail the right to citizenship at birth have long been pursued by hardliners in the Republican party. Legislation has been proposed in both the Senate and the House in recent years but has never passed a vote.
On Tuesday, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham said he would introduce legislation to support Trumpâs plan. In a statement, he said his measure would be âalong the same linesâ as the executive order. He did not give any details or timeline.
