#APFactCheck

[presssorg]

AP FACT CHECK: No sign of Trump-Mexico deal on farm goods

AP FACT CHECK: No sign of Trump-Mexico deal on farm goods WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is bragging about a new deal with Mexico that provides for “large” sales of U.S. farm goods, but it doesn’t appear to exist. In weekend tweets, he announced in all capital letters that he had won the agreement to benefit America’s “great patriot farmers,” and that U.S. sales would begin “immediately.” There isn’t any sign of that happening, however. Mexican officials denied that anything on agriculture was included in the deal on border security reached Friday to avert Trump’s threatened tariffs. Trump also unfairly placed responsibility on Mexico for the entire U.S. drug problem, even though many of the known drug deaths have nothing to do with the country. The statements came in a week where the apportioning of credit and blame often went awry in Trump’s remarks. He hailed pristine air quality that isn’t, wrongly insisted that the U.S. was paying “close to 100%” of NATO and told Puerto Ricans they should love him because he got them hurricane aid that he’s actually been complaining about for months. In the Democratic presidential campaign, meantime, Trump was accused of breaking a gun-control promise that in reality he kept. A look at recent claims and reality: MEXICO DEAL TRUMP: “MEXICO HAS AGREED TO IMMEDIATELY BEGIN BUYING LARGE QUANTITIES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT FROM OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS!” — tweet Saturday, retweeted Sunday. THE FACTS: There’s no evidence that Mexico agreed to “large” purchases of agricultural products from the U.S. as part of the deal to avoid tariffs. Nor did the White House provide any details to show such a deal exists. The joint declaration between the U.S. and Mexico released by the State Department late Friday makes no mention of agriculture. Officials from Mexico deny an agreement was reached on farm goods as part of the talks. “Everything that was negotiated was in the joint statement,” said a Mexican official familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. When Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Martha Barcena, was asked repeatedly Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” whether there was a new agricultural deal, she demurred, saying such trade between both countries should increase over time. She referenced instead the potential impact of the separate United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal, which has yet to be approved by Congress. “Is trade on agricultural products going to grow? Yes, it is going to grow, and it is going to grow without tariffs and with USMCA ratification,” Barcena said. According to the office of the United States Trade Representative, Mexico bought $20 billion in U.S. agricultural goods last year, making it the United States’ second-largest ag export market.   —— TRUMP: “Look, I’m dealing with Mexico right now. They send in $500 billion worth of drugs, they kill 100,000 people, they ruin a million families every year if you look at that. That’s really an invasion without the guns. … 100,000 people are killed, dead every year, from what comes through our southern border. They shouldn’t be allowing people to come through their country from Central, from Honduras and Guatemala, El Salvador.” — Fox News interview Thursday. THE FACTS: Trump is inflating the death toll from drug overdoses — more than 70,200 in 2017 — and wrongly blaming all the known deaths on Mexico. Tens of thousands of those deaths have nothing to do with Mexico or Central America. They are from legally made prescription opioids, fentanyl laboratories in China or other sources of international drug smuggling and illicit manufacturing in the U.S. More than 17,000 of the deaths in 2017, for example, were from prescription opioids alone. Mexico is indeed a significant conduit in the drug trade — it’s a leading source of heroin, for example — but it is hardly the only one. —— DISASTER AID TRUMP, on signing a relief bill for multiple U.S. disasters: “Puerto Rico should love President Trump. Without me, they would have been shut out!” — tweet Thursday. THE FACTS: That’s not likely. The $19.1 billion disaster aid bill, passed by the House on Monday and signed into law by Trump on Thursday, ordinarily would have been approved by Congress months ago. But Trump injected himself into the debate, demanding that money for hurricane-rebuilding efforts that was sought by Puerto Rico’s elected officials, Republicans and Democrats both, be kept out. Trump frequently inflated the amount of aid that Puerto Rico had obtained in previous bills and feuded with the island’s Democratic officials. Congressional Democrats held firm in demanding that Puerto Rico, a territory whose 3 million people are U.S. citizens, be helped by the measure. The legislation ultimately included more money for Puerto Rico, about $1.4 billion, than Democrats originally sought. The relief measure delivers money to states in the South suffering from last fall’s hurricanes, Midwestern states deluged with springtime floods and fire-ravaged rural California, among others. —— NATO TRUMP: “We were paying so much. I think we were really paying close to 100% of NATO. So we were paying to protect all of these European nations. And it’s just not fair.” — interview Thursday with Fox News. THE FACTS: It’s not true that the U.S. was paying “close to 100%” of the price of protecting Europe. NATO does have a shared budget to which each member makes contributions based on the size of its economy. The United States, with the biggest economy, pays the biggest share, about 22%. Four European members — Germany, France, Britain and Italy — combined pay nearly 44% of the total. The money, about $3 billion, runs NATO’s headquarters and covers certain other civilian and military costs. Defending Europe involves far more than that fund. The primary cost of doing so would come from each member country’s military budget, as the alliance operates under a mutual defence treaty. The U.S. is the largest military spender but others in the alliance obviously have armed forces, too. The notion that almost all costs would fall to the U.S. is false. In fact, NATO’s Article 5, calling for allies to act if one is attacked, has only been invoked once, and it was on behalf of the U.S., after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. —— CLIMATE CHANGE TRUMP, asked if he believes in climate change: “I believe that there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways.” — interview with Piers Morgan that broadcast Tuesday. THE FACTS: Trump is once again conflating weather and climate, suggesting that global warming can’t be happening if it gets cold outside. But weather is like mood, which changes daily. Climate is like personality, which is long term. The data show Trump also is wrong in that there is a clear one-way warming trend. Earth is considerably warmer than it was 30 years ago and especially 100 years ago. So far in this decade, there have been 301,292 daily heat records set in the contiguous United States, compared with only 141,892 daily cold records set, according to retired Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton’s analysis of government temperature records. That’s more than two heat records broken for every cold record, a ratio that is the largest of any decade since these types of records started in the 1920s. According to Walton’s analysis, each decade since the 1970s has had a higher hot record-to-cold record ratio than the decade before it. And that’s just the extreme weather. When it comes to global average temperature, April was the 412th consecutive warmer month than the 20th century average, according to records kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The last five years — 2014 to 2018 — have been the five hottest years on record globally, according to those records. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been in the past 15 years with records going back to 1880. The White House in November produced the National Climate Assessment by scientists from 13 Trump administration agencies and outside scientists. “Climate change is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us,” the report said. —— TRUMP: “We have the cleanest air in the world in the United States, and it’s gotten better since I’m president. We have the cleanest water. It’s crystal clean and I always say I want crystal clean water and air. … We’re setting records environmentally.” — remarks Wednesday with Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. THE FACTS: The U.S. does not have the cleanest air, and it hasn’t gotten better under the Trump administration. U.S. drinking water is among the best by one leading measure. Trump’s own Environmental Protection Agency data show that in 2017, among 35 major U.S. cities, there were 729 cases of “unhealthy days for ozone and fine particle pollution.” That’s up 22% from 2014 and the worst year since 2012. The Obama administration, in fact, set records for the fewest air polluted days, in 2016. In 2017, after Trump took office, the number of bad air days per metropolitan area went up 20%. The State of Global Air 2019 report by the Health Effects Institute rated the U.S. as having the eighth cleanest air for particle pollution — which kills 85,000 Americans each year — behind Canada, Scandinavian countries and others. The U.S. ranks poorly on smog pollution, which kills 24,000 Americans per year. On a scale from the cleanest to the dirtiest, the U.S. is at 123 out of 195 countries measured. On water, Yale University’s global Environmental Performance Index finds 10 countries tied for the cleanest drinking water, the U.S. among them. On environmental quality overall, the U.S. was 27th, behind a variety of European countries, Canada, Japan, Australia and more. Switzerland was No. 1. —— GILLIBRAND ON GUN CONTROL SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, Democratic presidential candidate, on Trump: “Remember after the shooting in Las Vegas, he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, we are going to ban the bump stocks’? Did he ban the bump stocks? No, because the NRA came crashing down and said, ‘Don’t you dare do any restrictions on our guns around this country.”‘– Fox News town hall on June 2. THE FACTS: Not true. Trump kept his promise. A nationwide ban took effect in March on bump stocks, the attachment used by the gunman in the 2017 Las Vegas massacre to make his weapons fire rapidly like machine-guns. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives outlawed the attachments at Trump’s direction after the shootings killed more than 50 people in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. It is the only major gun restriction imposed by the federal government in the past few years. The Trump administration’s move was an about-face for the bureau. In 2010, under the Obama administration, it found that the devices were legal. But under the Trump administration, officials revisited that determination and found it incorrect. After the Las Vegas shootings, the National Rifle Association initially said “devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.” After the bureau’s ruling banning the devices, however, the gun lobby called it “disappointing” and said it should have provided amnesty for gun owners who already have bump stocks. The government estimates that more than 500,000 bump stocks were sold after they were made legal in 2010. —— VETERANS TRUMP, on the late Sen. John McCain: “I was not a fan. I didn’t like what he did with health care. I didn’t like how he handled the veterans. Because I got them Choice. He was always unable. He was on committees and could have done it.” — interview Tuesday with Morgan. THE FACTS: Not so. McCain did, in fact, get the Veterans Choice program passed in Congress. Trump repeatedly claims falsely that he was the first president in decades to get such a private-sector health program passed. But what Trump actually got done was an expansion of the Choice program achieved by McCain and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the main lawmakers who advanced the legislation signed by President Barack Obama. McCain, an Arizona Republican, co-sponsored the legislation following a 2014 scandal at the VA medical centre in Phoenix, where some veterans died while waiting months for medical appointments. Trump signed the law expanding the program in June 2018. It is named after three veterans who were lawmakers — McCain, Daniel K. Akaka and Samuel R. Johnson. After helping to pass the program, McCain fought to expand it even more in his last months before dying of brain cancer in August. The original Choice program allowed veterans to see doctors outside the Department of Veterans Affairs system if they must wait more than 30 days for an appointment or drive more than 40 miles (65 kilometres) to a VA facility. Under the expansion, which took effect Thursday, veterans are to have that option for a private doctor if their VA wait is only 20 days (28 for specialty care) or their drive is only 30 minutes. Still, the VA says it does not expect a major increase in veterans seeking care outside the VA under Trump’s expanded program, partly because wait times in the private sector are now typically longer than at VA. —— LONDON PROTESTS TRUMP: “I kept hearing that there would be ‘massive’ rallies against me in the UK, but it was quite the opposite. The big crowds, which the Corrupt Media hates to show, were those that gathered in support of the USA and me.” — tweet Wednesday. TRUMP: “I heard that there were protests. I said: ‘Where are the protests? I don’t see any protests.’ I did see a small protest today when I came, very small, so a lot of it is fake news, I hate to say. …And I didn’t see the protesters until just a little while ago and it was a very, very small group of people.” — news conference Tuesday with British Prime Minister Theresa May. THE FACTS: The protests over Trump’s visit were more than just “very, very small,” and some were hard to miss. Thousands of protesters crowded London’s government district, chanting as he met May nearby. While police erected barricades to stop protesters from marching past the gates of Downing Street, they could be heard as Trump and May emerged from the prime minister’s official residence to pose for photos before their news conference. The protests included a giant Trump baby balloon and a robotic likeness of Trump sitting on a golden toilet, reciting familiar Trump phrases like “No collusion” and “You are fake news.” —— BREXIT TRUMP, referring to how he stood at his Scottish golf resort, Turnberry, on the eve of the Brexit referendum and predicted the British would vote to leave the European Union: “I really predicted what was going to happen. Some of you remember that prediction. It was a strong prediction, made at a certain location, on a development we were opening the day before it happened.” — news conference Tuesday. THE FACTS: He often tells this false story. Trump did not predict Brexit the day before the vote. Three months before the vote, he did predict accurately that Britain would vote to leave the EU. The day after the 2016 vote — not the day before — he predicted from his Scottish resort that the EU would collapse because of Britain’s withdrawal. That remains to be seen. —— TRANSGENDER TROOPS TRUMP, explaining his ban on transgender troops in the military: “In the military, you’re not allowed to take any drugs …People were going in and then asking for the operation, and the operation is $200,000, $250,000, and getting the operation, the recovery period is long, and they have to take large amounts of drugs after that …You can’t do that.” — interview Tuesday with Morgan. THE FACTS: Trump has offered no substantiation for the assertion that transgender military members represent tremendous medical costs and disruption. A Rand Corp. study found otherwise. Nor does the military bar troops from using prescription drugs. Rand estimates that out of about 1.3 million active-duty military personnel, 2,450 are transgender. Only a subset would seek transition-related care, such as hormone therapy and sex-reassignment surgery. Based on private insurance data, the study estimates a minimal increase in costs from such care for the active-duty armed forces — no more than 0.13%, or $8.4 million annually. As for disruption, members representing less than 0.1% of the total force would seek transition-related care that could affect their deployments, the study says. —— Associated Press writers Peter Orsi and Christopher Sherman in Mexico City, Seth Borenstein, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Perrone and Darlene Superville in Washington, Lisa Marie Pane in Boise, Idaho, Nicky Forster in New York, and Jill Lawless and Kevin Freking in London contributed to this report. —— Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd Follow https://twitter.com/APFactCheck EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures Published at Mon, 10 Jun 2019 04:43:05 +0000 Read the full article

[kidneystories2013]

AP Fact Check @APFactCheck This week’s #APFactCheck takes a deep look into President Trump’s comments about hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug he’s been promoting for coronavirus patients. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comment about Trump's weight is also scrutinized. https://apnews.com/fa25183cc889322a716567aa06e1ade4?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=APFactCheck&utm_campaign=SocialFlow (at Hammond, Indiana) https://www.instagram.com/p/CAiluTpDvKU/?igshid=x90dh8vnb61i

[2plan22]

RT @AP: An #APFactCheck finds President Trump is spreading false claims about voter fraud and Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. https://t.co/MhocOHAq8P 2PLAN22 http://twitter.com/2PLAN22/status/1326339456245391361

An #APFactCheck finds President Trump is spreading false claims about voter fraud and Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. https://t.co/MhocOHAq8P

— The Associated Press (@AP) November 11, 2020

[collapsedsquid]

Fact-checkers are lying to you folks, ivermectin is part of the Great Reset!

[the-sayuri-rin]

Posts claiming the Pfizer vaccine is "42% effective" are being used to suggest it doesn't work. But experts say that figure, from a single study, is misleading on its own since the vaccine strongly protects against severe illness and death. Get the facts:

[thehedgemaze]

https://twitter.com/APFactCheck/status/1570135600300437504?t=oKHgB-1CzJKOTopShwRngQ&s=19

[news-cafe]

Coffee Lounge: NOT REAL NEWS: A Look at What Didn't Happen This Week

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these is legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the real facts:

CLAIM: Photo shows a jaguar being rescued after throwing itself in the water during recent fires in the Amazon.

THE FACTS: The photo, which has circulated widely on social media as a record number of wildfires burn in Brazil, was taken in 2016  (not this week of 2019) by Brazilian photographer None Mangueira as part of a project to save jaguars in the Amazon.

CLAIM: The Amazon rainforest — "the lungs of the Earth" — produces 20% of the planet's oxygen.

THE FACTS: Scientists say while the Amazon is important to the world's ecosystem, it does not produce 20% of the world's oxygen. In fact, the region absorbs the same amount of oxygen it produces.

CLAIM: Video shows a helicopter setting fire to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

THE FACTS: The video shows a helicopter participating in an effort to contain a wildfire in the Canadian province of British Columbia in August 2018. The video was shared on Facebook and YouTube, falsely identified as showing a helicopter setting fire to the Amazon rainforest.

CLAIM: Olive Garden is "funding" President Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign.

THE FACTS: Social media users began recirculating the false claim on Twitter early this week, encouraging users to boycott the chain restaurant. Olive Garden responded with a tweet stating that the information was incorrect and that neither the Olive Garden nor Darden Restaurants, Inc., its parent company, contributes to presidential candidates.

For the rest of The Facts for each claim, access the link in US News: https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-08-30/not-real-news-a-look-at-what-didnt-happen-this-week

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This is part of The Associated Press' ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.  Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

[news247worldpressposts]

#Breaking: Social media users are sharing a manipulated image of an email from former President #Trump, referring to the “nuke codes”

#Breaking: Social media users are sharing a manipulated image of an email from former President #Trump, referring to the “nuke codes”

https://twitter.com/APFactCheck/status/1558210146966585344?s=20&t=FFXkQi7ubCBeLzNvJfu7-Q Source: Twitter

[presssorg]

Latest: North Korea, GDP, Employment, Trump vs Iran, Trade War & Border Wall

AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s misfires on Iran, trade and that wall WASHINGTON — In President Donald Trump’s reckoning, an Iran tamed by him no longer cries “death to America,” the border wall with Mexico is proceeding apace, the estate tax has been lifted off the backs of farmers, the remains of U.S. soldiers from North Korea are coming home and China is opening its wallet to the U.S. treasury for the first time in history. These statements range from flatly false to mostly so. Here’s a week of political rhetoric in review: IRAN: TRUMP, speaking about Iranians “screaming ‘death to America”‘ when Barack Obama was in the White House: “They haven’t screamed ‘death to America’ lately.” — Fox News interview Friday. THE FACTS: Yes they have. The death-to-America chant is heard routinely.

An Iranian navy boat tries to stop the fire of an oil tanker after it was attacked in the Gulf of Oman, June 13, 2019. Tasnim News Agency/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. - RC1D5E81AD00 The chant, “marg bar Amreeka” in Farsi, dates back even before Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Once used by communists, it was popularized by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution’s figurehead and Iran’s first supreme leader after the U.S. Embassy takeover by militants. It remains a staple of hard-line demonstrations, meetings with current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, official ceremonies, parliamentary sessions and main Friday prayer services in Tehran and across the country. Some masters of ceremonies ask audiences to tone it down. But it was heard, for example, from the crowd this month when Khamenei exhorted thousands to stand up against U.S. “bullying.” In one variation, a demonstrator at Tehran’s Quds rally last month held a sign with three versions of the slogan: “Death to America” in Farsi, “Death to America” in Arabic,” “Down with U.S.A.” in English. —— WAGES and TAXES TRUMP: “Wages are growing, and they are growing at the fastest rate for — this is something so wonderful — for blue-collar workers. The biggest percentage increase — blue-collar workers.” — remarks Tuesday in Council Bluffs, Iowa. THE FACTS: He’s claiming credit for a trend of rising wages for lower-income blue-collar workers that predates his presidency. Some of the gains also reflect higher minimum wages passed at the state and local level; the Trump administration opposes an increase to the federal minimum wage. With the unemployment rate at 3.6%, the lowest since December 1969, employers are struggling to fill jobs. Despite all the talk of robots and automation, thousands of restaurants, warehouses, and retail stores still need workers. They are offering higher wages and have pushed up pay for the lowest-paid one-quarter of workers more quickly than for everyone else since 2015. In April, the poorest 25% saw their paychecks increase 4.4% from a year earlier, compared with 3.1% for the richest one-quarter. Those gains are not necessarily flowing to the “blue collar” workers Trump cited. Instead, when measured by industry, wages are rising more quickly for lower-paid service workers. Hourly pay for retail workers has risen 4.1% in the past year and 3.8% for hotel and restaurant employees. Manufacturing workers — the blue collars — have seen pay rise just 2.2% and construction workers, 3.2%. —— TRUMP: “And to keep your family farms and ranches in the family, we eliminated the estate tax, also known as the ‘death tax,’ on the small farms and ranches and other businesses. That was a big one. … People were having a farm, they loved their children, and they want to leave it to their children. … And the estate tax was so much, the children would have to go out and borrow a lot of money from unfriendly bankers, in many cases. And they’d end up losing the farm, and it was a horrible situation.” — remarks in Council Bluffs. THE FACTS: There still is an estate tax. More small farms may be off the hook for it as a result of changes by the Republican-controlled Congress in 2017 but very few farms or small businesses were subject to the tax even before that happened. Congress increased the tax exemption — temporarily — so fewer people will be subject to those taxes. Previously, any assets from estates valued at more than $5.49 million, or nearly $11 million for couples, were subject to the estate tax in 2017. The new law doubled that minimum for 2018 to $11.2 million, or $22.4 million for couples. For 2019, the minimums rose to $11.4 million, or $22.8 million for couples. Those increased minimums will expire at the end of 2025. According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, only about 80 small farms and closely held businesses were subject to the estate tax in 2017. Those estates represent about 1 per cent of all taxable estate tax returns. —— NORTH KOREA TRUMP: “I think we’re going to do very well with North Korea over a period of time. I’m in no rush. … Our remains are coming back; you saw the beautiful ceremony in Hawaii with Mike Pence. We’re getting the remains back.” — joint news conference Wednesday with Poland’s president. THE FACTS: The U.S. is not currently getting additional remains of American service members killed during the Korean War. With U.S.-North Korea relations souring, the Pentagon said last month it had suspended its efforts to arrange negotiations this year on recovering additional remains of American service members. The Pentagon said it hoped to reach agreement for recovery operations in 2020. The Defence POW-MIA Accounting Agency said it has had no communication with North Korean authorities since the Vietnam summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February. That meeting focused on the North’s nuclear weapons and followed a June 2018 summit where Kim committed to permitting a resumption of U.S. remains recovery; that effort had been suspended by the U.S. in 2005. The agency said it had “reached the point where we can no longer effectively plan, co-ordinate, and conduct field operations” with the North during this budget year, which ends Sept. 30. Last summer, in line with the first Trump-Kim summit in June, the North turned over 55 boxes of what it said were the remains of an undetermined number of U.S service members killed in the North during the 1950-53 war. So far, six Americans have been identified from the 55 boxes. U.S. officials have said the North has suggested in recent years that it holds perhaps 200 sets of American war remains. Thousands more are unrecovered from battlefields and former POW camps. The Pentagon estimates that about 5,300 Americans were lost in North Korea. —— BORDER WALL TRUMP: “We’re building a wall … And by next year, at the end of the year, we’re going to have close to 500 miles of wall.” — remarks Tuesday at the Republican Party of Iowa annual dinner. TRUMP: “We’re going to have close to 500 miles of wall built by the end of next year. That’s a lot. And we’re moving along very rapidly. We won the big court case, as you know, the other day. And that was a big victory for us.” — remarks Monday with Indianapolis 500 champions. THE FACTS: He’s being overly optimistic. It’s unclear how Trump arrives at 500 miles (800 km), but he would have to prevail in legal challenges to his declaration of a national emergency or get Congress to cough up more money to get anywhere close. Those are big assumptions. And by far the majority of the wall he’s talking about is replacement barrier, not new miles of construction. So far, the administration has awarded contracts for 247 miles (395 km) of wall construction, but more than half comes from Defence Department money available under Trump’s Feb. 15 emergency declaration. On May 24, a federal judge in California who was appointed by Obama blocked Trump from building key sections of the wall with that money. In a separate case, a federal judge in the nation’s capital who was appointed by Trump sided with the administration, but that ruling has no effect while the California injunction is in place. Even if Trump prevails in court, all but 17 miles (27 km) of his awarded contracts replace existing barriers. The White House says it has identified up to $8.1 billion in potential money under the national emergency, mostly from the Defence Department. Customs and Border Protection officials say the administration wants Congress to finance 206 miles (330 km) next year. The chances of the Democratic-controlled House backing that are between slim and none. —— TRADE TRUMP: “Right now, we’re getting 25% on $250 billion worth of goods. That’s a lot of money that’s pouring into our treasury. We’ve never gotten 10 cents from China. Now we’re getting a lot of money from China.” — remarks Monday. TRUMP: “We’re taking in, right now, billions and billions of dollars in tariffs, and they’re subsidizing product.” — remarks Tuesday in Council Bluffs. THE FACTS: He’s incorrect. The tariffs he’s raised on imports from China are primarily if not entirely a tax on U.S. consumers and businesses, not a source of significant revenue coming into the country. A study in March by economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Columbia University and Princeton University, before the latest escalation, found that the public and U.S. companies were paying $3 billion a month in higher taxes from the trade dispute with China, suffering $1.4 billion a month in lost efficiency and absorbing the entire impact. It’s also false that the U.S. never collected a dime in tariffs before he took action. Tariffs on goods from China are not remotely new. They are simply higher in some cases than they were before. Tariffs go back to the beginning of the U.S. and were once a leading source of revenue for the government. Not in modern times. They equate to less than 1% of federal spending. —— TRUMP: “Look, without tariffs, we would be captive to every country, and we have been for many years. That’s why we have an $800 billion trading deficit for years. We lose a fortune with virtually every country. They take advantage of us in every way possible.” — CNBC interview Monday. THE FACTS: Trump isn’t telling the whole story about trade deficits. When he refers to $800 billion trade gaps, he’s only talking about the deficit in goods such as cars and aircraft. He leaves out services — such as banking, tourism and education — in which the U.S. runs substantial trade surpluses that partially offset persistent deficits in goods. The goods and services deficit peaked at $762 billion in 2006. Last year, the United States ran a record $887 billion deficit in goods and a $260 billion surplus in services, which added up to an overall deficit of more than $627 billion. The U.S. does tend to run trade deficits with most other major economies. But there are exceptions, such as Canada (a nearly $4 billion surplus last year), Singapore ($18 billion) and Britain ($19 billion). Mainstream economists reject Trump’s argument that the deficits arise from other countries taking advantage of the United States. They see the trade gaps as the result of an economic reality that probably won’t bend to tariffs and other changes in trade policy: Americans buy more than they produce, and imports fill the gap. U.S. exports are also hurt by the American dollar’s status as the world’s currency. The dollar is usually in high demand because it is used in so many global transactions. That means the dollar is persistently strong, raising prices of U.S. products and putting American companies at a disadvantage in foreign markets. —— TRUMP: “You know, France charges us a lot for the wine and yet we charge them little for French wine. So the wineries come to me and they say — the California guys, they come to me: ‘Sir, we are paying a lot of money to put our products into France and you’re letting – meaning, this country is allowing this French wine which is great, we have great wine, too, allowing it to come in for nothing. It is not fair.”‘ — interview Monday with CNBC. THE FACTS: Trump, who’s been in the wine business, is technically wrong about France applying tariffs. The European Union does. He’s right about a disparity in wine duties. Tariffs vary by alcohol content and other factors. A bottle of white American wine with 13 per cent alcohol content imported into the EU carries a customs duty of 10 euro cents (just over 11 U.S. cents). A bottle of white wine from the EU exported to the United States has a customs duty of 5 U.S. cents. The gap in duties is narrower for red wine with an alcohol content of 14.5 per cent. Bulk wines are another story. The U.S. tariff is double the EU one, a break for American producers because bulk wine represents 25% of the volume of U.S. wine coming into the EU, according to the French wine exporter federation. The value of wine imported by France has jumped 200% over a decade. Americans are the top consumers of French wine exports. —— RUSSIA INVESTIGATION TRUMP, on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report: “The Mueller report spoke. … It said, ‘No collusion and no obstruction and no nothing.’ And, in fact, it said we actually rebuffed your friends from Russia; that we actually pushed them back — we rebuffed them.” — remarks Wednesday in Oval Office. THE FACTS: He’s wrong to repeat the claim that the Mueller report found no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign; it’s also false that his campaign in 2016 denied all access to Russians. Nor did the special counsel’s report exonerate Trump on the question of whether he obstructed justice. Mueller’s two-year investigation and other scrutiny revealed a multitude of meetings with Russians. Among them: Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer who had promised dirt on Clinton. On collusion, Mueller said he did not assess whether that occurred because it is not a legal term. He looked into a potential criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and said the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence to establish criminal charges on that front. Mueller noted some Trump campaign officials had declined to testify under the Fifth Amendment or had provided false or incomplete testimony, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what happened during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel wrote that he “cannot rule out the possibility” that unavailable information could have cast a different light on the investigation’s findings. In an interview broadcast Wednesday with ABC News, Trump said if a foreign power offered dirt on his 2020 opponent, he’d be open to accepting it and that he’d have no obligation to call in the FBI. “I think I’d want to hear it,” Trump said. “There’s nothing wrong with listening.” —— REPUBLICAN SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, Judiciary Committee chairman, in response to Trump’s comments that he’d be open to accepting political dirt from foreign adversaries like Russia: “The outrage some of my Democratic colleagues are raising about President Trump’s comments will hopefully be met with equal outrage that their own party hired a foreign national to do opposition research on President Trump’s campaign.” — tweet Thursday. THE FACTS: Graham is making an unequal comparison. He seeks to turn the tables on Democrats by pointing to their use of a dossier of anti-Trump research produced by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, that was financed by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Graham also insists on “equal outrage” over Democrats using that information from a former intelligence officer of Britain, an ally with a history of shared intelligence with the U.S. That’s a different story from a foreign adversary such as Russia, which the Mueller report concluded had engaged in “sweeping and systematic” interference in the 2016 presidential election. Moreover, Steele was hired as a private citizen, though one with intelligence contacts. The Mueller report found multiple contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, and the report said it established that “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” Trump and his GOP allies typically point to the Steele dossier as the basis for the Russia probe. But the FBI’s investigation began months before it received the dossier. —— TRUMP: “The Democrats were very unhappy with the Mueller report. So now they’re trying to do a do-over or a redo. And we’re not doing that. We gave them everything. We were the most transparent presidency in history.” — Oval Office remarks Wednesday. THE FACTS: It’s highly dubious to say Trump was fully co-operative in the Russia investigation. Trump declined to sit for an interview with Mueller’s team, gave written answers that investigators described as “inadequate” and “incomplete,” said more than 30 times that he could not remember something he was asked about in writing, and — according to the report — tried to get aides to fire Mueller or otherwise shut or limit the inquiry. In the end, the Mueller report found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but left open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice. According to the report, Mueller’s team declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on whether to charge partly because of a Justice Department legal opinion that said sitting presidents shouldn’t be indicted. The report instead factually laid out instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, specifically leaving it open for Congress to take up the matter. —— FEDERAL RESERVE TRUMP: “We have people on the Fed that really weren’t, you know, they’re not my people, but they certainly didn’t listen to me because they made a big mistake.” — CNBC interview. THE FACTS: Actually, most of the members on the Fed’s Board of Governors owe their jobs to Trump. In addition to choosing Jerome Powell, a Republican whom Obama had named to the Fed board, to be chairman, Trump has filled three other vacancies on the board in his first two years in office. Lael Brainard is the only Democrat on the board. There are still two vacancies on the seven-member board. Trump had earlier intended to nominate two political allies — Herman Cain and Stephen Moore — but both later withdrew in the face of sharp opposition from critics. —— AUTOMAKERS TRUMP: “Tariffs are a great negotiating tool, a great revenue producer and, most importantly, a powerful way to get … companies to come to the U.S.A., and to get companies that have left us for other lands to come back home. We stupidly lost 30% of our auto business to Mexico.” — tweets Tuesday. TRUMP: “They took 30% of our automobile companies. They moved into Mexico. All of the people got fired.” — interview Monday with CNBC. THE FACTS: He’s incorrect that Mexico took 30% of the U.S. automobile business in the years since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994. In 2017, 14% of the vehicles sold in the U.S. were imported from Mexico, according to the Center for Automotive Research, a think-tank in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Parts imported from Mexico exceed 30%. —— TRUMP: “If the Tariffs went on at the higher level, they would all come back.” — tweet Tuesday. TRUMP: “What will happen is the companies will move into the United States, back where they came from. … They would all move back if they had to pay a 25% tax or tariff.” — interview Monday with CNBC. THE FACTS: He’s wrong to assume that auto companies in Mexico would immediately move back to the U.S. if there were a 25% tariff on Mexican-made vehicles and parts. It takes three years or four years minimum to plan, equip and build an auto assembly plant, so there would be little immediate impact on production or jobs. Auto and parts makers are global companies, and they would also look to countries without tariffs as a place to move their factories. The companies could also just wait until after the 2020 election, hoping that if Trump is defeated, the next president would get rid of the tariffs. “They’re not going to invest in duplicative capacity in response to short-term policy incentives,” said Kristen Dziczek, a vice-president at the Center for Automotive Research. It is possible that some production could be shifted back to the United States. General Motors, for instance, makes about 39% of its full-size pickup trucks at a factory in Silao, Mexico, mainly light-duty versions, according to analysts at Morningstar. If the U.S. imposed a 25% tariff on assembled automobiles, GM could shift some production to a factory in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that also makes light-duty pickups. But there are limits. That plant already is running on three shifts and is almost near its maximum capacity. Tariffs on Mexico probably would cost auto jobs in the U.S., too, because Mexico would almost certainly retaliate with tariffs of its own. Tariffs on both sides would raise prices of vehicles, because automakers probably would pass the charges onto their customers. Industry experts say higher prices would cause more buyers to shift into the used-vehicle market, cutting into new-vehicle sales. Tariffs could be higher than 25% because parts go back and forth across the border multiple times in a highly integrated supply chain. Vehicles built in Mexico get 20% to 30% of their parts from the U.S., so the tariffs would drive up prices there. That would hit lower-income people hard because automakers produce many lower-priced new vehicles in Mexico to take advantage of cheaper labour. About 62% of U.S. vehicle and parts exports go to Canada and Mexico, according to the Center for Automotive Research. Tariffs would add $1,300 to $4,500 to the price of vehicles based just on the cost of parts, the centre estimated. —— Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Christopher Rugaber, Martin Crutsinger and Paul Wiseman in Washington, Elliot Spagat in San Diego, Tom Krisher in Detroit and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report. —— Find AP Fact Check http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd Follow https://twitter.com/APFactCheck EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures Published at Sat, 15 Jun 2019 11:57:41 +0000 Read the full article

[2plan22]

RT @APFactCheck: Officials have seen a surge of social media accounts that have fewer than 200 followers created in the last month, a textbook sign of a disinformation effort. https://t.co/i4uvzK3v28 2PLAN22 http://twitter.com/2PLAN22/status/1267292504040321033

Officials have seen a surge of social media accounts that have fewer than 200 followers created in the last month, a textbook sign of a disinformation effort. https://t.co/i4uvzK3v28

— AP Fact Check (@APFactCheck) May 31, 2020

[tahyirasavanna]

CNN Airs Inaccurate California Recall Election Results

https://twitter.com/apfactcheck/status/1438218418675650568?s=21 California Gov. Gavin Newsom ably fended off a recall attempt from Republicans on Tuesday, changing the stakes of the contest from a referendum on his own performance and into a partisan fight over Trumpism and the coronavirus. Five takeaways from Newsom’s victory: COVID PRECAUTIONS CAN HELP DEMOCRATS Republicans intended the…

[the-sayuri-rin]

CLAIM: Video shows Taliban fighters jumping on a trampoline this week as they celebrate their return to power in Afghanistan.AP’S

 ASSESSMENT: False. This video is not current and has circulated online for months.But an internet search reveals the video is at least 11 months old. 

It was posted to YouTube on Aug. 28, 2020, with the caption, “Taliban first time trampoline.” It wasn’t immediately clear who captured the original video or who was featured in it.

[cpandf]

How Dare You People? Joe Biden's the Man. A FACT CHECK EXCLUSIVE

How Dare You People? Joe Biden’s the Man. A FACT CHECK EXCLUSIVE

https://twitter.com/APFactCheck/status/1419780078448283649 Remember when Pres Trump was still President-of course he still is,but for the sake of the people who believe Biden got 81 million votes we’ll humor them-and they did a fact check? It was always with the intention of making him look bad. Didn’t work with most of us but it wasn’t for lack of trying. They do the same thing with people like…

[spyrokid77666]

I've liked a tweet: @APFactCheck: - The #APFactCheck team reviews Joe Biden's statement about health insurance. #Debates2020 Read more: https://t.co/39LbddvuvU pic.twitter.com/5WV31KiZAJ— AP Fact Check (@APFactCheck) October 23, 2020

http://twitter.com/APFactCheck/status/1319469362097606656

[news247worldpressposts]

#Breaking: A map of boats off #China's coast is being shared online as evidence that the country’s lockdowns are causing backups

#Breaking: A map of boats off #China’s coast is being shared online as evidence that the country’s lockdowns are causing backups

https://twitter.com/APFactCheck/status/1524535945034444802?s=20&t=c0ZfoRthKJ_dGsdu3g3CNg Source: Twitter