The 6 most misleading statements from Trump's CPAC speech
Narjas Zatat
Over the weekend, Donald Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) where he made a number of statements about a whole host of topics, including unemployment, the Russian investigation, and crowd size.
A number of the statements he made however, when fact-checked, turned out to be false.
Here are a few of them:
1. He claimed America was "down to 3.7 per cent unemployment".
Wrong. The unemployment rate is actually at 4 per cent – it was 3.7 per cent in September 2018.
2. Speaking about the diversity visa lottery program, he said: "They send us the people they don't want."
This is wrong. Countries don't actually select citizens to apply for the US program – individuals apply for it.
Secondly, "don't want" implies that only undesirable people apply for the visa. In fact, they have to meet very specific education and/or skills requirements in order to qualify.
3. Speaking on the Russia investigation, he said Robert Mueller's team has "13 of the angriest Democrats in the history of our country".
Untrue. Mueller is a Republican, and the team has both Republicans and Democrats.
4. On James Comey: "Every single Democrat said Comey should fired" for the way he handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. And, Trump added that Chuck Schumer "called for his resignation many times".
Incorrect. Firstly, Democrats didn't universally call for Comey to be fired – though a few wanted him fired, it was by no means a majority.
Secondly, Schumer told Bloomberg News he wanted to speak with Comey "to restore my faith" as he had lost confidence in the investigation. He did not however, call on Comey to be fired.
5. Crowd size. Trump doubles down on his accusation that the media falsely reports about crowd size. He said: "They did the same thing at our big inauguration speech. You take a look at those crowds. We had a crowd, I've never seen anything like it. There were people (from) the Capitol down to the Washington Monument."
Wrong. The National Park Service released lots of photos showing that the crowd that showed for his inauguration ceremony didn't extend to the Washington Monument from the Capitol.
It showed that there were empty spaces on the National Mall.
6. On the shut-down, he claimed that though he travelled to Iraq, he "stayed at the White House for months and months because I wanted the Democrats to get back from their vacations from Hawaii and these other places".
That's misleading. He actually left the White House lots of times outside of travelling to Iraq.
In fact, he travelled to Philadelphia to watch the Army-Navy football game, Kansas City for a conference, the G-20 summit, hosts MAGA rallies in Mississippi and hosted Thanksgiving dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
H/T Associated Press
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