Trump held a press conference yesterday-- a humdinger for the ages. He rambled on and on-- ranting and raving about getting "the itch" from electric heaters, low-flow washing machines, gas stoves, retaking the Panama Canal, changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, windmills and whales, how Hezbollah was involved in January 6 (it wasn't), invading Greenland and Canada, and so much (meaningless) more. But Trump employed his usual crazy bluster and ridiculous blather to obscure another tirade of lies, which I will try to document (and refute) for you:
"I saw it with plants in Louisiana--they were through the review in one week after spending 14.5 years trying to get it and they were going nowhere." Trump was referring to the Cameron LNG project in Louisiana that first received its federal approval in 2012 under Obama. In April 2014, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued the final environmental impact statement to construct and operate the liquefaction facility. In 2016, Washington gave permission to add another two liquefaction lines, although the company hasn’t decided to move ahead on those.
"Inflation is continuing to rage and interest rates are far too high." The U.S. inflation rate declined significantly between June 2022 and November 2024, and is currently half the historically high rates seen under Trump.
"We had a landslide election." In reality, Trump won the popular vote by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century.
"I defeated deranged Jack Smith. He's a deranged individual. I guess he's on his way back to The Hague, and we won those cases. Those were the biggest ones. And the press made such a big deal out of him, but we did nothing wrong." Jack Smith is clearly not suffering from mental disease. In addition, Trump did not win either of the DOJ cases. He used funding from supporters to mount baseless appeals and deploy other tactics to delay the legal process, and was helped out by dubious rulings from an unqualified Florida judge (who was appointed to the bench by Trump). After the Trump won the election, the DOJ elected to drop the cases so that they could issue reports on the investigations before Trump’s DOJ had the chance to bury all the evidence and sweep the cases under the rug.
"I'm a former very successful president." Trump had a very unsuccessful presidency—he failed to get the wall built; his Muslim ban was blocked by the courts; he failed on the economy; North Korea, Russia, Iran and Syria all advanced their interests on Trump’s watch; and (most importantly) he bungled the federal response to COVID and was responsible for the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
"We had borders that were sealed and beautiful." Trump detained and deported fewer illegal immigrants than either Obama or Biden.
"We had no wars." Trump escalated conflict in every theater of war he inherited-- increasing troop levels, deepening reliance on private contractors, and dramatically scaling up aerial warfare. Not only did Trump not end the wars he promised to, he worsened them, dropping more bombs, stoking further conflict, undermining the prospects of peace, and massively increasing the rate of civilian deaths.
"[Panama] charges more for our ships than they charge for ships of other countries. They charge more for our navy than they charge for navies of other countries." Panama has a standard rate methodology they charge for all ships, which is based on gross weight of the vessel—larger and heavier ships pay more; smaller ships pay less. The claim originated on a satirical social media account, but Trump is too stupid to figure that out.
"We had the greatest economy in history." Wrong on so many levels. Trump’s economic legacy was mainly characterized by tax cuts (for the rich), trade wars and tariffs (which hurt workers and the poor), deregulation (mainly rolling back protections for workers and the environment), and restrictions on immigration (which restricted the supply of labor and resulted in higher costs for businesses).
"[Wind is the] most expensive energy ever. They [windmills] only work if you get subsidy. Wrong again. Wind energy is widely considered one of the least expensive electricity sources available today, especially when considering large-scale, land-based wind farms.
"The Panama Canal is vital to our country. It's being operated by China." The Panama Canal is 100% operated by the country of Panama—only a complete moron can't understand that.
"Well, they [NATO members] weren't paying their bills. I said
we're not going to protect you if you're not paying the bills. So, in a true
sense, I saved NATO." Trump continues to display utter ignorance on how NATO is funded While a majority of NATO
members do not meet the alliance’s target of each member spending a minimum of
2% of gross domestic product on defense, the 2% target is a “guideline” that
does not create bills, debts or legal obligations if it is not met. In fact,
the guideline doesn’t require payments to NATO or the US at all. Rather, it
simply requires each country to spend on their own defense programs. If anything, NATO will survive despite Trump.
"Why are we in for billions and billions of dollars more money than Europe? And yet Europe is in for a small fraction of the number the United States is in." Another example of Trump's ignorance about how NATO works. The U.S. portion of the NATO budget is 15.88%. The combined portion of the NATO budget that comes from European countries is 77.4%.
"The only one that was killed [on January 6] was a beautiful young lady named Ashli Babbitt. In fact, multiple people died in connection with the pro-Trump attack, including five police officers. This lie has been refuted with indisputable, documented facts so many times, his repeating it over and over again should be criminal.
"This [Jan. 6] would be the only insurrection in history where people went in as insurrectionists with not one gun." Hundreds of rioters were filmed holding weapons on Capitol grounds and dozens were convicted of carrying weapons on Capitol grounds, including Mark Mazza of Indiana, Christopher Alberts of Maryland, Jerod Thomas Bargar of Missouri, and Mario Mares, Guy Reffitt and Roger Preacher of Texas.
"They know who the pipe bomber is. The FBI knows who it is." The FBI does NOT know the identity of the
piper bomber and continues to seek help from the public on identifying the
individual. If Trump is so confident of his assertion, he could order the DOJ to reveal the pipe bomber's identity once he is sworn in. But of course, that won't happen.
"All they [DOJ, NY prosecutors] did was attack me because I'm their political opponent." DOJ, New York and Georgia filed charges against you because you are a criminal. Trump instigated a riot to prevent the counting of electoral ballots; Trump pressured officials to reverse the results and knowingly spread lies about election fraud; Trump falsified business records to cover up hush-money payments to a porn star; Trump criminally conspired with others to overturn his defeat in the Georgia election; Trump mishandled classified documents and obstructed the FBI's efforts to retrieve the files.
"But we've won most of the cases, so we're very happy about that." Trump has not won a single case against him. He was convicted in the NY hush-money trial; the Federal government was forced to drop the charges related to the Capitol Riot due to Trump’s reelection; the Georgia Election charges are pending; the Classified Documents charges were dropped after a widely-criticized ruling from a Trump-appointed judge.
"People really don't even know if Denmark has any legal right to it." Greenland is a territory of Denmark, a fact that is not questioned by anyone (with half a brain) in the political and legal world.
"Don't forget, we basically protect Canada." The U.S. has never protected Canada from anyone. The U.S. has never come to the defense of Canada in any real way. The U.S. has no military bases in Canada, gives no money for its defense or does anything that could reasonably be called “protecting Canada”.
"We have massive fields of lumber. We don't need [Canada's] lumber. The U.S. is heavily dependent on Canada's lumber, since the needs of the U.S. outweigh its domestic supply.
"The fake witch hunt started by the DOJ having to do with books and records, and Biden had many more." Biden had a “small number of documents with classified markings” in his DC office, a “small number” of documents in the garage at his Delaware home, and “six pages of classified documents” in his office at his home. In comparison, Trump had roughly 300 documents with classification markings in the 48 boxes and containers of presidential records that were seized from his Florida estate.
This is going to be an exhausting wait for real leadership in this country. Clearly the press has no energy or time to refute these continued lies from Trump-- they just want to focus on headline bait like Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. Buckle up for another four years of this nonsense.
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