#factchecking trump

[tomorrowusa]

Fact checking Donald Trump is a full time, even overtime job. He told over 30,000 lies just during his term.

The problem with live news coverage of Trump is that he gets to spew lies and that the factchecking has to wait until he shuts his porcine mouth or producers cut him off.

Low information voters are therefore likely to hear Trump's semi-coherent rants but miss any attempts to call out his lies.

Having said that, MSNBC on Super Tuesday night did a decent attempt at countering a few of Trump's main lies.

Joy Reid is pointing something out that Democrats need to do much more. Trump TOTALLY botched the US pandemic response right from the start. A reminder of what Trump said at CNBC on 22 January 2020 – the day the first COVID-19 case appeared in the US.

Of course it wasn't just fine under Trump.

The Obama administration, which limited the 2014-2016 Ebola pandemic in the US to under a dozen cases, had put together a pandemic playbook. You can read it here. Trump totally ignored it. He spent 50 days after the first US COVID case doing typically idiotic Trump stuff like criticizing 2020 Oscar Best Picture winner Parasites. And afterwards he became preoccupied with quack cures for COVID as it spread throughout the US.

People who claim they had it better under Trump are hoping that the memories of voters are as impaired as Trump's cognition.

We need to be prepared to offer clear fact checks to anybody hearing Trump's lies. Of course convincing MAGA zombies is a waste of time. But when around low information voters who may not be part of the Trump cult we need to be able to offer convincing short refutations. Pointing out that Trump did nothing for the first 50 days of COVID in the US is a good start. So speak up!

Trump's lack of a competent COVID response led to a cascade of acute economic problems which took several years to sort out.

[lasseling]

CNN Comedian Apologizes for Lying about Trump, Then Deletes Apology

A leftist comedian Michael Ian Black apologized for lying to the American people about President Donald Trump. "Presidential debate".

[undergroundusa]

"…the most potent threat to free speech comes not from the communist Chinese or the Bolshevistic Russian oligarchs, the Marxist dictators of South America, or the Islamofascists of the Middle East. It is emanating from the far-Left of the Democrat Party…"

ORIGINAL CONTENT: https://www.undergroundusa.com/p/free-speech-under-attack-the-marxists

READ, SUBSCRIBE, SHARE & EDUCATE: PROTECT FREE SPEECH

Free Speech Under Attack: The Marxist’s March To Control Through Censorship

[factcheckdotorg]

Trump’s Latest False Claim About the U.S.-China Trade Deficit 

[alanfromrochester]

Fact checking during the Trump-Harris debate was good, calling BS on him in real time, to the point of rightwingers complaining that it was too easy on her. Is that true or does it just seem that way after factcheckers covering for Trump as this describes?

I have noticed nitpicking on something that's substantially true, and validating something substantially false because of weasel words, and I suppose bias could manifest that way.

Maybe it is a symptom of media playing both sides rather than portraying one negatively when they are being bad, or bending over backwards to avoid being accused of biased against him

PS

These problems with factchecking could be an issue with trying to regulate misinformation, though that sounds like a tempting idea

“Many of the purported “fact-checks” go beyond verifying Democrats’ statements and instead serve as political spin for Trump, giving him an unearned benefit of the doubt that almost ignores he actually was president and has an established record of deceit and malicious incompetence. The error that fact-checkers consistently make is taking Trump’s assertions and denials at face value. They still treat the convicted felon like someone who operates in good faith, which often results in wish-casting and the “sane-washing” of Trump’s blather. Democrats, meanwhile, are held to an impossibly literal standard where routine exaggerations and rhetorical flourishes are treated like whoppers. Trump’s statements are decontextualized, while those from Democrats are relentlessly scrutinized. The impact is a proliferation of false equivalencies that normalize Republican liars.”

— What’s wrong with the fact-checkers? - by Stephen Robinson

[cur-events]

(via FactChecking the Harris-Trump Debate - FactCheck.org)

Harris messed up some things, but Trump looked bad on much more.

[pirefyrelight]

Ive been at my new job for a couple weeks now and it's good I'm settling in right. At first my only complaint is my line lead is one of those 'I listen to anything' guys who controls the speaker and what that actually means is he plays country but doesn't seem to know who Marty Robinson is so yaknow it's whatever. ("I'm proud to be an American!" Oh man I wish I could be)

But now, it's clear he's a flat earth transphobe etc etc. Today he and the opening server had a way too long conversation about how Elon musk is an idiot, not for any of the reasons you would expect, but because 'he's trying to break the firmament and flood us all with the water held above it with his pointy spacex rocket' to paraphrase. He's also trying to use the bible as proof of these claims but also trying to say that all the religions that Christianity stole traditions from were the real ones? I don't fucking know.

Before he got into all that he started the conversation by going "whelp, I guess I'm not watching the Olympics anymore!"

And I got this dread feeling in my gut, because I don't know what happened but he's also said some mildly transphobic stuff before already, a la 'I don't care I just wish they wouldn't shove it down our throats' yaknow, tolerable. Not a statement I really agree with tonally, but tolerable. 'I have gay friends' etc.

So today I asked him, "Oh no, what happened?"

Then he goes on this fucking rant about men being allowed in women's sports, and how a male boxer was allowed to punch a female one who quit because it wasn't fair, and how all these guys are allowed to set all these records in girls sports, and so on and so forth. Full transphobia that I don't know how to actually start countering, so I just kinda nod along and say things like 'damn that's crazy. Yeah you know there's the idea that instead of being separated into male and female it should be sorted like weight classes. Or a third category for Trans people.' And he goes 'Yeah like for the mentally ill.' And I'm like ooh that is not what I meant but ok.

Well now that I'm home and I can look up what he was talking about, Imane Khelif is a cis female boxer, whose opponent dropped out after less than a minute in the ring with her. I don't know exactly where he got the idea she was trans but there is apparently established controversy about her gender. Which is just- wow. Can we stop being trasphobic as a whole but especially to the cis women? Can the transphobes at least Try to be coherent.

this was before the server came in and they went on about how it's impossible to go to space and we aren't spinning at millions of miles an hour, and the sun zooms out?? I don't even know what that last one is. Something about multiple portals? That the sun goes through? New flat earther model unlocked I guess.

Also apparently Russia's not socialist and because there's foreign involvement/corruption in Ukraine they deserve to be invaded. Anyone who supports Ukraine's sovereignty is suspicious. She asked me who Ukraine was with before now, and I said I know it wasn't always with the Soviet union/Russia as much as they want to say it was, and she kinda backpeddled? 'You know how many Labs are in Ukraine?' As if that erases their right to sovereignty.

[lizardsfromspace]

The factchecking this cycle has been so profoundly incompetent that it's finally getting some real backlash, but the extent of it really should be clear. So much of factchecking is not based in reality, but in a kind of contorted moon logic that can find true claims to be false and false ones to be true based on wildly inconsistent reasoning.

But this one really shows off some of the base assumptions of modern factchecking, and also bc it got a community note which is funny:

Let's take this one by one

The idea that quotes have any options but "he said it" or "he didn't say it". It is a binary, maybe with a third option of "it was clipped wildly out of context", but something you see constantly now is the idea that quoting someone's direct words without deceptive editing or removal of context can somehow be false

Pointlessly noting that it's from 2016, and that it's not clear if he currently believes it. What the hell does that matter to the question of if he said that in 2016? People understood that the "dig up someone's tweets from when they were 17" thing was inane, but they counter-balanced by apparently deciding that citing anything someone said more than about six months ago is Misinformation if we don't have objective evidence they would say the exact same thing now, even if there's no evidence they believe anything else. Analyzing someone's high school tweets and analyzing something the literal President said seven years ago are not equivalent

Noting that he walked it back following criticism. You see this constantly, too. Again, what does that matter to the question of if he said it? But this is just taken as a given now: if someone gets blowback and says "whoops I didn't mean it", that should be taken at face value. Effectively, Politifact is letting Donald Trump self-factcheck Donald Trump: their only evidence (and I read the article too) this is at all false is that Donald Trump said Donald Trump didn't really mean the words he said, so they must agree with the judgment of Donald Trump that Donald Trump was treated so unfairly here.

A general confusion over what factchecking is. If you're asked "did Donald Trump say this in 2016?", your sole job is to determine if he really said that in 2016. It's not to divine if he, deep in his heart, still believes it now. That's completely irrelevant.

The two guiding principles of modern factchecking are this: one, it's strongly rumored - and also, obvious to everyone literate - that the major factchecking sites have either standing orders to find equal numbers of lies on both sides, or are staffed by people who think it's their job to hold both sides equally to account (the exception is Snopes, whose writers are just terrible at their jobs). In the name of this, Donald Trump can say something on camera only for it to be judged false, while a Democratic politician can be excoriated for mildly rounding down a figure in a speech. A factchecking website once determined that saying climate change was a threat to life on this planet was a lie, because climate change won't kill all life on this planet. Politifact's lie of the year one year was a Democrat saying a Republican plan would "end Medicare as we know it", which was judged to be a lie because it wouldn't literally end Medicare completely. Figurative language needs to be scoured, comments said directly on camera need to be made fuzzy. This makes factchecking sites worthless at factchecking, because what even is this?

It's not true that Donald Trump will refuse to accept the election results, because he's merely said he won't accept, and has said if he loses, it's only because the election was fraudulent. Okay, what, do you demand that people prove he said his plans in exact words? What is the actual, functional difference between "he said he won't accept it" and "he said if he loses it's because he won and they stole it from him, and he won't commit to saying he'll accept it"? What are you talking about, who is this for? When you go to the Logic and Reason Site for Debunking & end up having to puzzle out their convoluted logic and reasoning to understand anything, the plot's been lost a bit

The other is the idea that context is exonerating. Any context at all. If they said they didn't mean it, partially false. If they walked it back, partially false. If they said it was taken out of context, partially false. If they said it a certain number of years ago, partially false. If there's a longer video, even if it shows functionally the same thing, pants on fire, five pinocchios.

Again, we have footage of Trump saying this, and the footage in the ad is unedited, and the factchecking website is declaring something that OBJECTIVELY HAPPENED WITH HARD EVIDENCE IT HAPPENED didn't really happen bc we don't know his heart, maybe he believes something different now, we simply can't know for certain. But we do know for certain. Because "false" at least used to mean "didn't happen". But factchecking sites are now on those Beyond Belief definitions of "true" and "false" I guess

But the real problem here is that they just accept anything someone being factchecked says at face value. Because, and I can't believe I'm saying this

It seems like the people paid to determine if other people are lying...have forgotten that people lie sometimes

[jjmcquade-misc]

Scamla's bullshits factchecked

VOTE TRUMP 2024

[odinsblog]

Imagine being the loser ass tool, Yisha Raziel, who made a deepfake of Bella Hadid saying she supports Israel. 🤮

If you’re reading this, I am telling you right now, you better second and third guess what you see and hear on social media and the news. Stick to reliable news sources. Vet them. Require multiple, trusted sources. Validate links to sources. In the last several months, I’ve seen the deepfake of President Nixon talking about the failed NASA mission that never happened. I’ve seen a deepfake of Joe Biden hilariously using profanity to trash talk Trump - Biden’s deepfake, however, was made to be intentionally obvious that it wasn’t his words, or something he would actually say.

But imagine a viral deepfake video of Biden announcing a nuclear strike on Russia within the next 20 minutes? Or a deepfake of Biden reintroducing the draft to support Israel? Or a deepfake of Biden withdrawing from the 2024 election and endorsing Trump…

These kinds of things are going to begin happening a lot more, especially with the proliferation of troll farms, and especially since YouTube, Twitter (I refuse to call it X), and Facebook have all eviscerated their verification and factcheck teams that used to at least attempt to limit disinformation and misinformation.

Pay attention, peeps.

Don’t get bamboozled.

[laundryandtaxes]

I think that maybe the worst impact that Trump's presidency made on the American landscape is that Trump Derangement Syndrome was 100% real and millions of American just never recovered- millions of liberals fully lost their minds and became incapable of reasoning along the lines of their own principles rather than according to sheer partisan reaction. They believed by the millions, and their serious journalists and talking heads regularly claimed to believe, that it made more sense that Vladimir Putin was holding a sex tape over the head of the US president than that liberals ran an election campaign against an embarrassingly bad candidate and lost. They became so allergic to disagreement itself that they regularly attacked the character of people generally on their side over minor and inconsequental political differences. They became so allergic to thinking and to the marketplace of ideas that many of them now legitimately believe that support for freedom of speech is itself a dogwhistle. They became so weak in their principles that they argued that any American, especially any conservative, who took issue with sending billions of taxpayer dollars into the black hole of a meat grinder of a war in Eastern Europe was a traitor and a lover of Vladimir Putin- being anti war, long one of the single best traits of American liberals, was tossed to the side largely just in reaction to Trump's personal desire to avoid new wars. They convinced themselves that feminists speaking up in defense of the ability of women to even discuss wanting to maintain some designated single sex spaces, facilities, groups, etc for women were not just similarly-principled women with whom they had disagreements on the definitions of basic terms, but actually fascists, purely in reaction to conservative dislike of gay, bisexual, gnc, and trans people. They became so accustomed to simply making the truth by speaking it into existence with their media heads and their factchecking bodies that mainstream media all but pretended there were no riots in the summer of 2020 when people could walk around and see them for themselves. They became so nostalgic for the platonic ideal of a president that they rehabilitated the image of George W. Bush despite his being a war criminal who outright lied to justify the illegal invasion of a country for oil that led to unthinkable amounts of destruction and death, and who grew the tendrils of the American security state until they reached into the personal email accounts of American citizens. They straight up forgot how to think and reason and even how to look at the world as it actually exists, and that's what we are stuck with.

[tomorrowusa]

^^^ Daniel Dale of CNN was almost breathless from reciting and refuting all the lies which Trump told at his Wisconsin rally a couple of days ago. Being a fact checker in the age of Trump is steady work.

Donald Trump is simply a diarrhea torrent of lies. He told 30,573 lies just during his administration. He's likely has told many more than that since leaving office in disgrace.

Washington Post counts 30,573 false or misleading claims in four years by Trump

One thing Trump didn't talk about at his lie-encrusted Wisconsin rally was his Foxconn fiasco near Racine.

Foxconn mostly abandons $10 billion Wisconsin project touted by Trump

Yet another business failure, this time with taxpayer money, by the frequently bankrupt "stable genius".

[lasseling]

Analysis: Fact-Checking the Biden vs. Trump Debate

President Joe Biden went up against former President Donald Trump in a live debate hosted by CNN in Atlanta, Georgia. No audience was permitted in the hall, and the candidates were subjected to strict rules regarding speaking times.

[andthemoonsingswisely]

anyone else just so fucking tired of American politics? Trump’s “concepts of a plan” and Harris being unable to respond when asked how she’d fund her initiatives. Harris switching randomly to “I grew up in a middle class family” instead of y’know, actually answering the question. Trump acting as if he was good for the economy when he just rode off Obama’s economy and promptly ruined it for Biden, who in turn made it even worse. But ignore that everyone: the biggest issues are finding a middle ground on “do women have autonomy” and “is it okay for kids to be shot up in schools”. As I high schooler, I sometimes remember that I could be next. I could be “thoughts and prayers” I could be “something that happens very rarely”. oh, and also loveee how most people get their education from either TikTok or Twitter university. Either “white people are OPPRESSED” or “communism will work once we start the GLORIOUS REVOLUTION”. buzzwords like “late stage capitalism” “ethnofascism” that 90% of its users don’t use properly. people vote on catchy slogans “Make America Great Again” as opposed to actual policy. I keep hearing people say “the internet has allowed us to gain more knowledge” and all I can think is half that knowledge ain’t even true, and that YOU aren’t factchecking nearly as often as you should. please, if this country is really a democracy, I don’t want the next four years to be run by someone who can’t understand basic economics. Half the kids in my ap gov class would be better candidates than whatever shitshow we got going on.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Acc to spare, when does Harry actually claim he proposed to Meghan?? And when did he claim to have asked the queen for permission? I believe she said "I spoke I have to say yes then" to his question.

From whatever i had read so far, I thought the permission happened in Scotland, or just after the queen got back from Balmoral. So sometime late August or early September 2017. And the proposal happened in Sept 2017. So right around the time you say the BRF Archie page was forst set up. And when suits not being renewed rumours started. What do you think was happening there? Meghan finally got her claws all in and started flexing about how she will be one of the KP bosses soon?

So below the jump are excerpts from both Spare and Tom Bower's Revenge on Harry asking The Queen for permission and the proposal.

But essentially, both works contradict each other and the key dates mentioned don't line up to the September 4, 2017 date from the webpage.

In Spare:

Harry says that Meghan and The Queen met at the Royal Lodge "by accident" in October 2016 - he was taking Meghan to meet Fergie, there were no corgis, Meghan's curtsy was flawless, and The Queen asked about Donald Trump.

Harry writes that he asked The Queen for permission to marry Meghan at the end of October in Sandringham on a shoot. This would have been the weekend of October 27 - 29, 2017.

He proposed on November 4th shortly after Meghan officially moved to London. (It sounds like he proposed maybe between 1-3 days after she moved.) Harry writes that they kept the engagement a secret for about two weeks, but the way he wrote it, it's dripping with a kind of venom, in a way, that makes one wonder if the engagement was leaked or if they were forced to announce the engagement when they did.

But when you look at the calendar, two weeks after November 4th is November 18th - a whole nine days before the official announcement. So what happened to the missing week?

In Revenge:

Bower presents them going to The Queen for permission to marry as a kind of fait accompli - it sounds like they were engaged first, then went to see The Queen for permission at Buckingham Palace and that this meeting was also Meghan's first introduction to The Queen.

Bower says this happened at the end of October, 2 weeks after the Invictus Games ended on October 12th. This would be the weekend of October 27-29, 2017 - so at least the dates that the Queen was asked for permission align between Harry's version and Bower's version.

The corgis were there in Bower's version of events. (Which aligns with Harry saying the corgis were there the first time he introduced Meghan to The Queen in the engagement interview.)

Bower also suggests that The Queen felt she had to say yes because of Meghan's PR saying they had already met; ergo, that the Queen felt she couldn't say no because it would have been a Thing.

It is interesting that Bower specifically calls out the 2017 Invictus Games ending on October 12 when the official record has it ending on September 30. It's most likely a factchecking error, but it's surprising coming from Bower.

Quotes below the jump!

Quick note first - I cannot stand how they formatted Spare, so in the sections below, I'm using my own formatting to make it a much more sensical (to me, at least) read. If you read Spare yourself, you will see that the formatting is a tragedeigh.

In Spare, Harry describes Meghan meeting the Queen in Part 3, Chapter 15:

Meg came back to London a week later. October 2016. We lunched with [Mark Dwyer] and his family, and I introduced her to a few other close mates. All good. Everyone loved her. Emboldened, I felt the time had come for her to meet my family. She agreed. First stop, Royal Lodge. o meet Fergie, because Meg already knew Fergie's daughter Euge, and Jack, so this seemed a logical baby step. But as we neared Royal Lodge, I got word on my phone. Granny was there. She'd popped in. On her way home from church back to the castle. Meg said: "Fun! I love grandmas." I asked if she knew how to curtsy. She said she thought so. But she also couldn't tell if I was serious. "You're about to meet the Queen." "I know, but it's your grandma." "But she's the Queen." We pulled into the driveway, drove across the gravel, parked next to the big green box hedge. Fergie came outside, somewhat aflutter, and said: "Do you know how to curtsy?" Meg shook her head. Fergie demonstrated once. Meg imitated her. there wasn't time for a more advanced tutorial. We couldn't keep Granny waiting. As we walked towards the door, Fergie and I both leaned into Meg, whispering quick reminders. "When you first meet the Queen, it's Your Majesty. Thereafter it's just Ma'am. Rhymes with ham." (Quick aside: I'm pretty sure they did not say this. This is 100% the script from the movie, The Queen, and I'm pretty sure it's verbatim.) "Just, whatever you do, don't talk over her," we both said, talking over each other. We entered the large front sitting room and there she was. Granny. THe monarch. Queen Elizabeth II. Standing in the middle of the room. She turned slightly. Meg went straight to her and dropped a deep, flawless curtsy. "Your Majesty. Pleasure to meet you."

(Harry goes on to describe how The Queen asked Meghan about Donald Trump, since this was right before the 2016 election, and Meghan expertly pivoted to Canada and the Commonwealth. There are no dogs present in Harry's recollection of Meghan's introduction to The Queen.)

Harry describes the engagement beginning in Part 3 - Chapter 32. It takes place sometime after the 2017 Invictus Games. Harry calls Ed Lane Fox, his former private secretary, 'Elf.'

I told Elf and Jason that I wanted to propose. Congratulations, both men said. But then Elf said he'd need to do some fast digging to find out the protocols. There were strict rules governing such things. Rules? Really? He came back days later and said before doing anything I'd need to ask Granny's permission. I asked him if that was a real rule, or the kind we could work around. "Oh no, it's very real." (Harry describes how self-absorbed he is and recaps some plot points from The Crown.) And so, heart full of fear, mouth full of dust, I turned to the calendar. With Elf's help I circled a weekend in late October. A family shooting trip at Sandringham. Shooting trips always put Granny in a good mood. Perhaps she'd be more open to thoughts of love? (Harry talks about how he thinks Charles and William would talk him out of asking The Queen to marry Meghan if they knew he was going to do it and he recaps how William had been "pretty discouraging" about the relationship. Then he blathers on about how Charles told him there's no money to support Meghan and how Charles doesn't like anyone taking attention from him. He describes the shoot and how anxious he is to get time alone with The Queen.) After the final drive the party scattered. Everyone finished picking up their birds and returned to the Land Rovers. I saw Granny jump into her smaller Range Rover and drive out to the middle of the stubble field. She began looking for dead birds, while her dogs hunted. There was no security around her, so this looked to be my chance. I walked out to the middle of the stubble field, fell in alongside her, began helping. (blah blah blah, interior monologue, my heart cannot go on without Meg but I can't disobey my Queen.) I realized that I needed to get to it, without one second more of hesitation, so as Granny lowered the tailgate, as the dogs leaped up, as I thought of petting them but then remembered I had (description of dead birds and more interior monologing about how much he loved The Queen)...I saw her waitingf for me to speak--and not waiting patiently. Her face radiated: "Out with it." I coughed. "Granny, you know I love Meg very much, and I've decided that I would like to ask her to marry me, and I've been told that, er, that I have to ask your permission before I can propose." "You have to?" "Um. Well, yes, that's what your staff tell me, and my staff as well. That I have to ask your permission." I stood completely still, as motionless as the birds in my hands. I stared at her face but it was unreadable. At last she replied: "Well, then, I suppose I have to say yes."

Harry goes on to describe how offended he is by her reaction and admits he's so self-absorbed he doesn't realize it was permission granted.

Chapter 34 is about a time Harry and Meghan hosted William and Kate for dinner. William had a cold, Meghan offered her homeopathic "cures" and William found it charming while Kate was rude, and describes Meghan being in ripped jeans while Kate is dressed up. Chapter 35 is Harry's narration of Meghan moving to London and his description of how he proposed: outside in the garden because he wanted it to be like when they were in Botswana:

We hurried inside, finished our celebration in the warmth of the kitchen. It was November 4. We managed to keep it secret for about two weeks.

From Revenge, Tom Bower writes in Chapter 19:

To please Harry, the Queen agreed to ditch centuries of tradition. Meghan would be fast-tracked into the Royal Family before the wedding. Two weeks after the Invictus Games ended on 12th October, Harry introduced Meghan to the Queen in Buckingham Palace. Over tea and sandwiches, the monarch formally approved her grandson's engagement. The 91 year old had no choice. Apparently, she had already met Meghan in Windsor Park. In a fleeting, unexpected encounter, Meghan would claim to have performed an unrehearsed botched curtsey. During the formal meeting in the Palace, Harry would describe how the Queen's corgis, who had for the previous 33 years barked at him, lay at Meghan's feet and wagged their tales. Meghan described the scene as 'very sweet.' (Meghan moves to London. Bower talks about how the institution isn't welcoming to married-ins. They ran off Diana, Fergie, and Anne's first husband, and threatened to do the same to Kate till William laid down the law.) Meghan was the beneficiary of those misjudgements. In anticipation of the engagement's formal announcement, Palace officials agreed that to ease her transition into the family she needed guidance about the restrictions accepted by all members of the Royal Family. Harry would claim that he had forewarned Meghan: 'You know what you're letting yourself in for. It's a big deal and it's not easy for anybody.' If so, no one directly asked Meghan whether she understood that the British monarchy had only survived - with the support of 70 per cent of Britons - by seaking to remain soberly uncontroversial. No one spelled out to her that monarchists were unaware that most of the changes made to ensure the Crown's modernisation and survival had been imperceptible. But then, no one recalls that Meghan asked any detailed questions before the engagement was officially announced on 27th November, 2017.