IMPOTUS is the best that the r's have to offer us in Nov!
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status ... 7707424768
America already knows its president is a liar, but now that he's losing his re-election campaign badly, he's taken it to a new level.
LIE: Trump says that—despite growing up in the "church" of Norman Vincent Beale's now-infamous philosophy of "positive thinking"—he's equally committed to always seeing the downside of a scenario.
TRUTH: Trump aides' books confirm he won't hear bad news—and it endangers America.
LIE: Trump says his "incredible" pandemic response is evident in him stopping all people from coming to the US from China.
TRUTH: The NYT reports that Trump's "ban" had so many loopholes that 40,000 came to the US from China *just* in the 5 weeks immediately following the order.
LIE: Trump says "practically no one" wanted him to do the "China travel ban."
TRUTH: In fact, issuing such a ban was the almost unanimous advice Trump received from his White House advisers, who talked him into doing it. He has constructed a fantasy "hero" narrative around this.
LIE: Trump says that he issued his loophole-riddled "ban" on travel from China "very early in January."
FALSE: The order was issued at the very *end* of January, and for reasons that remain unexplained, was not an immediate order—so it didn't take effect until early *February*.
LIE: Trump says he put a "ban on Europe."
TRUTH: Trump emphatically *didn't* put a "ban" on all of Europe in March 2020, weeks after his China order (NB: the NYT later reported the virus came to NYC mainly from Europe—not China). He exempted any country with a Trump golf course.
LIE: Trump says the US would've lost "hundreds of thousands more [lives]" by now if he hadn't put his loophole-riddled travel orders on China and part of Europe.
TRUTH: By the time Trump's Europe order came it was too late to substantially slow the spread of the virus in the US.
LIE: Trump said his advisers told him his China ban was too "severe."
TRUTH: In fact, Trump's DHHS secretary, Alex Azar, has explicitly said the opposite: that the order was intended to be incremental and was constructed that way. It was not intended—ever—to be a "severe" order.
LIE: Trump says "nobody knew what this [COVID-19] was all about."
TRUTH: Trump received urgent warnings at the White House throughout the fall of 2019 about the risk of a pandemic *just* like this one and then—in November—received intel warnings about an emerging virus in China.
LIE: Trump says the 1918 pandemic was unlike this one because it was a "flu"—and that's why COVID-19 threw everyone everywhere for a loop.
TRUTH: Trump began the pandemic trying to convince America COVID-19 was indeed just like the flu—even as experts were telling him otherwise.
LIE: Trump says that of the 188 countries with COVID-19, "some are suffering proportionately far greater than we are."
TRUTH: The U.S. ranks 1st of 188 in total cases. Per capita, it ranks 7th in deaths and 8th in cases—and these rankings are rising toward "1st of 188" rankings.
LIE: Trump says China "sent" the virus "one way or another."
TRUTH: The Pentagon says it has no evidence China deliberately "sent" the virus to anyone. Even as to possible accidental outbreak in a "wet market," there is evidence the virus was elsewhere in the world before China.
LIE: Trump says the U.S. economy pre-pandemic was the best in American history.
TRUTH: No, it wasn't.
LIE: Trump says his trade war led to "billions" in US revenues—which went to "the farmers."
TRUTH: It's the opposite. The trade war has cost billions and harmed US farmers immeasurably. There's evidence from Trump aides that the trade war was a political ploy to gain reelection.
LIE: Trump says his orders "closed down" the US economy and protected America.
TRUTH: Trump had nothing to do with closing down the US economy. In states where it happened, it was the decision of the governor—in states where it didn't, it's because *Trump convinced them not to*.
LIE: Trump says he saved "millions of lives."
TRUTH: There's no evidence of this. For this ("millions") to be true, IHME projections would have to have been that more than 2.5 million Americans were going to die from COVID-19 (as we're heading toward 500,000 now). They were not.
LIE: Trump says he opposed any "herd immunity" plan.
TRUTH: Trump was the *top proponent in the White House* for letting COVID-19 "wash over" America through a "herd immunity" plan that could've killed 2 million people. The NYT reports that Trump wouldn't stop insisting on this.
LIE: Trump says those who "really understand" COVID-19 say he's done an "incredible" job on it.
TRUTH: No medical experts say so. No one who "really understands" COVID-19 says so. The only public statements of this sort come from inside the administration (e.g., from Bill Barr).
LIE: Trump says "nobody knew" how contagious COVID-19 was when he issued a China travel "ban" in early February.
TRUTH: The Trump White House knew this by November 2019—via multiple briefings. There were many more—from multiple sources—in December. And dozens throughout January.
LIE: Trump says "12,000, not 6,000" people attended his Tulsa rally, which appears to have sickened hundreds and may have caused the death of Herman Cain, a 2012 Republican presidential candidate (in fact the leader of the GOP field for a part of fall 2011).
TRUTH: It was 6,000.
LIE: Trump says #BlackLivesMatter protesters made his Tulsa rally site an "armed camp" that you "couldn't get into."
TRUTH: There is no evidence of threats being made with weapons at the event, and video from the site showed Trump supporters having no difficulty getting inside.
(THREAD UPDATE) That's 20 lies so far. We're 5 minutes and 47 seconds into a *37 minute, 53 second* video.
LIE: Trump says the COVID-19 pandemic was "pretty much over" in Oklahoma when he picked the site.
TRUTH: The opposite is true—cases were rising there at the time and Trump was strongly warned not to hold his rally. The result of the rally (illness and death) was widely foretold.
LIE: Trump says that cases in the Tulsa area didn't start going up until a "month" after his rally.
TRUTH: Not only is this false, but the infection to data-cognizable timeline for COVID-19 is 2 to 4 weeks—suggesting any post-Tulsa-rally rises were indeed connected to the rally.
LIE: Trump then "corrects" himself to say that Oklahoma "spiked" in COVID-19 cases not one month after his rally, but "one and a half or two months" after.
TRUTH: Trump here deliberately makes his lie *worse*, not better. His "correction" is actually a much worse prevarication.
LIE: Trump says the Tulsa rally had a "tremendous" response.
TRUTH: Not only was the arena only one-third filled—Trump had promised a sellout—but a corresponding outside event had to be cancelled. The much-vaunted "1 million preorders" turned out to be largely kids using TikTok.
LIE: Trump said "we couldn't get anybody in" to the Tulsa rally, and that that's why its attendance was so low.
TRUTH: Video from the event confirms that everyone who wanted to get in, got in. There were *no* crowds of people waiting to get in that did not. This is pure fantasy.
LIE: Trump said he cancelled a subsequent New Hampshire rally "for the same reason"—i.e., public health reasons.
TRUTH: Nope. Trump had a chance to tell the truth about why he cancelled the Portsmouth rally, but chose to lie: he said it was the weather. The weather was gorgeous.
LIE: Trump says "right now it [COVID-19] is under control."
TRUTH: Trump's entire coronavirus task force explicitly says otherwise, and is doing so publicly on a daily basis. Right now, more than *a thousand Americans a day* are dying of the virus. It is 100% *uncontrolled* now.
LIE: Trump says "we are doing everything we can" to slow the virus and keep people safe.
TRUTH: There's no evidence of this. Not only is Trump fighting COVID-19-safe balloting measures for November, he refuses to enact the DPA regularly and won't push for maximum testing rates.
LIE: Trump says Arizona and Texas are seeing decreases in COVID-19 infections.
TRUTH: The data on this is mixed, and moreover Trump has a consistent pattern of listing off large numbers of states that are improving when in fact *many* of them are getting measurably much worse.
LIE: Trump says there's no chance the infection and death rates will go back to spring levels.
TRUTH: The infection data is already *two and a half times* worse than March and April, and the death rate—even before school re-openings bump it upward—is edging toward spring levels.
LIE: Trump says infections are going down in Florida.
TRUTH: No.
LIE: Trump says he "never gets bored of talking about the virus."
TRUTH: In June and July major media reported that Trump had stopped communicating much with his task force and seemed committed to rarely discussing COVID-19. He's only just changed his tune—for political reasons.
LIE: Trump says "at this moment" the death toll is 140,000.
TRUTH: It's actually 160,000—14.2% higher than Trump said. That's a *staggering* percentage for the president to be off, given that he's briefed daily on the death toll and his error represents *20,000 dead Americans*.
LIE: Trump says "governors wouldn't have equipment" to fight COVID-19 if not for him.
TRUTH: In fact Jared Kushner's pandemic response team created a situation in which governors had to *compete* with the federal government to get equipment—and generally procure it on their own.
LIE: Trump says "there are those who say you can test too much."
TRUTH: Literally no one with any knowledge of epidemiology says this.
LIE: Trump says the "manuals" he has say "you can test too much."
TRUTH: Trump actually has *two* government pandemic-response manuals he's supposed to be guided by—and per reporting, he's ignored basically every prescription in both of them (neither says you can test too much).
LIE: Trump calls PCP/hospital COVID-19 tests "point-to-point" testing.
TRUTH: I find no evidence of this term being used with respect to COVID-19 tests. Trump seems to be referring to "point-of-care" testing. That he fakes knowing such a basic term underscores his lack of focus.
LIE: Trump says that non-point-of-care COVID-19 testing has seen Americans waiting "three, four, five days" for results.
TRUTH: The wait is actually 10 to 15 days in many instances—very, very few Americans are seeing "three"- or "four"-day wait times for non-point-of-care tests.
LIE: Trump repeated his already-infamous lie that America is only seeing a rise in cases due to testing.
TRUTH: As has been universally reported, "positivity rates" are rapidly increasing across America—confirming that cases are going up because of widespread virus transmission.
LIE: Trump says "other countries don't test [as much as] we do."
TRUTH: The United States has actually ranked *below 30th worldwide* for much of the pandemic in per capita testing. At the moment America occupies its *highest-ever* global position in this critical category: 18th.
(THREAD UPDATE) We are now at 40 significant lies in 12 minutes.
LIE: "We are so much better at testing than any other country in the world."
TRUTH: Not only was the first test the administration developed broken; not only did Trump tout "instant" testing that turned out to have a 50% error rate; as noted already, the U.S. *lags* in testing.
LIE: Trump says that the U.S. is "lowest in numerous categories" relating to COVID-19 deaths; "lower than the world," he insists.
TRUTH: This is 100% false. Even the documents Trump provided on-air don't show the U.S. ranking best in the world in any COVID-19 mortality category.
LIE: Trump says "you can't go by" per capita deaths.
TRUTH: Trump, his team, and his supporters have been telling Americans for *months* that per capita death data is the *only* data they can or will trust (not total death count). This is a complete evacuation of that position.
LIE: Trump implied South Korea is faking their death toll.
TRUTH: There is no evidence of this. (Note that Trump is talking about our *close ally* South Korea here, not China.)
