It’s been a busy week for President Donald Trump. He hosted a rally Tuesday in Tampa, Florida, then another in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Thursday. (Some conspiracy theorists came, too!) He suggested the American Civil Liberties Union should do his administration’s work for him. He called on his deputy attorney general to stop the Russia investigation, but he also might really want to sit down and chat about that.
He also told a lot of untruths! Or falsehoods, fibs, fabrications ― lies, if you will. His bad habit is actually on the rise, according to The Washington Post, which reported this week that the president has told twice the number of false or misleading statements in the first half of this year as he did all of last year.
Strap in, folks. Here are 11 things the president of the United States said this week that are just not true.
There are people watching on giant TVs outside his Tampa rally because it’s so popular!
There were no TVs or large screens stationed outside, the Tampa Bay Times reported, although some people couldn’t get in.
He’s the most popular Republican president ever!
Trump repeated a favorite claim of his in a tweet and again at his Tampa rally, where he said he was “the most popular person in the history of the Republican Party,” including Abraham Lincoln.
According to multiple news outlets, Trump beats only Gerald Ford among modern Republican presidents. Polling didn’t exist in Lincoln’s time; Gallup began polling in 1935.
He arrived 15 minutes early to his meeting with Queen Elizabeth!
The president slammed the “fake, fake, disgusting news” media for accurately reporting the fact that he was more than 10 minutes late to the meeting with Britain’s reigning monarch, as video of the event showed and many news outlets reported. The world even saw the 92-year-old queen look at her watch as she stood waiting for Trump’s car to approach.
He chatted with The New York Times publisher about the paper’s fake news!
The president posted a tweet about the off-the-record meeting that suggested he and Publisher A.G. Sulzberger “spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’”
Sulzberger wrote a statement describing a vastly different meeting, one in which he spent time explaining to the president how his divisive language might cause real harm to journalists around the world.
“I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people.’ I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence,” Sulzberger wrote.
U.S. Steel Corp. is opening seven new plants!
He told his audience Tuesday that six plants were coming and upped that number to seven on Thursday.
The company has made no such announcement. A spokeswoman told The Associated Press that any plans to open new plants would be announced on the company’s website.
The Russia investigation is a hoax!
OK, he says this a lot.
“We’re being hindered by the Russia hoax. It’s a hoax, OK?” Trump said in Pennsylvania.
But just hours earlier, top national security officials told reporters at a news conference that Russia’s U.S. election meddling is indeed real.
“Russia attempted to interfere with the last election,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday, stressing that it is a threat “we need to take extremely seriously and to tackle and respond to with fierce determination and focus.”
Russia is “very unhappy” that he is president!
The president once again made this untrue assertion at his Thursday rally. Russian President Vladimir Putin explicitly told reporters that he wanted Trump to win the 2016 election at a news conference the two leaders gave after their Helsinki summit last month.
“Savage gangs” are “occupying our country”!
“Every day, the brave men and women of ICE are liberating communities and towns from savage gangs, like MS-13, that are occupying our country like another nation would,” Trump said in defense of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at his Tampa rally.
Although MS-13 is extremely violent and has a presence in some coastal cities, there is no evidence to support that claim, despite how often the president makes it.
Democrats are trying to give illegal immigrants the right to vote!
This does not appear to be happening across the country, although non-citizens were recently approved to vote in San Francisco’s school board elections.
“In this country, the only time you don’t need [I.D], in many cases, is when you want to vote for a president, when you want to vote for a senator, when you want to vote for a governor or a congressman,” the president claimed at his rally in Tampa this week. “It’s crazy. It’s crazy. But we are turning it around.”
It is explicitly illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections.
The terrorist who killed several people in an October attack in Manhattan brought “22 relatives” into the country!
“He came in through chain [migration], and he has 22 relatives here. They came in because he was here,” Trump said Thursday of the truck driver who killed eight people in Lower Manhattan last October.
Trump has made this claim in the past. The New York Times explained it is not possible because, as a green card holder, the Uzbek truck driver would not have been allowed to sponsor any extended relatives ― just spouses and unmarried children. The man has one wife, and his three children were born in the United States.
His administration passed the biggest tax cuts in history!
“We passed the biggest tax cuts and reform in American history. Biggest cuts in history,” Trump said in Tampa. Experts say the bill was not the biggest in U.S. history, although he would be correct if he said it was “the biggest corporate tax cut.”